ICC deputy prosecutor reports staff banking problems amid US sanctions

Khan says Gaza war investigation and other cases have made significant progress

International Criminal Court deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan said the court’s new US sanctions were already beginning to affect staff, with some staff members reporting banking difficulties. She said those disruptions had not reduced the institution’s investigative work and described the Gaza war investigation and other cases as making significant progress.

Khan, a Fijian deputy prosecutor who is co-running the office pending the appointment of a new chief prosecutor, spoke to The Guardian as the court prepared for the sanctions announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Oct. 9 to take effect six months later. The new measures target the court as a whole, following earlier US sanctions on 13 individual ICC staff in February 2025. Khan was among those 13 and is accustomed to dealing with sanctions, which affect aspects of everyday life such as banking and insurance.

Rubio accused the ICC, a frequent target of the Trump administration, of being a “rogue court” and said: “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.” His announcement gave the court six months to negotiate and present a solution to US concerns. It remained unclear what would satisfy the Trump administration, which has repeatedly sanctioned and criticized the court.

Some staff have encountered banking problems, Khan said, even though the new sanctions are not due to take effect until six months after the Oct. 9 announcement. She said banks were “over complying” to minimize risk while the ultimate scope of the measures remained uncertain. “These are sanctions imposed on the institutions and in principle, our individual members should not be impacted directly,” she said, but added that some staff members were experiencing difficulties with banking.

The court is meanwhile working on insulating itself from sanctions imposed by the US administration. It has switched its software from Microsoft to European alternatives and is negotiating with relevant service providers over banking and health insurance. The court’s registrar is in negotiation with the European Union over blocking the US sanctions or protecting the court in other ways. Khan acknowledged that the full effect could not be anticipated when the sanctions formally take effect.

“All the investigations across all situations continue. We haven’t made any decision based on the sanctions to reduce our capability or reduce our output,” Khan said.

Khan said the Gaza war investigation and other matters had made “significant progress” since the ICC issued war-crimes arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Galant in November 2024. Further applications from the prosecutor were being kept secret by order of the court, she said. No additional charges over the Gaza war have been announced since late 2024.

Khan attributed the lack of public detail to a court ruling earlier in 2026 that all charges and applications for warrants should remain secret until judges decided whether they could be made public. “Even if we reach a stage of the investigations where it might be imminent, we may not discuss it publicly,” she said. She said the secrecy could create the appearance that nothing was happening while work continued in the Israel-Palestine file and other situations.

Rubio claimed, without evidence, earlier in October that “globalist ‘experts’ an ocean away” wanted the ICC to prosecute American citizens. Khan said it was unclear whom and what Rubio had in mind and said the court had not brought any Americans before it. If his reference was Afghanistan, she said, the priority was offenses committed specifically against women, girls and other vulnerable groups by the Taliban and Islamic State Khorasan. Earlier in October, the ICC pretrial chamber unsealed four arrest warrants against Taliban members on charges of gender persecution.

Sanctions were not the court’s only disruption. Formal investigations began in late November 2024 into allegations of sexual harassment against former chief prosecutor Karim Khan, a British jurist and no relation to Nazhat Shameem Khan. He denied the charges and was removed in July 2026 after a vote by member states.

Khan described her own experience under the earlier US sanctions. “Life without a credit card is inconvenient. It’s amazing how many things now we cannot do around the world, particularly in relation to travel, without a credit card,” she said. She said the inconvenience was put into perspective when she visited refugee camps or sites of mass atrocities: “We see the faces of our victims for whom sanctions and credit cards are completely irrelevant. They just want justice.”

Support for the court continued as the sanctions began to create practical problems. On Thursday, the European Parliament awarded its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to the court and its officials. Khan said the public support was “a very important message that the staff at the court need to hear,” along with pledges from other countries to continue contributing to the court’s costs.

Khan said the attention reflected the court’s relevance: “This is a court that provides an avenue of justice for victims who have nowhere else to go, who really want to cut past politics and want their voices to be heard.”