bookwyr.me‘It’s surreal’: US sanctions lock International Criminal Court judge out of daily life
Arthur Bessewww.irishtimes.com/world/us/2025/12/12/its-surr…
cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24014988
This summer Kimberly Prost, a Canadian judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC), arrived at her home in The Hague and, as was her habit, called out “Alexa”.
There was silence. The voice-activated assistant did not respond. “Alexa was dead. She wouldn’t talk to me,” Prost recalled in an interview with The Irish Times.
Prost had been added to the United States’ sanctions list, because in 2020 she ruled to authorise an investigation into possible atrocities in Afghanistan, including by US troops. Amazon, obliged to implement the sanctions as a US company, had cancelled her account.
It was just the start of what Prost describes as a “pervasive, negative effect” of the sanctions across all aspects of her life, which has shut her out from much of the international banking system.
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driving_croonerI work in a financial company and every year I have to take a training on money laundering and sanctioned individuals/companies/countries. They always use arms and drug traffickers on the examples, hope they update it explain why we can’t insure the car of the ICC judges.
My favorite was the company I worked for had yearly trainings including that I was not allowed to bribe foreign heads of state… Bitch I am trying to figure how to afford dinner?? Does King Charles accept change, I maybe able to find a dime…
Same. I had to disclose every single investment and bank account, payment apps, and loan for myself, my wife, and any dependents like children or aging parents. All to avoid even a possibility of something looking like a conflict of interest. In the meantime the fucking president of the country can hawk meme coins, and pardon actual convicted fraudsters. I asked about that on one of those zoom calls, but was ignored for some reason.
I wasn’t even going political… Just saying if I can’t afford lunch I can’t afford to bribe a leader of a country.
I didn’t have to disclose any information like that, just check a box saying I pinky promise I won’t slip vladamir putin a crisp one dollar bill…
m-p{3}There should be automatic retaliatory sanctions when taking actions impeding an ICC judge.
HanrahanRight below this headline on the Irish Times website, there are links to share on Facebook, X, Whatsapp, all owned by US companies.
There’s a long way to go toward digital independance. There should be buttons to share via Mastodon, Email, .. shown before those US walled gardens.
Not having access to Alexa and other invasive products sounds liberating, not a punishment.
Jo Miran…which has shut her out from much of the international banking system.
This, not so much.
Not if you become accustomed to it and revolve your daily habits around it. But yeah, once she will get home assistant it will clearly be a liberating experience.
ɔiƚoxɘupSquirreling a bit here, but I’ve been wanting to go that route, but don’t have quite enough free time.
At least from what I understand, the Ux is pretty decent.
@Quexotic anything involving self-hosting is a hassle though, and the advertising is not there, unlike anything that comes from big tech. But the results are highly rewarding.
USA is a rogue state, the fact that they do these things administratively is complete disregard for human rights and complete disregard for the concept of operating within the law.
It is yet another example of how USA does not respect civil rights of people of other nations, and they don’t respect the sovereignty even of “allied” countries.
It’s disgusting, and it has infuriated me for decades how we in for instance Europe has allowed USA to do this, without as much as criticism.
There is no way it can be considered acceptable that USA can apply pressure on what a judge of a sovereign country or international organization decides. Not a judge or any politician or public servant or any private citizen for that matter.
But the fact that USA has the audacity to go after ICC judges, shows the extreme level of entitlement and exceptionalism USA feel they have in the world.
USA MUST be treated as a rogue nation, and we can’t allow them to continue. If Amazon does this, we need to ban Amazon in EU.
And fuck all the idiots that use Amazon cloud services, you should get the fuck away from American services already. It’s been crystal clear obvious that they operate illegally according to EU law at least since Obama was president!
Why the fuck are people still using their crap!
Avid AmoebaPeople and countries have to stop respecting US sanctions. Unfortunately it’s not time yet but we’re getting there I think.
We need more payment systems and IT systems that are not run by US companies, among other things.
EpicFailGuyI’m a security engineer and I can personally confirm that trump has personally done more to advance tech in Europe that any other leader.
There is currently a “Sovereign cloud” arms race in European tech where governments are rushing to migrate out of US based solutions in favor for their own if possible and other European countries if otherwise.
It’s been great for the industry and for the end users. I’m in the US myself, but even I am benefiting because more competition = more options and now I can have services where that orange fuck we have to call president doesn’t have a say or access to my data.
SeeMarkFlyFASTER!
The sooner you disrespect us (U.S.) the sooner the dumb people HERE will catch on.
Keep it up, PLEASE.
A world doesn’t exist where an American company doesn’t enforce American sanctions.The real shame is that she uses Alexa to begin with.
Basically every multinational company is going to enforce American sanctions in fears of having the American market close or being sanctioned itself.
Unfortunately. We just had left wing orgs debanked because the US put antifa on their terror list. Like what the flying fuck? Never in my life have I witnessed such bullshit.
It’s been time to react for decades, but people and politicians are so stupid they didn’t because USA is our “ally”, but if they really were our ally, they wouldn’t pull shit like this. They also wouldn’t make illegal surveillance in and against allied countries, with the purpose of influencing or countering politicians from allied countries, circumventing the democratic process of said countries.
USA is an enemy of democracy, and has been for decades.
We should have moved away from the US tech stack back then when Bush Jr. was in office… I can only say that I am preaching this now my whole professional life, for over 20 years now!
UnderpantsWeevilLove my Rules Based Intentional Order.
US government and billionaire tech companies intertwine and use both their influence to enforce compliance beyond democratic rules. That’s the new USA foreign policy: (peace thru force/strength/power, national security strategy)
- European members that criticized big tech or the president have been blocked from entering the USA, (and USA pushing their culture views on Europe by all means necessary)
- Maduro getting kidnapped and his country getting taken over cause he didn’t comply
- The U.S. has never ratified the ICC anyway because why would they give up the freedom to do what they want…
and normally does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC.
The 2002 American Service-Members’ Protection Act (ASPA) literally states that the U.S. will attempt to protect U.S. military personnel and other citizens from ICC persecution — even with military action if necessary.
That bill was nicknamed “The Hague Invasion Act” because in theory it authorizes the president to use force to free Americans from ICC prison.
They even go as far as using big tech to blackmail members of the ICC that investigate war crimes of the US military (or Israel). Like you see in the article… crazy.
The US and Israel reject the jurisdiction of the court. Neither country is among the 125 signatories of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 1998. However, the treaty sets out that nationals of non-member states can be tried for crimes that take place on the territory of states that are signatories.
Afghanistan signed it in 2003 and the state of Palestine in 2014. The court therefore asserts its jurisdiction to prosecute the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression that have taken place in Gaza, East Jerusalem or the West Bank, no matter the nationality of the alleged perpetrators.
In an executive order announcing the first round of ICC sanctions this year, US president Donald Trump said the court represented an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” for its investigations into nationals of the US and Israel. The state department accused the court of conducting “lawfare” and infringing on US sovereignty.
Along with the ICC staff, the US also sanctioned three Palestinian NGOs for engaging with the court in its efforts to “ investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute Israeli nationals”. The court is preparing for the possibility that the ICC itself might be sanctioned as an entity any day.
Originally from Winnepeg, Prost was a public prosecutor in Canada and became specialized in the prosecution of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. She served as a judge on the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which led to the conviction of multiple people for carrying out a genocide in Srebrenica.
I guess america hates growing because you grow and become stronger from criticism and self reflection from journalists, but nah rather hate free speech and oppress criticism by all means necessary cause we wannea become weaker not stronger.
The idiot will push more countries away fron US financial institutions and toward chinese ones
KorkkiThe idiot
Don’t make claims that this is just Trump. ‘The Hague Invasion Act’ was Bush II era invention and kept by every American president and congress since. Bush sr. had his famous quote: “I will never apologize for the United States — I don’t care what the facts are” after downing an iranian passenger plane apparently by accident. It’s great joy of the empire to be vindictive and petty and flee from any consequence. The last thing american elites will do is show some strategic humility and common sense, even if it’s to stop bleeding allies.
HiddenLayer555Silver lining I guess
This is actually great news. These judges have the money and power and political support to help drive such change. Poor folk would just get fucked because what could they do.
KimBongUn420
explodicleWhy not European?
I didn’t know that Europe has a financial system that work indecently independently from American one.
For example:
US has Visa, Mastercard and American Express.
China has Union Pay.
What does Europe have?
Many national systems.
Direct free instantaneous bank transfers in the SEPA member states. And the systems built upon it like ideal/wero/blue chip and others.
As far as I know most of Europe favors debit instead of credit cards. Financial life in the EU is organised completely differently from North America (well, at least from USA and Canada, haven’t been to Mexico yet).
European politics are a joke and is basically the same imperialist bs the US does. It’s why those colonizers are getting kicked out in Africa more and more
Seems like an incredibly bad idea for an ICC judge to be using Alexa/"OK Google"/Siri in any capacity.
I wonder how many humiliations the Europeans will suffer before they wake up
Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]This is economic terrorism
Outrageous. Good for the judge for going public, everyone has to know what happens when you’re cutoff US services and how untrustworthy they are.
Interfering in the judicial system makes U.S. no different than the wild-west they run in Russia with oligarchs.
Another proof that EU must immediately come with its own payment system and cut these meaningless ties with US corporations.
“Do as we demand or we’ll bully and terrorise you."
Yep, seems about right for the american government.
This is why we don’t depend on American providers