ICC judge on what U.S. sanctions mean for her and global courts : NPR

If you want to see how far U.S. sanctions can reach, ask Kimberly Prost’s Alexa.

After the United States sanctioned her, the Canadian judge at the International Criminal Court began losing access to services from companies in different countries. Her credit cards were also canceled.

“You start to lose services from American companies, Amazon, Google, potentially Apple, whatever it may be,” she told Morning Edition. “Completely randomly, though, you don’t know when something’s going to happen.”

One of those moments came during an ordinary moment at home.

“I went home and Alexa wouldn’t talk to me,” she told NPR’s Steve Inskeep.

Her credit cards, issued in the Netherlands and Canada, were canceled. She has managed to keep some bank accounts, but says her banking services are extremely limited and even small transfers can be blocked.

The sanctions themselves are American. Still, businesses abroad may comply because they have ties to the U.S.

“We have this massive overcompliance by companies,” she said.

One of the most serious examples is her health insurance. Prost receives coverage through AXA, the French company that provides insurance for the court. She says the company has refused to pay her claims even though it is not legally required to follow the U.S. sanctions.

“It’s a business decision,” she said.

Her phone still works — “so far” — but some email, cloud and other technology services are limited.

She has lived with the restrictions for more than a year.

Why was she sanctioned?

Prost said her sanction stems from Trump’s executive order targeting ICC officials involved in cases concerning Israel and Gaza or Afghanistan.

Her own case goes back six years.

At the time, Prost was temporarily serving on the ICC’s Appeals Chamber when prosecutors sought authorization to open an investigation into alleged crimes connected to the war in Afghanistan. Prost and four other judges unanimously approved the request.

The investigation covered alleged crimes involving the Taliban and ISIS and included what Prost described as “a small component related to the United States.”

That U.S. component was never pursued and was later deprioritized by prosecutors, she said.

“And it is for that decision that I’m sanctioned,” Prost said.

Her role was judicial, not investigative. She said the appeals judges were required to decide whether prosecutors had the proper legal basis and jurisdiction to proceed — similar, she said, to a judge authorizing a search warrant.

“There is no investigation related to the American component in Afghanistan, and I have nothing to do with the Israel-Gaza situation,” Prost said.

Her designation came amid a much wider confrontation between Washington and the ICC that intensified after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.

For Prost, the broader concern is what sanctions like these mean for judges on international courts making decisions from the bench.

“We are judges, and we are being told that rather than deciding our cases on the basis of the facts and the law before us, as we are duty bound to do, we’re being asked to decide the cases or not decide them in accordance with the wishes of the U.S. government,” she said.

By August 2026, nine of the court’s 18 judges were under U.S. sanctions, along with both deputy prosecutors, its former prosecutor and one staff member.

The Trump administration has threatened to go further, announcing what it called a “whole-of-government campaign” to “systematically dismantle” the ICC over its investigations involving Americans and Israelis.

NPR reached out to the State Department for more information about whether and when the administration plans to impose additional sanctions on the court. The department did not respond.

Prost is challenging the sanction in U.S. court. In June, she and fellow ICC judges Reine Alapini-Gansou and Solomy Balungi Bossa sued President Trump and other administration officials in federal court in New York, arguing that the measures were unlawful.

The work goes on in The Hague

For now, the sanctions have changed how she lives outside the courtroom, but not the work she continues to do inside it.

Her current case involves alleged crimes tied to the jihadist takeover of Timbuktu in Mali, including persecution, torture and inhumane treatment.

“I will never quit my job as a judge,” Prost said. “These methods that they’re using, these coercive measures, are completely futile.”

She said she and other sanctioned judges and prosecutors continue to do their jobs “objectively, independently and in accordance with the oath that we’ve taken.”

The radio interview was produced by Ava Pukatch, and the web version was edited by Treye Green.