The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.(File Photo)

Judges and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) report being cut off from basic financial services and daily activities due to sanctions imposed by the Trump administration in response to war crimes investigations involving Israeli and US officials.

Media outlets reported on Friday the adverse effects of US sanctions on at least nine staff members of the court in The Hague.

Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, one of the ICC officials targeted, stated that she lost access to her credit cards, her purchased e-books disappeared from her device, and Amazon`s Alexa stopped responding.

"Your whole world is restricted," Prost, who was sanctioned in August, said. "It`s the uncertainty. They are small annoyances, but they accumulate."

Prost was sanctioned for voting to allow the court to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, including actions by US personnel.

"I`ve worked all my life in criminal justice, and now I`m on a list with those implicated in terrorism and organized crime," she remarked.

Deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan described the pervasive impact of US sanctions on their daily lives, noting uncertainty when her credit card fails to work.

Sanctioned Peruvian judge Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza stated that travel restrictions prevented her daughters from attending conferences in the US.

The ICC, the world`s permanent war crimes tribunal with 125 member states, was targeted by restrictions in February, with the White House claiming these actions responded to "illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel."

These measures, enacted through an executive order by Trump, block access to essential financial services, online shopping, and email, and bar entry into the US.

The order followed the ICC`s move to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war minister Yoav Gallant for "crimes against humanity and war crimes" committed during its during its genocidal war on Gaza.

The sanctions threaten businesses and individuals with significant US fines and prison time for providing any support to the sanctioned individuals, prompting many to withdraw services.

Reports indicate that these sanctions are part of broader efforts to pressure the court regarding the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. In July, media outlets reported that the court`s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, received warnings that he and the ICC would be "destroyed" if the warrants were not retracted.

The threat reportedly came from Nicholas Kaufman, a British-Israeli defense lawyer at the court linked to a Netanyahu adviser.

Khan said the Israeli leader`s legal adviser told him he was "authorised" to make Khan a proposal that would allow the prosecutor to "climb down the tree."

The site reported in August that Khan had also been privately warned by then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron in April the previous year that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if it issued the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, while in May 2024.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also "threatened" Khan with sanctions if he applied for the warrants.

In May, Khan`s office announced he had taken a leave of absence pending the conclusion of a UN-led investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

His lawyers said he rejected all claims of wrongdoing and had only stepped aside temporarily due to intense media scrutiny.

Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed about 70,400 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured 171,000 others in the two-year war in Gaza that has reduced much of the blockaded Palestinian territory to rubble.

Experts say the Israeli regime, with the complicity of the US and Western states, has committed genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.