U.S. Sanctions U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese. Sanciones de EEUU a Francesca Albanese ENG ESP

ENGLISH

10 July 2025 Democracy Now

U.S. Sanctions U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese. Interview. "Economy of Genocide"

We speak with United Nations expert Francesca Albanese, one day after the Trump administration announced it is imposing sanctions on her over her advocacy for Palestinian rights. Albanese has served as the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory since 2022.

She recently released a report highlighting dozens of companies aiding Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory and fueling its genocidal war machine in Gaza, including U.S. tech giants. Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized Albanese's work as "political and economic warfare" against the United States and its allies.

"It seems that this administration is quite allergic to justice," says Albanese, speaking to Democracy Now! from Slovenia. "It's trying to distract us from where our focus should be: what's happening to the Palestinians in the little that remains of their tormented land, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem." 

 

TRT Global 11 July 2025.

‘Lawless rampage’: Why US sanctions on Francesca Albanese trample on global normsWashington’s sanctions against UN Special Rapporteur Albanese come days after she published a groundbreaking report linking major corporations to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including US tech giants.

Zeynep Conkar

The US has long relied on unlawful unilateral sanctions as a foreign policy weapon – targeting governments, institutions, companies, and individuals it deems adversarial.

On Wednesday, Washington once again crossed a red line by turning its coercive power against the United Nations itself, sanctioning the UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the announcement, accusing Albanese of “illegitimate and shameful efforts” to prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against American and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.

But Albanese, a widely respected international lawyer, was doing exactly what her mandate requires: documenting violations in the occupied Palestinian territories and reporting them to the UN system. 

The US sanctions came just days after she released a report titled From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide, which detailed how dozens of corporations, including Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Palantir, are enabling and also profiting from Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and genocide in Gaza by supplying surveillance systems, digital infrastructure, and weapons technology.

“The US government’s imposition of sanctions on Albanese, and Rubio’s malicious and libellous smears against her, are just the latest in the Trump administration’s lawless rampage,” Craig Mokhiber, a prominent Human Rights Lawyer and a former UN official, tells TRT World.

Mokhiber resigned from the UN in November 2024 in protest against the organisation’s failure to stop what he described as a “textbook case of genocide” in Gaza.

“In addition to the attacks on Albanese, we’ve seen the administration participate in genocide in Palestine, commit the crime of aggression in Iran, unlawfully sanction the ICC prosecutor and judges, violate the rights of countless migrants, and abduct and detain students merely for speaking out against genocide,” Mokhiber says.

Illegal under the UN Charter

Experts point out that these sanctions are not only politically retaliatory, they are also entirely unlawful under international law, as the US has no legal basis for imposing unilateral sanctions on a UN mandate holder. 

In fact, doing so violates the UN Charter itself.

“These experts are mandated by the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly to investigate human rights violations and report their findings through the UN system,” says Munir Nuseibah, a human rights lawyer and law professor at the occupied East Jerusalem-based Al-Quds University.

“The sanctions imposed on Albanese, and previously on the ICC demonstrate that the US is actively opposing international law and the institutions of international justice,” Nuseibah tells TRT World.

According to Mokhiber, the sanctions are also in violation of the Genocide Convention, which obligates states to prevent genocide and facilitate accountability for it. 

Albanese’s report documents how private companies are profiting from Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians. 

Punishing her for bringing those facts forward, Mokhiber argues, amounts to obstructing international obligations aimed at preventing and prosecuting genocide.

Additionally, under Article 41 of the UN Charter, only the Security Council is authorised to impose sanctions that are binding on member states. 

When a single country enforces coercive measures outside this framework, it bypasses international legal mechanisms and undermines the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention.

As for mechanisms of accountability, there are limitations in enforcing international law on powerful states like the US.

“However, this doesn’t mean the special rapporteur will be silenced, nor will the court. The US cannot unilaterally reshape the international system,” says Nuseibah.

Nuseibah expects the UN Human Rights Council and potentially the General Assembly to take up the matter. 

“While this may not prevent Washington from continuing such policies, it is essential to at least acknowledge the violation so that it does not become acceptable for any country to attack the human rights system simply because they disagree with its findings or mandates,” he explains.
Related
TRT Global - ICC warrants lay groundwork to indict others, including US leaders

Targeting accountability mechanisms

The US reaction was not surprising as Albanese’s latest report is one of the clearest and most direct efforts so far to show how private companies are enabling Israel’s military occupation and apartheid regime.

It outlined extensive economic and technological ties between corporate actors and the Israeli government, many of which are US-based.

What makes the report especially significant is its connection between these companies and the wider machinery of destruction in Gaza, where over 57,800 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, according to Nuseibah.

“I believe Albanese’s report is especially significant because it goes beyond Israeli violations to also highlight the role of third parties, companies and NGOs that are supporting Israel’s genocidal campaign and apartheid regime.” 

“The timing of the sanctions is telling, though not surprising,” Nuseibah adds.

Under international law, complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are separate, prosecutable offences. Albanese’s findings hint that US actors could be exposed to legal consequences. 

In this context, the sanctions appear designed to silence and isolate her and other UN experts and legal bodies from moving too close to the truth.

The move also mirrors past US sanctions against the International Criminal Court and its officials, revealing a persistent pattern of unilateral coercion meant to go after international institutions seen as a threat. 

In recent years, revelations have uncovered years of Israeli surveillance and espionage targeting ICC officials. 

One notable example came in 2020, when the Trump administration sanctioned senior members of the Court, including then-chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. The decision followed the ICC’s announcement that it would investigate war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan and by Israeli forces in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Bensouda reportedly received direct threats from Mossad leadership, warning her not to pursue cases that could endanger her or her family’s safety. US authorities followed up by freezing her assets and barring her from entering the country.

In 2024, the same tactics resurfaced. As the ICC prepared arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, a group of Republican senators threatened prosecutor Karim Khan with sanctions. Their warning extended not only to him, but also to ICC officials and their families.

These examples point to a pattern when legal accountability appears imminent for the US, Washington does not hesitate to pressure or punish the institutions seeking to uphold international law.

“It’s fair to say that the standing of the US on the global stage has never been lower than it is at this moment,” Mokhiber says.

“The administration’s open disdain for human rights and the rule of law should be of grave concern to the entire international community,” he adds.

 

Chris Hedges
@ChrisLynnHedges
10 July 2025
The Persecution of Francesca Albanese 

When the history of the genocide in Gaza is written, one of the most courageous and outspoken champions for justice and the adherence to international law will be Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, who today the Trump administration is sanctioning. Her office is tasked with monitoring and reporting on human rights violations that Israel commits against Palestinians.

Albanese, who regularly receives death threats and endures well-orchestrated smear campaigns directed by Israel and its allies, valiantly seeks to hold those who support and sustain the genocide accountable. She lambasts what she calls “the moral and political corruption of the world” that allows the genocide to continue. Her office has issued detailed reports documenting war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, one of which, called “Genocide as colonial erasure
,” I have reprinted as an appendix in my latest book, “A Genocide Foretold"

She has informed private organizations that they are “criminally liable” for assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide in Gaza. She announced that if true, as has been reported, that the former British prime minister David Cameron threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, which Cameron and the other former British prime minister Rishi Sunak could be charged with a criminal offense for, under the Rome Statue. The Rome Statue criminalizes those who seek to prevent war crimes from being prosecuted.

She has called on top European Union (EU) officials to face charges of complicity of war crimes over their support for the genocide, saying that their actions cannot be met with impunity. She was a champion of the Madleen flotilla that sought to break the blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, writing that the boat which was intercepted by Israel, was carrying not only supplies, but a message of humanity.

Her latest report lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as BlackRock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law, are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned her support for the ICC, four of whose judges have been sanctioned by the U.S. for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant last year. He criticized Albanese for her efforts to prosecute American or Israeli nationals who sustain the genocide, saying she is unfit for service as a special rapporteur. Rubio also accused Albanese of having "spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West." The sanctions will most likely prevent Albanese from travelling to the U.S. and will freeze any assets she may have in the country.

The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states, such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint. It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. No one, from now on, will take seriously our stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? We speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide.

“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass forced displacement and the mass homelessness, while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation — how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asked in an interview.

 

I did with her when we discussed her report, “Genocide as colonial erasure.”
The militarized drones, helicopter gunships, walls and barriers, checkpoints, coils of concertina wire, watchtowers, detention centers, deportations, brutality and torture, denial of entry visas, apartheidesque existence that comes with being undocumented, loss of individual rights and electronic surveillance, are as familiar to desperate migrants along the Mexican border, or attempting to enter Europe, as they are to Palestinians.

This is what awaits those who Frantz Fanon calls “the wretched of the earth.”
Those that defend the oppressed, such as Albanese, will be treated like the oppressed.

 

ESPAÑOL

Sanciones de EEUU a Francesca Albanese. Entrevista. "Economía del genocidio"

Hablamos con la experta de las Naciones Unidas, Francesca Albanese, un día después de que el gobierno de Trump anunciara la imposición de sanciones contra ella por su defensa de los derechos palestinos. Albanese se ha desempeñado como relatora especial de la ONU sobre el territorio palestino ocupado desde 2022.

Recientemente publicó un informe que destaca a decenas de empresas que contribuyen a la ocupación israelí del territorio palestino y alimentan su maquinaria de guerra genocida en Gaza, incluyendo gigantes tecnológicos estadounidenses. El secretario de Estado, Marco Rubio, calificó la labor de Albanese de "guerra política y económica" contra Estados Unidos y sus aliados.

"Parece que este gobierno tiene bastante alergia a la justicia", declara Albanese a Democracy Now! desde Eslovenia. "Intenta distraernos de donde deberíamos centrarnos: qué les está sucediendo a los palestinos en lo poco que queda de su tierra atormentada: la Franja de Gaza, Cisjordania y Jerusalén Este".

 

TRT Global 11 julio 2025 "Desmanes sin ley”: Por qué las sanciones de EE. UU. contra Francesca Albanese pisotean las normas globales. Las sanciones de Washington contra la Relatora Especial de la ONU, Albanese, se producen días después de que esta publicara un informe pionero que vincula a grandes corporaciones con el genocidio de Israel en Gaza, incluyendo a gigantes tecnológicos estadounidenses.