British lawyer Amal Clooney could get barred from the US where she lives with her husband George Clooney because of her role in influencing the International Criminal Court to charge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant with war crimes in Gaza. Financial Times reported the UK Foreign Office warned that several human rights barristers could be slapped with sanctions by the Trump administration and Amal Clooney is one of them.
A former senior British judge, Lord Justice Adrian Fulford, the Labour peer Baroness Helena Kennedy of the Shaws, and Danny Friedman, a barrister at Matrix Chambers, are also at risk.
In February, Trump sanctioned the ICC and ordered that ICC officials, employees and their immediate family members should be hit with financial penalties and visa restrictions. Last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amal Clooney provided advice to the ICC as to whether there was sufficient evidence to charge.
Trump’s order gave a 60-day deadline for a subsequent internal recommendation to the president on who else should be placed under sanctions, which would have been April 7, the FT reported
Trump’s executive order does not name Amal Clooney. In fact, it does not name anyone apart from ICC prosecutor Karim Khan who first pushed the court to issue the arrest warrants, but there are chances, as hinted by the UK Foreign Office.
British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Clooney married George Clooney in 2014, a year after they met through a mutual friend. In 2017, they became parents to fraternal twins. Recently, there were rumors of their impending divorce, but George maintained that their relationship feels like hitting a jackpot.
Amal Clooney, despite her high-profile legal work, stayed in the US with George and their daughters.
