Criminal kingpins defend themselves. Cross them at your own risk.

White Rose activists resisting the Nazis; Italian journalists and prosecutors pursuing the mafia; dissident Russian politicians challenging Vladimir Putin – and getting too popular. Guillotined, gunned down, poisoned, or starved to death in the gulag.

White Rose activist Sophie Scholl

Now, condemning the US government and its foreign policies, or pursuing its partner in crime in court, probably won’t get you killed. Donald Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, will just ruin your life.

Ask Andrew Cayley. Together with American lawyer Brenda Hollis, Cayley, a British barrister, steered the International Criminal Court investigation leading to arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and his war minister, Yoav Gallant, back in November 2024.

“It was the worst few months of my life,” Cayley told the Observer. US Senator Lindsey Graham screamed and yelled, vowing sanctions against Cayley and the court. Phone threats followed. Then, the kicker: Watch your back, Dutch police warned Cayley.

“They said we need to look at your flat and we need to put alarms on all the French windows, bars across the skylights and you need a reinforced bulletproof door,” Cayley recounted to the Observer.

Last Fall, Cayley quit. Others have too.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, flanked by prosecutors Brenda Hollis and Andrew Cayley

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan and four judges are under US sanction; bank accounts frozen; email accounts blocked. The court’s IT system – its very existence – is under threat. (in flagrant breach of Article 70 of the ICC’s Rome Statute.)

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu travels back and forth between Tel Aviv and Washington, through European airspace, fearing nothing from Greek, Italian, French, or British authorities.

The GPM spoke with British barrister Toby Cadman about ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, where they stand, other warrants that may be issued against other Israeli leaders, and crippling US sanctions against the ICC. Cadman is an international human rights lawyer, and the co-founder and joint head of Guernica 37 Chambers, a London-based law firm specializing in international criminal and humanitarian law.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Watch our complete conversation here:

Then, there’s Italian human rights lawyer Francesca Albanese.

In her role as Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Occupied Palestine, Albanese has submitted a host of damning reports to the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council. Israel and its conjoined twin are not amused.

Albanese’s latest report has really pissed off the Americans.

“From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,” it’s called.

Albanese’s report lists dozens of mega-corporations that have been aiding, abetting, and profiting from Israeli settler-colonialism, apartheid and genocide. Among these, US-based Lockheed-Martin, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, Palantir, Microsoft, Google, Caterpillar … the list goes on and on.

Infuriated, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has struck back.

“Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West,” Rubio wrote in a statement released on July 9, sanctioning Albanese.

Little Marco was just warming up. Albanese, Donald Trump’s poker-faced Secretary of State declared, has written “threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies across finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making extreme and unfounded accusations and recommending the ICC pursue investigations and prosecutions of these companies and their executives. We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty.”

The GPM spoke to Albanese last January.

At the time, Israeli Occupation Forces were demolishing Jenin refugee camp, in the northern West Bank. Since then, some 70,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps.

Since October 7, 2023, about a thousand Palestinians have been killed up and down the West Bank by Jewish settler-terrorists and their soldier friends.

Since May, almost 800 have been gunned down by Israeli or private US snipers, while seeking out food at US/Israeli humanitarian aid centers.

Most recently, Israeli war minister Israel Katz has proposed that a concentration camp be established on the ruins of southern Rafah, into which Gaza’s surviving two million people would be forced — presumably by a fleet of weaponized, heavily armoured Caterpillar D9 bulldozers, provided by Israel-USA.

Listen to our conversation with Francesca Albanese. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Watch our complete conversation here: