United States: sanctions lifted on UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese

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The US Treasury Department has lifted the sanctions imposed on the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese.

The change, announced in a notice posted on the Treasury’s website, lists Albanese’s name under “removals of sanctions related to the International Criminal Court”.

The Trump administration’s move comes a week after US federal judge Richard Leon suspended the sanctions against Albanese, upholding an appeal filed last February by the UN official’s husband and daughter. In his ruling, Judge Leon granted the family’s request, stressing that “protecting freedom of speech is ‘always’ in the public interest”.

Why the US had imposed sanctions on Albanese

The sanctions against Francesca Albanese were imposed by the Trump administration in retaliation for the rapporteur’s public denunciations of violations of Palestinians’ human rights, which she attributed to Israel.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had condemned the expert’s criticism of the United States and claimed that the rapporteur had urged the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Albanese has so far not commented on the lifting of the sanctions. On her social media accounts, her latest posts concern the capture and arrest by Israel of activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, among them dozens of Italians and other European citizens.