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US sanctions violate immunity that protects UN envoys: Albanese

UN envoy on Palestinian rights Francesca Albanese said Tuesday that U.S. sanctions against her, imposed after her criticism of Washington’s Gaza policy, violate her diplomatic immunity.

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories made the comments while visiting Bogota, nearly a week after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions, calling her work “biased and malicious.”

“It’s a very serious measure. It’s unprecedented. And I take it very seriously,” Albanese told an audience in the Colombian capital.

Albanese was in Bogota to attend an international summit initiated by leftist President Gustavo Petro to find solutions to the Gaza conflict.

The Italian legal scholar and human rights expert has faced harsh criticism for her long-standing accusations that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.

“It’s clear violation of the U.N. Convention on Privileges and Immunities that protect U.N. officials, including independent experts, from words and actions taken in the exercise of their functions,” Albanese said.

Rubio on July 9, announced that Washington was sanctioning Albanese “for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”

The sanctions are “a warning to anyone who dares to defend international law and human rights, justice and freedom,” Albanese said.

On Thursday, the U.N. urged the United States to reverse the sanctions against Albanese, along with sanctions against judges of the International Criminal Court, with U.N. chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman calling the move “a dangerous precedent.”

On Friday, the European Union also spoke out against the sanctions facing Albanese, adding that it “strongly supports the United Nations human rights system.”

Albanese, who assumed her mandate in 2022, released a damning report this month denouncing companies – many of them American – that she said “profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide” in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The report provoked a furious Israeli response, while some of the companies also raised objections.

Washington last month slapped sanctions on four ICC judges, in part over the court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, barring them from the United States.

U.N. special rapporteurs like Albanese are independent experts, who are appointed by the U.N. human rights council, but do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.

Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, incursion triggered the war, causing 1,219 deaths and taking 251 hostages, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.

Israel’s genocidal war, in comparison, has killed over 57,800 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry, displaced almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, sparked a humanitarian crisis in the enclave and left much of the territory in ruins.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence has surged in the territory since October 2023.

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