News - Middle East: The United States has decided to impose sanctions on a noted and outspoken UN rights official over her outright criticism and exposure of the Israeli regime’s acts of deadly aggression and Washington’s unstinting support for the atrocities.

 In a social media post on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had decided to impose punitive measures against Francesa Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.

Rubio accused Albanese of having tried to prompt the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the regime’s former minister for military affairs Yoav Gallant.

The tribunal issued the warrants last November over the duo’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, where the regime has been waging a strongly-US-supported war of genocide since October 2023.

Prior to the court’s issuance of the warrants, Albanese had authored a landmark report to the UN Human Rights Council, stating that the regime’s military operations in Gaza displayed "prima facie evidence of an intention to systematically destroy Palestinians as a group." The atrocities, she had added, effectively indicated genocide under the UN’s Genocide Convention.

The run-up to authorization of the warrants also saw her propose that the UN consider suspending the regime’s membership for its deadly violations.

She has consistently used the term genocide in multiple reports, including by condemning the regime for carrying out one of “the cruelest genocides in modern history,” and declaring Gaza a “laboratory” for Israeli weapons.

During a UN session last month, she urged a full arms embargo, plus sanctions and divestment against state and corporate supporters of the regime.

She specifically named scores of companies, including Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Caterpillar, Volvo, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Pimco, and Vanguard, denouncing them for facilitating an “economy of genocide”.

Rubio further claimed that Albanese had been trying to instigate punitive action by the court against American officials and companies, calling the alleged efforts “illegitimate and shameful.”

“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” he added.

The American official, meanwhile, vowed that Washington would keep standing by the regime in its “right to self-defense.”

The United States has poured billions of dollars in military aid into the regime’s coffers to be used towards reinforcement of the genocide that has so far claimed the lives of nearly 57,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

Washington has also been lending the genocide unwavering political support by shielding Tel Aviv against punitive UN action.

Source: Press TV