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Jurists Urge ICJ to Remove 'Christian Zionist' Judge from Gaza Genocide Case
International Court of Justice Vice President Julia Sebutinde recently told members of her church in Uganda that "the Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel."
Aug 26, 2025
A global legal advocacy group on Monday called on the International Court of Justice in The Hague to "immediately remove" ICJ Vice President Julia Sebutinde from the ongoing Gaza genocide case following the publication of remarks in which the judge said that God wants her to support Israel.
Santiago Canton, secretary general of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, sent a letter to ICJ President Justice Yuji Iwasawa citing an article published by the Ugandan newspaper Daily Monitor, which reported that Sebutinde delivered remarks on August 10 at Watoto Church in Kampala.
Sebutinde discussed the ICJ's January 26, 2024 issuance of six provisional measures, including orders for Israel to do everything possible to prevent genocidal acts, ensure that humanitarian aid reaches Gazans, and preserve evidence of Israeli crimes committed in the strip. The Ugandan was the sole member of the 17-judge panel to vote against all six measures.
"There are now about 30 countries against Israel," Sebutinde said. "The Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel. The whole world was against Israel, including my country."
Indeed, in January 2024 the Ugandan government issued a statement clarifying that Sebutinde's votes were her "individual and independent opinion" and did "not in any way reflect the position of the government of the Republic of Uganda."
Sebutinde told members of her church—which gained international infamy as its pastor pushed for the current nationwide law punishing "aggravated homosexuality" with a death sentence—that Israel's annihilation and starvation of Gaza is a sign of the biblical "End Times," a period of great suffering followed by the "second coming" of Jesus Christ, a climactic battle between the forces of good and evil, and God's judgment of all people living and dead.
Many Christian Zionists believe that the restoration of Israel as a nation—which occurred in 1948, largely via the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine—is a prerequisite for Christ's "return."
"I have a very strong conviction that we are in the End Times," Sebutinde told Watoto's congregation. "The signs are being shown in the Middle East. I want to be on the right side of history. I am convinced that time is running out. I would encourage you to follow developments in Israel. I am humbled that God has allowed me to be a part of the last days."
Canton's letter states: "Should it be confirmed that these are accurate quotes of her remarks, the International Commission of Jurists considers that Vice President Sebutinde's continued role in the context of ongoing proceedings before the court, such as South Africa v. Israel, and at least any other proceedings concerning Israel or the state of Palestine, would be profoundly damaging to the court's impartiality, propriety, and integrity, or to perceptions thereof, as well as to the to public confidence in the court."
"These remarks raise serious concerns as to whether her decisions were taken solely on the basis of facts and in accordance with the law, but rather may have also been taken under 'improper influences,' specifically her religious and political beliefs regarding
Israel and the purported approaching of 'End Times,'" the letter continues.
"While the vice president certainly enjoys the right to freedom of expression, this right is not absolute, and there are certain limitations on the right that are particularly applicable to members of the judiciary," Canton stressed. "I therefore respectfully urge you and the court to conduct an investigation into these allegations, and if substantiated, undertake remedial actions."
"In the interim," he added, "I would request that you act to immediately remove Vice President Sebutinde from participating further in proceedings in the South Africa v. Israel case."
Canton's letter follows similar calls by the Arab Organization for Human Rights in the UK, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and international jurists including Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch—one of a growing number of organizations accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza—who urged Sebutinde to recuse herself from the ICJ case.
Michael Becker, a professor at Trinity College Dublin's School of Law and former ICJ associate legal officer, told Middle East Eye that "it is never a good idea for an ICJ judge to share their own views on a pending case in a public forum."
"It is worse to suggest that your position is to be 'on the side' of a specific party to the case," he added.
Sebutinde has also come under fire for apparently plagiarizing much of her dissenting opinion in the ICJ's July 2024 advisory opinion that Israel's occupation of Palestine, including Gaza, is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible.
South Africa filed its genocide case against Israel in December 2023 and subsequently submitted thousands of pages of evidence including alleged statements of genocidal intent by prominent Israelis including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation.
More than two dozen nations and regional blocs are supporting South Africa's case, which is not expected to produce a ruling for years.
Israel's 690-day assault and siege on Gaza have left at least 230,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing. Israeli forces are ramping up Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza amid a growing famine that has killed hundreds of people, many of them children.
The ICJ has issued a series of orders for Israel to prevent genocidal acts, stop attacking the southern city of Rafah, and allow the unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel is accused of ignoring all of these orders, and has reportedly proposed building a concentration camp over the ruins of Rafah to house ethnically cleansed Palestinians.
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'Malicious Abuse of Power': Trump Slammed for New Arrest of Ábrego García and Deportation Threat
"This vindictive behavior is not just about Mr. Ábrego García; this is once again the administration showing that it can weaponize the law to punish people standing up for their rights and make our immigrant neighbors afraid," said one advocate.
Aug 25, 2025
A crowd of community members who had gathered outside an immigration office in Baltimore on Monday chanted, "Shame!" as a lawyer for US resident Kilmar Ábrego García announced that he had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents once again—days after he was finally released from prison after a monthslong ordeal.
Attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told the crowd that assembled to show support for Ábrego García that ICE had ordered the Maryand father and sheet metal worker to report to its offices for an interview on "false" pretenses and said his legal team is filing a habeas corpus petition to challenge the administration's plan to deport Ábrego García to Uganda.
Ábrego García's lawyers are arguing in the Federal District Court of Maryland that ICE re-arrested him without allowing him to express "fears of persecution and torture in that country."
The team is asking the court to ensure that Ábrego García "is not put on any flight to any country whatsoever, whether it's Uganda, South Sudan, what have you, unless and until he has had a full and fair trial in an immigration court as well as his full appeal rights," said Sandoval-Moshenberg.
It’s not clear what charges Abrego Garcia is facing, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg says, or where he will be detained.
Sandoval-Moshenberg says another federal lawsuit is being filed to challenge the planned deportation to Uganda, of any other third-country. pic.twitter.com/9YYKd0hOfG
— Mikenzie Frost (@MikenzieFrost) August 25, 2025
As Common Dreams reported, when Ábrego García was released from a jail Friday in Tennessee—where he'd been held on human smuggling charges since being returned to the US in June following his mistaken deportation to El Salvador—the administration informed his legal team that it may deport him once again to Uganda.
That threat was made when Ábrego García declined an offer to be sent to Costa Rica as part of a plea deal in which he would be required to plead guilty to human smuggling.
Another lawyer for Ábrego García, Sean Hecker, said Monday that "the government's campaign of retribution continues because Mr. Abrego refuses to be coerced into pleading guilty to a case that should never have been brought."
Ábrego García's ordeal has been at the center of outrage over the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda and President Donald Trump's $6 million deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, under which hundreds of migrants have been deported to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Ábrego García was initially sent to CECOT in March, and US Department of Justice officials acknowledged that his deportation had been the result of an administrative error. He was accused of being a member of the gang MS-13 based on a statement from an anonymous police informant, and a judge ruled in 2019 that he could not be deported to his home country of El Salvador due to concerns over torture and persecution there.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday said Ábrego García was being processed for his new deportation order, but did not say where the administration plans to send him. She repeated the Trump administration's unproven claims about the Maryland resident, calling him "an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator" and said he would not "terrorize American citizens any longer."
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who visited Ábrego García when he was imprisoned in El Salvador and demanded his release, condemned Noem for continuing to "spread lies about his case."
"Instead of spewing unproven allegations on social media, [officials] need to put up or shut up in court," said Van Hollen.
"The federal courts and public outcry forced the administration to bring Ábrego García back to Maryland, but Trump's cronies continue to lie about the facts in his case and they are engaged in a malicious abuse of power as they threaten to deport him to Uganda—to block his chance to defend himself against the new charges they brought," Van Hollen said. "As I told Kilmar and his wife Jennifer, we will stay in this fight for justice and due process because if his rights are denied, the rights of everyone else are put at risk."
Sarah Mehta, deputy director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU, said Ábrego García's arrest on Monday put "the Trump administration's obsessive and petty cruelty... on full display" and condemned the "latest move to deport Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland father they admitted to wrongfully deporting to a torture prison, to a country with which he has no relationship."
"This vindictive behavior is not just about Mr. Ábrego García; this is once again the administration showing that it can weaponize the law to punish people standing up for their rights and make our immigrant neighbors afraid of being rapidly exiled, including to places where they may be persecuted," said Mehta.
The Times reported Monday that Ábrego García "expressed willingness to leave the United States to accept refugee status in Costa Rica" after initially rejecting the plea deal.
An order handed down by the chief federal judge in Maryland in May requires the government to give Ábrego García a two-day reprieve before being expelled from the country following the filing of the habeas corpus petition.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, suggested the administration has continued targeting Ábrego García simply because he and his legal team brought nationwide attention to the fact that officials had wrongly deported him and other migrants.
"The entire weight of the federal government has been brought against this man for one reason, and one reason alone," said Reichlin-Melnick. "He tried to get them to fix a mistake they admit they made."
Ábrego García acknowledged other families that have been impacted and separated by Trump's mass deportation policy before entering the ICE facility on Monday.
"To all of the families who have also suffered separations or who live under the constant threat of being separated," he said, "I want to tell you that even though this injustice is hurting us hard, we must not lose hope."
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On Day of His Release, Trump Administration Threatens to Deport Ábrego García to Uganda
"Just spiteful evil for the sake of it," fumed one observer.
Aug 23, 2025
On the same day he was released from federal custody, the Trump administration on Friday informed Kilmar Ábrego García—a Maryland man wrongfully deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison rife with abuse—that it may deport him to the East African nation of Uganda.
Ábrego García, a Salvadoran national who entered the US without authorization when he was a teenager, was released Friday from a jail near Nashville, Tennessee, where he had been held since June following his errant deportation to El Salvador and imprisonment in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) super-maximum security prison.
According to a notice sent by a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official to Ábrego García's attorneys on Friday, "DHS may remove your client... to Uganda no earlier than 72 hours from now."
US District Judge Paula Xinis last month issued a ruling barring the Trump administration from immediately arresting Ábrego García upon his release and requiring the government to provide three business days' notice if US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intended to initiate deportation proceedings against him.
ICE directed Ábrego García to report to the agency's Baltimore field office on Monday morning.
The Associated Press reported Saturday that the Trump administration decide to pursue deportation of Ábrego García to Uganda after he declined an offer to be sent to Costa Rica if he pleaded guilty to human smuggling charges related to his alleged transportation of undocumented immigrants in Tennessee in 2022.
Uganda is one of four African nations—the others are Eswatini, Rwanda, and South Sudan—that have agreed to take third-country nationals deported from the US.
Noting that Ábrego García "has no connections to Uganda," Washington Monthly contributor David Atkins accused the Trump administration of "just spiteful evil for the sake of it."
Ábrego García was deported to CECOT in March after the Trump administration claimed without credible evidence that he was a gang member. He was one of more than 200 people deported to CECOT without due process. The father of three said he was subjected to beatings and "psychological torture" at the prison.
Although acknowledging wrongfully deporting Ábrego García, the Trump administration argued in court that it lacked jurisdiction to order his return to the United States. However, Xinis—who called Ábrego García's deportation "wholly lawless"—on April 4 ordered the administration to facilitate his stateside return.
As the administration balked, the US Supreme Court intervened, affirming Xinis' order in an April 10 ruling. Ábrego García was finally returned to the US in June, only to be arrested for alleged human smuggling. He pleaded not guilty and asked the court to dismiss the charges against him, contending they are retaliation for challenging his deportation to El Salvador.
In a court filing, Ábrego García's lawyers said their client is being subjected to "vindictive and selective prosecution" by the Trump administration.
"There can be only one interpretation of these events: the [Department of Justice], DHS, and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Ábrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat," the attorneys wrote.
"It is difficult to imagine a path the government could have taken that would have better emphasized its vindictiveness," they added. "This case should be dismissed."
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