Judge Blocks US Sanctions Against UN Palestine Expert Francesca Albanese 

A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, concluding that the sanctions violated her right to free speech after she called for Israeli officials to be charged with war crimes.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said that the sanctions against Albanese violate her right to free speech, as they aimed to “punish” and “suppress disfavored expression” after her recommendations to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Albanese has done nothing more than speak!” Leon wrote. “It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions – they are nothing more than her opinion.”

Albanese had called on the ICC to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders involved in the genocide in Gaza – including Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Defense Minister Israel Katz — after outlining how each of these figures played a part in the “infliction of collective torment and settler colonial genocide” in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed sanctions on Albanese in July 2025 based on Trump’s executive order targeting those “directly engaged” with ICC investigations into Israel’s crimes in Gaza. The executive order came after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their crimes in Gaza.

The sanctions on Albanese have drastically affected her life; she has described them as imposing a “civil death.” The sanctions led to the seizure of her apartment in Washington, D.C., where she had lived with her husband and daughter, prevented them from returning to the U.S., and froze them out of international banking systems. In Albanese’s own words, “Even outside the U.S., it means financial exile. I cannot hold a bank account. I cannot make bank transfers. My email address was shut down.”

“My ties with the universities I had collaborated with — Georgetown and Columbia — were severed,” she continued, speaking in an interview last month. “I am treated by the United States as an international drug trafficker, punished without due process, without any opportunity to defend myself. There are fines of up to 1 million dollars for anyone who provides goods or services to me. My husband works for a U.S.-based organization. My daughter was born in the U.S. and holds American citizenship. All of us have been affected.”

In imposing sanctions on Albanese, Rubio claimed that she had “spewed unabashed antisemitism,” while decrying her allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Left-wing economist Yanis Varoufakis wrote of the repression Albanese faced due to her outspokenness on the genocide: “Smears. Investigations. Vicious editorials. Frozen bank accounts. Dispossession of the only apartment she had ever owned. The machinery of the respectable turned to crush her.”

Leon’s preliminary injunction against the sanctions halts travel bans and banking restrictions on Albanese.

Albanese wrote on X on Wednesday, after Leon’s decision: “The interim by the US judge gives me respite but the battle is not over. ICC judges and Palestinian NGOs remain sanctioned with no recourse to justice. The stakes are incredibly high.”