ICJ Vice President Faces Backlash for Siding with Israel
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An Iranian deputy foreign minister criticized Julia Sebutinde, the Ugandan vice-president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), for her openly biased support for the Zionist regime.
In a post on his X account, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi denounced the ICJ vice-president’s backing for Israel as a “shocking breach of judicial ethics”.
“ICJ Vice-President openly sides with Israel, a regime with multiple cases before the Court. This blatant bias undermines the ICJ's credibility and violates the fundamental principle of judicial impartiality,” he added.
In comments on August 10, Sebutinde said the Lord "is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel" and the signs of the "end times" are "being shown in the Middle East".
Early last year, Sebutinde was the only judge on a 17-member ICJ panel that ruled it was "plausible" that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, who voted against all six measures adopted by the court.
And in July 2024, she was again the sole dissenter when a 15-judge panel found that Israel's decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories was "unlawful".
In February 2025, a study accused her of directly lifting sentences almost word for word in her dissenting opinion written on July 19, 2024.
It alleged that “at least 32 percent of Sebutinde’s dissent was plagiarized”.
