For a few hours last week, the International Criminal Court looked poised to take a Libyan warlord into custody. Instead, member state Italy sent the head of a notorious network of detention centers back home.

Legislation that would have imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court in protest of its arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister was blocked in the U.

European officials had warned that the bill, prompted by an arrest warrant for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, would irreparably harm the institution.

That has left the controversial court without a single trial ahead for the first time since it arrested its first suspect in 2006, four years after it was established. Though its docket remains empty,