THE HAGUE, Netherlands — 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.

It has issued 32 unsealed arrest warrants. Those suspects range from Netanyahu and Putin to Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and Gamlet Guchmazov, accused of torture in the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia.

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

The bill was a Republican-led effort to sanction the International Criminal Court in protest of its arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The measure was created to punish the ICC after it put out arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and a Hamas official, accusing them of committing war crimes.

The failed Senate vote was a setback for the bill, which aims to punish the court for its decision to prosecute top Israeli officials for war crimes based on the military offensive in Gaza.

The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act would have inflicted visa bans and financial restrictions on ICC-affiliated officials.

The Senate on Tuesday failed to advance a House-passed bill to sanction International Criminal Court officials for the court’s arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over military actions in the Gaza Strip.

The Senate voted Tuesday against advancing H.R. 23, which would impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), to the Senate floor. This follows the successful passage of the same bill in the House — by a 243 to 140 vote — earlier this month.