scholarly journals French foreign fighters: The engagement of administrative and criminal justice in France

2018 ◽  
Vol 100 (907-909) ◽  
pp. 211-236
Author(s):  
Sharon Weill
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Foreign Fighters

AbstractSince 2012, it is estimated that 2,000 French nationals have joined jihadist armed groups listed by the UN as terrorist organizations in Syria and in Iraq. Consequently, a new prosecution policy has been introduced in France. To date, more than 200 persons have been prosecuted and 1,600 persons have been placed under criminal investigation. In parallel, after the 13 November 2015 terror attacks in Paris, a State of emergency was declared. Persisting for two years, it introduced derogative administrative measures that slowly transgressed into regular criminal law. Consequently, French administrative and criminal courts, with ordinary judges and professional routines, find themselves involved in matters related to armed conflicts – a completely new phenomenon for them. What role has been performed by French criminal and administrative judges in the global fight against terrorism?This article takes a close look at France's fight against terrorism and the engagement of its domestic legal system in the context of foreign fighters and suspects of terrorism. It outlines the radicalization processes of French administrative and criminal law along with their hybridization and complementarity. While the armed conflict in Syria and Iraq and the complex geopolitical context are clearly present in French courtrooms, international humanitarian law and international criminal law frameworks are almost entirely absent. At the same time, by granting a growing power to the administration, the repressive and pre-emptive approaches introduced within criminal and administrative law transform liberal conceptions of law and justice.

scholarly journals International criminal law: Between law and politics

2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-67
Author(s):  
Dragan Jovasevic
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Law And Politics

Crimes against international law are committed by violating the rules of international humanitarian law during wars or armed conflicts. The perpetrators of these crimes are under the jurisdiction of international criminal courts (military or civil, permanent or ad hoc). The process of the commission of crimes against international law may comprise several different phases or stadiums. Moreover, such criminal offences rarely appear as the results of only one person?s activities. On the contrary, in numerous cases of these criminal offences, accomplice appears as a form of collective participation of several persons in the commission of one or more crimes against international law. All these facts represent grounds for the specific type of criminal responsibility of the perpetrators of crimes against international law. It is a object of regulation international criminal law about whose characteristics converse this article.

scholarly journals Self-Referring to the International Criminal Court: A Continuation of War by Other Means

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 260-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parvathi Menon
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Internal Armed Conflicts

Weak sub-Saharan African states use international law and its institutions to legitimate their actions and delegitimate their internal enemies. In this essay, I argue that during internal armed conflicts, African states use international criminal law to redefine the conflict as international and thereby rebrand domestic political opponents as international criminals/enemies who are a threat to the entire community. This in turn sets the stage for invoking belligerent privileges under international humanitarian law (IHL).

‘We Demand Dignity for the Victims’ – Reflections on the Legal Qualification of the Indecent Disposal of Corpses

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 896-925 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Fournet ◽  
Nicole Siller
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Trafficking In Human Beings

‘We demand dignity for the victims’. Such was the pledge of the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs following the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight mh17 in rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine and the looting of the corpses of the 298 victims. Although not an isolated instance, the indecent disposal of the corpses of the victims seems to have escaped legal scrutiny. Drawing from this and other case studies, this article addresses the legal qualification of acts of mistreatment perpetrated against the corpses of victims of international crimes. It analyses all relevant dispositions pertaining to international humanitarian law, international criminal law and the law of trafficking in human beings. While these provisions fail to legally characterize such acts, the judiciary however tends to recognize their criminality; a recognition which, in the authors’ views, could make its way into the text of international (criminal) law.

The Dangers of the Obvious but Often Disregarded Details in the International Criminal Law Demarcation Debate: Norm-Integration and the Triple-Thesis ‘Argument’

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 759-783
Author(s):  
Anja Matwijkiw
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Post Conflict

When responses to international crimes are managed in terms of post-conflict justice, this event may end ‘the demarcation debate’ before it has begun, thereby rendering it superfluous among legal scholars. This is to say that the transition from theory to reality arguably has the effect of cancelling any sharp distinction between international criminal law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law, as well as extending international criminal justice into the moral territory. Certainly, this is a premise for the dual-aspect defense of those rights that help to explain the non-separation. However, to the extent that the defense discords with traditional assumptions, relevant aspects of pro-separation reasoning must be considered. These are accommodated under the triple-thesis whereby the unequal status of different (rights-)categories limit norm-integration. The author’s account of the competing programs shows a series of flaws in the case of the triple-thesis doctrine, amounting to a vicious circle ‘argument’.

International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzannah Linton
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Regional Trends

This chapter assesses the approaches of Asia-Pacific states to international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law (ICL), within the context of the international legal framework. It first addresses influential approaches in the region, including how states present themselves in relation to IHL and ICL issues. Next, it considers how regional states engage with the issue of responsibility in international law, with an emphasis on IHL and ICL. The chapter then examines acceptance of these two bodies of law, arguing that there is no hostility to the basic norms of IHL, but a more unsettled approach to ICL. There is a definite chill in respect of aspects that potentially encroach on independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, or that smack of Western neo-colonialism. These are of course subjectively evaluated by each state. In practical terms, this frostiness can be seen in the responses to external threats of accountability against political leaders, the exercise of universal jurisdiction, Security Council referrals to the International Criminal Court, Pillar Three of the R2P doctrine, the crime of aggression, and certain formulations of other international crimes (for example, war crimes in non-international armed conflict). However, even within these broad regional trends, there is no uniformity. There is decidedly no collective ‘Asia-Pacific approach’ that emerges from the present chapter.

Sources of International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaël van Steenberghe
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
The Impact

This chapter analyses the specific features which characterize the sources of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law (ICL). It first examines those which are claimed to characterize IHL and ICL sources in relation to the secondary norms regulating the classical sources of international law. The chapter then looks at the specific features of some IHL and ICL sources in relation to the others of the same field. Attention is given particularly to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the impact of its features on other ICL sources, as well as to the commitments made by armed groups, whose characteristics make them difficult to classify under any of the classical sources of international law. In general, this chapter shows how all those specific features derive from the specific fundamental principles and evolving concerns of these two fields of international law.

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