A critical analysis of international jurisprudence relating to terrorism

Abstract

Terrorism manifests itself in many different forms. Under the umbrella of the United Nations, a number of resolutions and conventions have been adopted in a bid to fight terrorism and bring to justice those guilty of committing such heinous crimes. The international community has however fallen short of establishing a universally accepted definition of terrorism and the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over the crime of terrorism. In the absence of both an accepted definition and ICC jurisdiction, this paper argues that in seeking to analyze the crime of international terrorism, one must necessarily fall back on the jurisprudence of ad hoc, hybrid, and specialized tribunals. This paper will explore how three different tribunals in three particular cases have advanced the prosecution of the crime of terrorism. The Special Tribunal of Lebanon, a hybrid Court, forged a definition of terrorism in times of peace which had frustrated the international community for decades. With Camp Zeist, the Specialized Court which prosecuted over the Lockerbie Case, we see advances in procedural justice with the establishment of the procedural possibility of aut transfere. The Appeals Chamber in Galić within the ad hoc Tribunal of the ICTY confirmed with some certainty that acts of terror constitute a war crime under International Law and shaped its fundamental constituent elements. All three models of Tribunals have served the international community well. But are these or others modeled on them in the future the appropriate fora for the prosecution of terrorism? The paper will thus take the argument one step further and utilize the above rulings as a frame of reference to determine the forum conveniens for the prosecution of international terrorism.