Syrian War Crimes Trials in The Netherlands: Claiming Universal Jurisdiction Over Terrorist Offences and the War Crime of Outrages Upon Personal Dignity of the Dead

This chapter examines two cases against Syrian asylum seekers—the Ahmad al.-Y Judgment of 21 April 2021 and the Ahmad al-Khedr Judgment of 16 July 2021—in which the District Court of the Hague asserted universal jurisdiction to convict the accused of terrorist offences and war crimes committed in the Syrian conflict. The Court made remarkable findings on questions that concern the fields of international jurisdictional and humanitarian law. Specifically, it relied on the aut dedere aut judicare obligation under the UN Terrorist Bombings Convention, to which Syria is notably not a State Party,... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Yanev, Lachezar
Dokumenttyp: bookPart
Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
Verlag/Hrsg.: T.M.C. Asser
Schlagwörter: /dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/peace_justice_and_strong_institutions / name=SDG 16 - Peace / Justice and Strong Institutions
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28798039
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/23e9ee40-6d9e-4ef5-8ed2-a5c5a749efc8

This chapter examines two cases against Syrian asylum seekers—the Ahmad al.-Y Judgment of 21 April 2021 and the Ahmad al-Khedr Judgment of 16 July 2021—in which the District Court of the Hague asserted universal jurisdiction to convict the accused of terrorist offences and war crimes committed in the Syrian conflict. The Court made remarkable findings on questions that concern the fields of international jurisdictional and humanitarian law. Specifically, it relied on the aut dedere aut judicare obligation under the UN Terrorist Bombings Convention, to which Syria is notably not a State Party, to claim universal jurisdiction over the crime defined in it. It thus produced very rare judicial practice on a matter of international jurisdictional law that is subject to much controversy and scholarly disagreement. In addition, the judges entered certain findings on the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity, as defined under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which addressed two questions that have not been litigated at the international criminal tribunals: (i) can outrages upon personal dignity be committed against a dead person; and (ii) does exposing a captured fighter to public curiosity (by distributing online videos in which he is recognizably portrayed) amount to a war crime in non-international armed conflicts?