Chapter

Terrorism, war crimes and the International Criminal Court

Roberta Arnold

Research handbook on international law and terrorism

Cheltenham ; Northampton : E. Elgar, 2014

p. 282-297

English

Over a decade since the adoption of the Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998, this chapter considers whether the jurisprudential developments after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks may have paved the way to prosecute acts of terrorism as an international crime within the ICC’s jurisdiction. Following the launching of the United States’ ‘war on terror’ against Al Qaeda in response to 9/11, lawyers had to be creative to identify the applicable legal regime and to discern, in particular, whether acts of terrorism may be prosecuted under the international law of armed conflict (LOAC). This chapter first examines the jurisprudence of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) to assess whether, notwithstanding the initial exclusion of a separate crime of terrorism from the ICC’s jurisdiction, there may be new legal arguments that terrorism may be prosecuted as a war crime under Article 8 of the ICC Statute. Part 2 gives an overview of the applicable legal framework and the limits set by the ICC Statute; Part 3 then examines the existing jurisprudence supporting the view that acts of terrorism may be prosecuted as war crimes; and Part 4 draws this chapter’s conclusions.

• Research handbook on international law and terrorism / ed. by Ben Saul