1,721,221 research outputs found
Command Responsibility in International Criminal Law
No full textThe book deals with the problem of the effective attribution of criminal responsibility to individuals involved in the commission of heinous, macro-dimension crimes, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The practical difficulties involved in the ascertainment of the multi-level and complex web of responsibilities which lies behind the commission of such crimes raises the question whether it is possible to overcome their collective dimension. However, it is clear that only the timely attribution of individual criminal responsibilities to those implicated at various levels in the commission of the crimes can be an effective reaction. It is also apparent that the need to bring the single individuals to justice is particularly important with regard to those occupying positions of authority, the ‘most senior leaders’ or, in other words, those with powers of command. In recent years considerable attention has been devoted to the doctrine of command responsibility in international criminal law. Through this form of responsibility a military commander or a civilian superior may be held criminally responsible for crimes committed by his subordinates. The superior is held criminally responsible for his culpable failure to adopt necessary and reasonable measures to prevent or punish the crimes committed by his subordinates. Command responsibility is a concept that originated in the military field and then was applied in the context of international humanitarian law and finally in international criminal law. This complex form of responsibility has been a source of debate since its first applications in the period following the Second World War, and which continues to present particular difficulties for those who are called upon to interpret it. The limits and boundaries of this responsibility are still much debated, as the jurisprudence of the ad hoc Tribunals shows. Even more arduous is the attempt to establish the (legal) nature of command responsibility. Is it a form of responsibility pursuant to which the superior is held accountable for a specific offence of dereliction of duty or, instead, is he liable for the crime committed by the subordinates? The thesis put forward by the author is that it is erroneous to consider command responsibility as a unitary form of responsibility. Indeed, around a central corpus of common elements there are at least four different basic forms of command responsibility which can be differentiated on the basis of their various objective and subjective elements. We thus have superior responsibility cases of intentional failure to prevent or of negligent failure to prevent, and cases of intentional failure to punish or of negligent failure to punish the subordinates’ crimes. Moreover, each of these basic forms entails different characteristics depending on whether the superior is a military commander or a civilian superior. Each of these presents features that are so different that we may advance the thesis that the legal nature itself of command responsibility changes according to whether it is in turn a case of intentional or negligent failure to prevent or to punish. Thus in order to understand this form of responsibility, the author proceeds with a separate analysis necessary for each of the different basic forms of command responsibility, in order to reconcile it with the fundamental principles of individual and culpable responsibility
Superior responsibility for acts of torture committed by subordinates under international criminal law. The case of U.S. abuse against iraqi prisoners
No full textThe paper deals with the abuse and tortures committed at Abu Ghraib by american soldiers on Iraqi prisoners that have become ‘famous’ worldwide, being documented by a large number of photos taken by the same soldiers actually
involved in the torture practices. The repeated and systematic occurrence of acts of abuse against detainees in Iraq (or in other places, as Afghanistan) implies some legal questions regarding the criminal accountability of the subjects involved, from the ordinary soldier, direct perpetrator of the offences, up along the chain of command. More specifically, declarations such
as Colonel T. admission that he knew his soldiers used the ‘claustrophobic technique’, and was therefore aware of the physical abuse that occurred but did not intervene to stop them, raise substantial questions that need to be addressed. No doubt a soldier who intentionally commits torture is responsible for his actions, but what about the officer that ordered, approved or failed to intervene when he knew that torture was occurring? the author argues that the unlawful interrogation techniques used by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan should be viewed as the result of decisions taken at the highest levels, and of failure to prevent and punish such crimes. Therefore responsibility should be attributed accordingli to the higher echelons, also at the political level, along with the actual perpetrators of the criminal acts
Attributing crimes to upper echelons : the doctrine of command responsibility in international criminal law
No full textI nodi della responsabilità per genocidio nel diritto penale internazionale : tra dimensione collettiva e imputazione individuale, precetto internazionale e accertamento nazionale
No full textRespinto in appello il ricorso del Kenya avverso l'ammissibilitá delle indagini relative a taluni cittadini kenioti
No full textLa tutela dei bambini-soldato in diritto internazionale e responsabilità per crimini internazionali
No full textUna importante sentenza della Corte EDU in materia di tortura e immunità dello Stato di fronte a una giurisdizione straniera: Nota a C. eur. dir. uomo, sez. IV, sent. 14 gennaio 2014, Jones e a. c. Regno Unito, ric. nn. 34356/06 e 40528/06
Full text linkDopo oltre dieci anni, lo scorso 14 gennaio la Corte EDU ha finalmente reso il suo giudizio nel caso Jones c. Regno Unito. Purtroppo la tanto attesa sentenza non va nella direzione auspicata dagli avvocati e dalle numerose organizzazioni per i diritti umani intervenute nel procedimento di fronte alla Corte di Strasburgo: i giudici hanno infatti deciso che i ricorrenti, tre cittadini britannici che furono vittime di tortura nel 2000-2001 in Arabia Saudita, non possano adire le corti britanniche al fine di ottenere il realtivo risarcimento dallo Stato saudita o dai suoi funzionari
Palestine and the ICC : some notes on why it is not a closed chapter
Full text linkThe question that many scholars are dealing with in the past months, following the 3 April 2012 update by the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), is whether the Palestine-ICC chapter should be regarded as closed. In this short analysis I intend to delineate why, in my opinion, the Palestine-ICC chapter is far from over.
The issue is of particular relevance in these very days for two reasons: as further explained below, over the next weeks both the UN General Assembly and the ICC Assembly of States Parties will have to deal (much depending on the choices of the Palestinian Authority) with the question of Palestine, which will ultimately have an impact on the possible opening of the investigation before the ICC
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