Tagged: armed conflict

ICC Confirms War Crimes Charges for Intentional Destruction of Cultural and Religious Buildings

In a recent decision by the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I on March 24, 2016, the Court confirmed charges for war crimes for intentionally directing attacks against religious and cultural buildings under Art. 8(2)(e)(iv) in the case of the Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi. The defendant is alleged to have committed war crimes in Timbuktu, Mali, between around June 30, 2012 through around July 11, 2012. Already in a press release dated September 26, 2015, the ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda stated that that

Intentional attacks against historic monuments and buildings dedicated to religion are grave crimes. […] No longer should such reprehensible conduct go unpunished. […] Such attacks affect humanity as a whole. We must stand up to the destruction and defacing of our common heritage.

The ICC’s Rome Statute Article 8(2)(e)(iv) defines war crimes as

(e) Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in armed conflicts not of an international character, within the established framework of international law, namely any of the following acts: (iv) Intentionally directing attacks against building dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives; […].

The Pre-Trial Chamber I found sufficient evidence to establish substantial grounds to believe that Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi committed the crimes with which he is charged and reasoned, in paragraphs 40-44 of its decision on confirmation of charges, that it is not disputed that the targeted buildings/structures were “dedicated to religion and constituted historic monuments because of their origins and significance, and that none of them constituted a military objective” and that these buildings were “specifically identified, chosen, and targeted by the perpetrators as objects of their attack, precisely in light and because of their religious and historical character.” The Court further reasoned that the article’s prohibition “attaches to the attack per se” regardless of whether the building/structure was or was not destroyed and concluded that the “attacks” within the meaning of the statute also include acts “which did not bring about a complete destruction” of the targeted building or structure.

This reasoning is a step in the right direction when a Court of international stature recognizes the importance of cultural, historical, religious, and national heritage as embodied in buildings and structures and articulates that even a partial destruction will not go unpunished. The Court appears to focus on the reasons that the objects were targeted for their religious and historical importance within the surrounding society, the fact that they did not constitute military objectives, and that their destruction (even partial) was considered very serious by the local populations rather than the level or the intended level of destruction. As such, it would reason that even vandalizing, defacing, or otherwise damaging a building or structure might fall within the statute according to the Court’s interpretation of Art. 8(2)(e)(iv).

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The Humanitarian Crisis in Syria

POST WRITTEN BYProf. Peter Widulski, Assistant Director of the First Year Legal Skills Program and the Coach of International Criminal Moot Court Team at Pace Law School.

An article in the New York Times on October 6, 2015 on the conflict in Syria states that the conflict “has left 250,000 people dead and displaced half the country’s population since it started in 2011.”

This horrifying statement is contained in a dependent clause in a sentence in the sixth paragraph of an article on Russia’s intervention in the Syrian conflict. This placement unfortunately may reflect that the massive human suffering in Syria is becoming an afterthought to the quarrels among world powers regarding Syria.

What is happening to the people of Syria is difficult for most people to imagine. Americans will remember that thousands of their fellow citizens were displaced from their homes when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005. Most of these have returned home, but many have been unable to do so because what were their homes no longer exists.

The forced evacuation of a city like New Orleans is a frightening event. The present writer was one of those who experienced it. On the morning before the hurricane struck, I learned from radio reports that Katrina was not veering off, would hit the city in about 24 hours with great destruction, and all should evacuate. Not having a car, I stuffed some things in a kit bag, left my apartment in the Uptown District, and started walking toward downtown – not knowing where in particular I was going or what was going to happen to me. I managed to make my way to the Superdome, where about 25,000 others and I took shelter in harsh conditions for five days, before being evacuated.

The difficulties that my fellow refugees and I experienced at that time were as nothing compared to the terror and extreme hardships now being experienced by the people of Syria. We were evacuating our city, not our country. And our displacement was caused by a natural disaster, whose effects, for the most part, were temporary. It is a very different thing to be forced to flee not only your home, but also your country, because vicious people are more than willing to kill you and your family because of your political sympathies or because of your religious beliefs or because you just happen to be in the way.

The horrendous numbers of dead and displaced in Syria strongly support a conclusion that such massive suffering could not have happened without the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity by participants in the conflict. Whether there will ever be investigation or prosecution of such crimes by the International Criminal Court is far from clear. The U.N. Security Council has authority under the ICC’s Statute and Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter to refer the Syrian situation to the ICC, but such referral is unlikely because of the veto power of one or more of the Council’s permanent members.

The Preamble of the ICC’s Statute articulates its ratifiers’ “[d]etermin[ation] to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators” of “grave crimes [that] threaten the peace, security and well being of the world.” It seems that regarding what is happening in Syria, this goal will remain for the moment a mere aspiration, and, as the quarrel among world powers intensifies, the suffering of the Syrian people will remain an afterthought.

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