The crime of 'terror' under International Humanitarian Law

Ain, Qurat Ul (2020) The crime of 'terror' under International Humanitarian Law. PhD thesis, Middlesex University. [Thesis]

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Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the status of the crime of ‘terror’ as a war crime under international humanitarian law. Included in Article 51 (2) of Additional Protocol I and in Article 13 (2) of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the crime prohibits the ‘acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population’. The thesis is structured in two parts. The first traces the historical development of the prohibition on spreading terror among the civilian population. It surveys the evolution of state practice and scrutinises the drafting history of the Additional Protocols. The second part focuses on the prosecution of the crime before international courts and tribunals. The jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is given particular attention as the first international tribunal to prosecute the offence as a violation of laws and customs of war. Despite the case-law of the ad hoc Tribunals confirming the crime of ‘terror’ as an international crime in customary law, it was not included in the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court. The thesis explores the reasons for this and advances an argument for extending the subject-matter jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court to include the crime of ‘terror’. In doing so, the thesis examines the conflation of ‘terror’ as a war crime with the offence of ‘terrorism’ in order to add clarity to the conceptualization of the former under international humanitarian law.

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