Proving Modes of Criminal Liability in Prosecuting International Crimes: An Analysis of International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh

Abstract

is study examines how the International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh (ICTB)- a domestic criminal court, is prosecuting and punishing international criminalities perpetrated in the Bangladesh Freedom War in 1971 through the flaw laws in proving the modes of individual criminal responsibility that hinder securing criminal justice to the parties. By applying a qualitative approach, this study firstly scrutinizes the modes of criminal responsibility in the ICTB’s Statue-the International Crimes Tribunal Act 1973 and whether such notion is supported by international customary law in 1971 and 2010. Secondly, this study outlines different modes of liabilities, such as Joint Criminal Enterprise and Superior Liability, that are extensively applied by the jurisprudence of the ICTB in more than 51 individual cases to date. Lastly, as the originality of this research, it advances ‘Two Proposals’ that need to be executed by the ICTB to secure criminal justice to the relevant bodies in improving its legitimacy to the global criminal justice system. Then, the study concludes that in any failure to uphold the customary law requirement of proving the Joint Criminal Enterprise and the Superior Liability as the particular modes of criminal liability, the tribunal will lose its legal credibility.