Towards a new approach to dealing with terrorism as an international crime

Abstract

This study is born out of the conviction drawn from Tadic case (ICTY,IT-94-1-A, 15July 1999), that legitimate judicial activity proceeds on the basis of the identification of the gap or ambiguity in the law that must be resolved in the interests of justice. Terrorism has come to stay. But be it as it may, controversies exist within both domestic borders and international fora about its definition and the best strategies to effectively combat it. At every corner, embers are being fanned to dissuade, deescalate and prevent its occurrence and impact or threat to international peace and security. International law leans heavily on domestic law enforcement for the purpose of bringing to justice those accused of terrorism at both domestic and or transnational spheres. This work adopts a critical and contextual analysis of extant body of international criminal law and argues that the focus needs to shift from terrorism as a criminal event to individual acts that make an event a crime of terrorism. The essence of this is to move away from the more complex question of what constitutes terrorism, a result of which the ICC was denied jurisdiction. The trajectory resulting from this approach enables the International Criminal Court (ICC) with its extant law, the Rome Statute assume jurisdiction to prosecute these terrorist acts such as murder, mass executions, genocide, violent sexual crimes, imprisonment and torture which are within the threshold of international crimes provided in the International criminal law. Key words: Terrorism, international criminal court, criminal law, United Nations, security council, crime, rome statute.