Advent of International Crimes and adjudication mechanism with special reference to Dutch Courts and International Criminal Court.

International criminal law deals with with most serious nature of offences on a global parameter such as war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression/torture. Such crimes have been defined in several international treaties and agreements. The Hague Convention in the end of 19th century to begin with, which not only extended criminal responsibility by issuing directives against perpetrators of any particular crime but also laid down policies that are meant to be adopted against those who commanded, planned or allowed such crimes to take place at the outset.

Netherlands is divided into 11 districts, each with its own court. Each district court is made up of a maximum of 5 sectors, which always include the administrative law, civil law, criminal law and sub-district law sector. There are four Courts of Appeal at Hague, Amsterdam, Arnhem-Leeuwarden and 's-Hertogenbosch along with the Apex Court, Supreme Court of the Netherlands. Some of the international crimes that have shook the world over the past half a century and were tried by Dutch Courts at Netherlands are as follows:

I. In April 1978, Afghanistan was affected when army officers of a of left-wing group carried out a coup d’état (military rebel) killing President Daoud, the head of state. Popularly known as Saur Revolution fought between the new communist regime (established in Kabul and a few major cities) and other rebel groups across Afghanistan. Russian and Afghan troops loyal to the new communist regime and para-military units carried out warfare against resistance groups primarily which were Islamic thereby killing and torturing thousands of opponents.

II. Until April 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina was part of the Republic of Yugoslavia. Civil war broke out on April 06, 1992, in the wake of a referendum on independence. Three parties were involved in the conflict: Bosnian Croatians, Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), and Bosnian Serbs. All parties were guilty of a range of crimes in the course of the conflict. The signing of the Dayton Agreement in November, 1995 finally brought the conflict to a close.

III. The Republic of Zaire, established in 1960, was under the leadership of Mobutu from 1965. Protests against Mobutu’s dictatorship multiplied rapidly in the early 1990s, and ethnic riots broke out. These worsened as a result of the genocide in neighboring country Rwanda in 1994. Mobutu was eventually deposed in May 1997, and the Republic of Zaire was transformed into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

IV. In 1979, Saddam Hussein, a leading figures in the Ba’ath party, became President of Iraq. Resistance within the country was violently repressed, and the Kurds and Shiites, particularly, were oppressed and persecuted. Both groups responded to this repression with public acts of rebellion. In addition to this internal struggle, Saddam Hussein waged war on Iraq’s neighboring countries. From September 1980 to August 1988, the country was at war with Iran, and on August 02, 1990, Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait. Throughout the whole period of the Hussein regime, the authorities used violence to enforce their policies. Thousands of people disappeared or were killed.

V. In 1991 Croatia, formerly part of the Republic of Yugoslavia, declared its independence. This declaration prompted the first fighting between Croatian troops and the Yugoslav army. Heavy gun battle took place from 1992 to May 1995, especially in the Croatian province of Krajina.

VI. Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, is the continent’s oldest republic. Following a coup d’état (military rebel) in 1980, civil war broke out in the late 1980s and early 1990s. International intervention in 1997 ushered in a period of relative calm and Charles Taylor came to power. From 1999 to 2003, however, the country again disintegrated into conflict.

VII. On April 06, 1994, the aeroplane carrying Juvénal Habyarimana, the President of Rwanda, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu President of Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land at the city of Kigali at Rwanda. Both presidents were killed in the crash. Even before that, violent incidents had occurred over the years between the two main ethnic groups in Rwanda: Hutus and Tutsis. The shooting down of the president’s plane triggered the genocide in which an estimated 8,00,000 people – mainly Tutsis and moderate Hutus – were killed within the space of just three months. Atrocities were committed on a huge scale, openly encouraged by the authorities through, for instance, hate propaganda on Radio RTLM. In July 1994, the RPF (Front Patriotique Rwandais), the Tutsi army headed by General Paul Kagame, succeeded in putting a stop to the genocide.

VIII. In the wake of Sri Lankan independence in 1948, the Sri Lankan Government, in which the Singhalese were the dominant ethnic group, took several measures that privileged the Singhalese population. These measures led to ethnic tensions between Tamils and Singhalese, which, in the 1970s’, prompted a desire on the part of various Tamil groups to found their own independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka since the Singhalese were engaged in mass killing or genocide of the Tamils in Jaffna and other parts of Sri Lanka. A few of these organizations set out to achieve this through violent means. One such group was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), established in 1976. From its foundation, the LTTE was associated with violent campaigns, such as bomb attacks and contract killings. From 1990, the LTTE acquired ‘its own’ territory in the north-eastern part of Sri Lanka, where it acted in a sort of semi-official capacity. The LTTE had its own army, police, and judicial system, and a tax structure of its own to fund its armed struggle against the Sri Lankan army. For their funding activities, the LTTE also appealed to Tamils who had left Sri Lanka and were living all over the world. Early in 2009, the Tamil Tigers were defeated by Sri Lankan government troops. That summer, a new leader of the LTTE announced that the separatist movement would fight on. The LTTE has been on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations since 2006. LTTE was also responsible for the assassination of India’s Ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

International crimes since its advent have been prosecuted by several national and international courts amongst which the International Criminal Court (ICC) constituted under the Rome Statute in 1998, based in Hague at Netherlands and so far 123 countries forming members of it acts as the apex adjudicating and a permanent body, which was finally given effect of operation from July 01, 2002. The primary purpose behind constitution of ICC with regard to dealing matters related to international crimes with the purpose of prosecuting and bringing justice to those responsible for the worst crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. ICC acts as a framework for an international criminal justice system, representing the highest point of a process that began in the wake of the Nuremberg Judgement, when the first time United Nations considered the establishment of an international criminal jurisdiction. The preamble of the ICC says ‘the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished’. The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer situations to the ICC. ICC is also termed as the Court of last resort.

The Rome Statute which acts as the Bible for the ICC has defined (1) Genocide under its Article 6 as ‘the intention to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’ (2) Crime against Humanity under its Article 7 as ‘a number of different acts committed as part of the widespread or systematic attack directed against any civial population, with the knowledge of the attack’ and (3) War Crimes under its Article 8 as ‘serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international and non-international armed conflicts’. The Rome Statute also defines other underlined acts which includes murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearance of persons, apartheid and others. ICC has the power to prosecute individuals unlike the International Court of Justice which adjudicates disputes between governments.

ICC's first verdict, in March 2012, was against Thomas Lubanga, the leader of a militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was convicted of war crimes relating to the use of children in that country's conflict and sentenced in July, 2012 for 14 years of imprisonment. The highest profile person to be brought to the ICC is Ivory Coast's former President Laurent Gbagbo, who was charged in 2011 with murder, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution and "other inhumane acts". Other notable cases included charges of crimes against humanity against Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was indicted in 2011 in connection with post-election ethnic violence in 2007-08, in which 1,200 people died. The ICC dropped the charges against Mr Kenyatta in December 2014. Again, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir was the President of the Republic of Sudan since October 16, 1993. Prosecution application for a warrant of arrest was filed on July 14, 2008, and the first warrant of arrest issued by Pre-Trial Chamber-I on March 04, 2009. Thus he became the first sitting president to be indicted by the ICC for directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur at Sudan and charged for causing Genocide by ICC.

ICC has been alleged and criticized to be biased when it comes to the African Union, for its focus on Africa. In the court's history it has only brought charges against black Africans primarily. Although, the ICC denies any bias, pointing to the fact that some cases, such as the Lords’ Resistance Army in Uganda, were self-referred by the country affected, and some were referred by the UN. Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, who is Gambian, has argued that the ICC is helping Africa by its prosecutions of criminals.