Jus de non evocando is an ancient feudal right stating that no one can be kept from the competent court. It derives from a medieval principle that subjects of the Crown were entitled to ius de non evocando, the right to enjoy the jurisdiction and the protection of the Crown to which they were loyal. As such, it is still present in several constitutions, such as the German constitution, the Italian constitution and the Dutch constitution.
It has today become an important concept in public international law by which states refuse to extradite their own citizens. Some countries may refuse to extradite non-nationals, who because of their crimes may be subject to the death penalty. That may be seen in the case of Canada and Mexico towards the United States.
The principle is frequently argued in cases of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The foundation lies in that the international tribunal, by seizing jurisdiction over an international criminal trial from national courts, violates the principle of jus de non evocando. The Trial Chamber, in the case of Dusko Tadic (IT-94-1 of the ICTY), stated that states give up some measure of sovereignty to be a part of the UN, which produced the ICTY, and so there is no violation. [1]
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal was an ad hoc court located in The Hague, Netherlands.
Jurisdiction is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple levels.
Universal jurisdiction is a legal principle that allows states or international organizations to claim criminal jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where the alleged crime was committed, and regardless of the accused's nationality, country of residence, or any other relation to the prosecuting entity. Crimes prosecuted under universal jurisdiction are considered crimes against all, too serious to tolerate jurisdictional arbitrage. The concept of universal jurisdiction is therefore closely linked to the idea that some international norms are erga omnes, or owed to the entire world community, as well as to the concept of jus cogens – that certain international law obligations are binding on all states.
In an extradition, one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdictions and depends on the arrangements made between them. In addition to legal aspects of the process, extradition also involves the physical transfer of custody of the person being extradited to the legal authority of the requesting jurisdiction.
A peremptory norm is a fundamental principle of international law that is accepted by the international community of states as a norm from which no derogation is permitted.
A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation.
Non bis in idem which translates literally from Latin as 'not twice in the same [thing]', is a legal doctrine to the effect that no legal action can be instituted twice for the same cause of action. It is a legal concept originating in Roman civil law, but it is essentially the equivalent of the double jeopardy doctrine found in common law jurisdictions, and similar peremptory plea in some modern civil law countries.
International criminal law (ICL) is a body of public international law designed to prohibit certain categories of conduct commonly viewed as serious atrocities and to make perpetrators of such conduct criminally accountable for their perpetration. The core crimes under international law are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
In the practice of international law, command responsibility is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer (military) and a superior officer (civil) is legally responsible for the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates; thus, a commanding officer always is accountable for the acts of commission and the acts of omission of his soldiers.
Bosnia and Herzegovina v Serbia and Montenegro [2007] ICJ 2 is a public international law case decided by the International Court of Justice.
Duško Tadić is a convicted war criminal, Bosnian Serb politician, former SDS leader in Kozarac and a former member of the paramilitary forces supporting the attack on the district of Prijedor.
Immunity from prosecution is a doctrine of international law that allows an accused to avoid prosecution for criminal offences. Immunities are of two types. The first is functional immunity, or immunity ratione materiae. This is an immunity granted to people who perform certain functions of state. The second is personal immunity, or immunity ratione personae. This is an immunity granted to certain officials because of the office they hold, rather than in relation to the act they have committed.
Dragan Nikolić was a Bosnian Serb army commander of the Sušica detention camp near Vlasenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina who was charged with war crimes. He was arrested in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) and taken to the Hague in Netherlands for trial.
Joint criminal enterprise (JCE) is a legal doctrine used during war crimes tribunals to allow the prosecution of members of a group for the actions of the group. This doctrine considers each member of an organized group individually responsible for crimes committed by group within the common plan or purpose. It arose through the application of the idea of common purpose and has been applied by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to prosecute political and military leaders for mass war crimes, including genocide, committed during the Yugoslav Wars 1991–1999.
Gabrielle Anne Kirk McDonald is an American lawyer and jurist who, until her retirement in October 2013, served as an American arbitrator on the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal seated in The Hague.
Florence Hartmann is a French journalist and author. During the 1990s she was a correspondent in the Balkans for the French newspaper Le Monde. In 1999 she published her first book, Milosevic, la diagonale du fou, reissued by Gallimard in 2002. From October 2000 until October 2006 she was official spokesperson and Balkan adviser to Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
Alphonsus "Alphons" Martinus Maria Orie is a Dutch jurist specialising in criminal law and a former judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), who presided over many Trial Chamber cases at the ICTY.
The Prosecutor v. Ratko Mladić was a war crimes trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands, concerning crimes committed during the Bosnian War by Ratko Mladić in his role as a general in the Yugoslav People's Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska.
In criminal law, the right to a speedy trial is a human right under which it is asserted that a government prosecutor may not delay the trial of a criminal suspect arbitrarily and indefinitely. Otherwise, the power to impose such delays would effectively allow prosecutors to send anyone to jail for an arbitrary length of time without trial.
The United Nations Detention Unit (UNDU) is a UN-administered jail. It is part of the Hague Penitentiary Institution's Scheveningen location, more popularly known as Scheveningen Prison, in The Hague, Netherlands. The UNDU was established in 1993 as part of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and currently houses detainees whose cases have been taken over by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT).