Journal of college of Law for Legal and Political Sciences

Abstract

The establishment of International Criminal Judiciary is one of the outstanding features witnessed by international community after many attempts in order to reach international judicial mechanisms to ensure prosecuting those responsible for horrible international crimes that violate the common values of international community of human rights and fundamental freedoms which threaten ultimately international peace and security. The international community has witnessed through different stages of evolution of international criminal law in general and international criminal judiciary in particular different types of international criminal tribunals, starting from Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II between 1945-1946, then Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals between 1993 - 1994, then the Permanent International Criminal Tribunal in 1998.It is noticeable by looking at the basic laws and regulations regarding the establishment of such tribunals that there is a variation in the position of death penalty, The law on the formation of Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals acknowledged the possibility of imposing death penalty on defendants present before it and this is what happened in some of the provisions of Nuremberg Tribunal. But the statutes of Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals did not provide a text for such a penalty, and this is also the position of the Permanent International Criminal Tribunal, as its statute came free from this penalty. Rather, it seems through a precise analysis of the statutes of Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals and the International Criminal Tribunal that there is a room in some cases to apply death penalty by national criminal judiciary in the context of common jurisdiction between Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals with the national judiciary and the principle of integrative specialization between the permanent International Criminal Tribunal and national criminal judiciary.