Abstract

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