In the media
June 30, 2016
On 10 December 2015, one of the largest terrorism cases in the Netherlands came to a close: Ten people were charged for a number of terrorism-related crimes with the main suspect receiving a 6-year prison sentence. It was not until June 2016 that the District Court in The Hague published the unofficial English translation (only the Dutch text of the full verdict is authentic) of the judgment. The 200-page judgment not only includes considerations on jurisdiction, terrorist intent, incitement, recruitment, training and participation in a criminal (terrorist) organisation, but also on several aspects of international humanitarian law (the relationship between international humanitarian law and the EU Framework Decision on Terrorism, the non-international armed conflict in Syria, the status of foreign fighters under international law, etc).
An analysis of the judgment, including the text of the judgment itself (in both Dutch and English), can be found on the International Crimes Database (ICD). The ICD is a comprehensive database on international crimes adjudicated by national, as well as international and internationalized courts, hosted and maintained by the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague and supported by ICCT and the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice.
In the second half of this year, the Asser and ICCT will create a tab on the ICD that will collect relevant case law on the foreign fighters phenomenon. The main lessons distilled from this data and these analyses will be included in an ICCT Policy Brief, authored by ICCT Research Fellow Christophe Paulussen.
Read the analysis of the judgment here.
