Baltasar Garzon, who in 1998 made unprecedented use of universal jurisdiction to attempt to try Augusto Pinochet for crimes committed abroad. Wikicommons/Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación. Some rights reserved.Armed conflicts that have given rise to horrific war crimes in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and South Sudan are all beyond the reach of the ‘court of last resort’, the International Criminal Court (ICC). But domestic courts in Europe are stepping into the void and giving the victims some hope.
The ICC was created to take on crimes that shocked the conscience of humankind where national courts failed to do their job. But by making consent from the states almost a necessary precondition for invoking the court’s authority, governments gave this court only limited power. With obstruction and division at the United Nations Security Council, the council was blocked from “referring” Syria to the ICC.
Near-absolute impunity has dominated on the ground at the price of unimaginable human suffering in Syria. But even with impunity ascendant there and no international court with the necessary authority available, the trials of low level armed insurgents and returning members of ISIS in the national courts of several European countries highlights an important trend. Swedish, German and French courts are using what’s known as universal or extraterritorial jurisdiction to take up cases against those believed to have committed serious crimes in Syria. This trend is especially significant when neither the ICC or the domestic courts where the crimes occurred are available.
