Joint Criminal Enterprise - Criticism

Criticism

John Laughland, author of Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice, criticized the Joint Criminal Enterprise doctrine. He stated that successive rulings of the ICTY Appeals Chamber have allowed this doctrine "to get wildly out of hand". The judgement in Kvocka ruled that "JCE responsibility does not require any showing of superior responsibility, nor the proof of a substantial or significant contribution." In Brdjanin, it ruled that "the third category of joint criminal enterprise does not require proof of intent to commit a crime."

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia...has invented a doctrine of criminal liability known as ‘joint criminal enterprise.’ It uses this concept, which is so contentious that it is unconstitutional in many jurisdictions, in order to convict people of crimes when even the Tribunal accepts that they did not, in fact, commit them or that the proof is lacking to show that they did. —John Laughland

He argues thus that "international tribunals have abolished the very thing which criminal trials are supposed to be about. If you can be convicted of a crime as a primary perpetrator for something which you neither committed nor intended to commit, and if mens rea can be ‘established’ by judicial ruling," this is "introducing into the heart of their systems measures which are the very hallmark of dictatorships." The chapter in Laughland's book Travesty on the subject of the Joint Criminal Enterprise doctrine is titled "Just convict everyone."

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