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An Effective Form of Judicial Treatment of Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Kosovo?

July 20, 2023

Introduction Following the defeat of Islamic State in 2018 in Syria, thousands of Europeans accused of fighting for ISIS remain detained in Kurdish jails in Syria, while women and children related to these fighters are also living in several camps nearby the Iraqi border. Due to the absence of adequate infrastructure, some ISIS fighters are imprisoned in schools or hospitals without any security. Risks of attacks targeting detainees remain considerable and several fighters have already escaped. Citing security reasons, most Western countries have so far refused to repatriate ISIS foreign fighters of their nationality from Syria, and some countries, like France, are still opposed to the comprehensive repatriation even of  women and children related to these fighters. It is against this backdrop that state authorities in Kosovo initiated a  policy to bring back hundreds of jihadists and their families from Syria and Iraq. This post considers whether the model of repatriation and prosecution of foreign terrorist fighters pursued by Kosovo constitutes a model for other European countries, many of which are considering how to deal…

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Mistakes of Fact When Using Lethal Force in International Law: Part III

January 15, 2020

  To briefly recapitulate our examination of mistake of fact when using lethal force in various sub-fields of international law: such a doctrine is, in its purely subjective form, black letter law in international criminal law. It is also established (even if not labelled as such) in international human rights law and (somewhat less clearly) in international humanitarian…

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Mistakes of Fact When Using Lethal Force in International Law: Part II

January 15, 2020

  If a state believes that it is the target of an ongoing or imminent armed attack and uses force to repel that attack, but it later turns out that it was mistaken and that there either was no such attack or that there was no necessity to respond to it, is that use of force in putative…

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Mistakes of Fact When Using Lethal Force in International Law: Part I

January 14, 2020

  The tragic shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner over Tehran last week, which Iran has admitted to after several days of denial, has led me to think about a set of issues that was already on my mind when we were discussing the legality of the US strike on Soleimani. How exactly does international law…

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The Killing of Soleimani, the Use of Force against Iraq and Overlooked Ius Ad Bellum Questions

January 13, 2020

  As most people know by now, the US killed Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Quds force, in a drone strike on 3 January. Most commentators seem to agree that Soleimani’s killing was unlawful, but one issue has received less attention: the legality of using force against Iraq. The strike occurred in Baghdad, killing not only Suleimani…

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