Rule of Law Responses to Terrorism - International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT)

Since September 2020, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) has been researching both the linkages between terrorism, core international crimes, and other serious crimes , and the ways in which alleged terrorists suspected of committing these crimes can be prosecuted. In that capacity, ICCT has previously supported the Global Counter Terrorism Forum’s Criminal Justice and Rule of Law Working Group by contributing to the development of the “Memorandum on Criminal Justice Approaches to the Linkages Between Terrorism and Core International Crimes, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Crimes, Human Trafficking, Migrant Smuggling, Slavery, and Crimes Against Children”.

In furtherance of that research, ICCT has developed this database containing cases from all European countries where alleged terrorist have been prosecuted cumulatively for terrorism and core international crimes. The latter is understood to include war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of genocide as criminalised by relevant domestic legislation. Detailed information about each case is derived from written court decisions, wherever applicable and accessible. While several written court decisions were fully accessible online, others were only made available to researchers upon request. In a few cases, full written decisions were not even made available to the researchers as anonymised copies, in order to protect the identities of the parties involved in these cases. As this database includes case-law from a variety of domestic jurisdictions with different anonymization policies, especially in relation to defendants and convicts, ICCT has decided to only provide the first name and initial of the last name(s) of the individuals in question, in order to protect their identity.

The information gathered as described above has been analysed in order to identify challenges, areas for development, and good practices in prosecuting individuals both for terrorism and core international crimes. The database serves as an open access hub for interested practitioners, policy makers, and researchers.

This project aims to enhance the accountability of the full range of crimes that are committed by members of terrorist groups. By doing so, the database aims to

• Increase the understanding of the nexus between terrorism, and core international crimes;
• Enhance prosecutorial strategies and evidence collection from the conflict zones; and
• Provide more justice and dignity to  victims.

This database is supported by the Swedish Ministry of Justice and was first launched in November 2023. New developments concerning existing or newly arising cases are reflected in due course upon when detailed, reliable information was gathered by the researchers. To be notified about future updates to the database and other projects, subscribe to the ICCT newsletter, and learn more about this and other ICCT projects here.