[MUSIC]. Terrorism and Piracy. Doesn't get much more interesting than that. I'm Michael Scharf, welcome back to our course on International Criminal Law. Today we're going to be looking at two of the most fascinating crimes in the field, Terrorism and Piracy. Our objectives today are to first of all to understand why a consensus definition of terrorism has been so difficult for the international community to arrive at. Next, we'll be looking at the gaps in the web of anti-terrorism treaties, and why the quest for a new definition continues to be on the priority list of the United Nations. And then finally, we'll be exploring the contours of the crime of piracy. A crime that many thought was something, that was only important in the past. But now, with the scourge of Somalia pirate attacks, it's on everybody's radar once again. You probably are familiar with the old adage that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. This next slide really brings that to home. This was taken during the Ronald Reagan administration back when the United States was supporting the Taliban resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. That's right, these are the same Taliban that we have been fighting against for the last 11 years, since the 9/11 attacks. And of course, Ronald Reagan said back then, these gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America's Founding Fathers. In other words, if you support their cause, they're not terrorists. This has been the problem for the international community, how do you define a crime that is only a crime when it's against you and not when it's for you. Well, the international community has done this, by creating a number of specific international treaties, called anti-terrorism conventions. That makes certain kinds of terrorism unlawful, no matter what the reason is, no matter whether, no matter what the context whether you like the terrorist or you dont. So, they cover things for example as the hijacking of aircraft. No matter why you hijack, even if you're a refugee trying to escape a totalitarian regime. It's still terrorism and it's covered by a treaty. And the treaty says if anybody gets hold of a hijacker, they must prosecute that person under universal jurisdiction or extradite them to another country who would prosecute. Same applies to the crime of airport sabotage, aircraft sabotage, blowing up aircraft like the famous case of the Pan Am 103 bombing. and this has been expanded to not only include aircraft sabotage but also attacks against vessels. Then there is hostage-taking. No matter why you take hostages, it is such an international crime, it is therefore considered criminal under all circumstances. Another one, as I was mentioning, attacking maritime ships, civilian ships on the high seas, like the Achille Lauro case that was so famous a few years ago. Then there is attacks against diplomats. Any time a diplomat is attacked, it doesn't matter if you like that country or not, that makes it a terrorist incident according to these treaties. Then there's a treaty that deals with using bombs against the civilian population. There's some other treaties as well, for example, there is a treaty that covers using poisons, chemical weapons or biological weapons and introducing those to public water systems. There is also a treaty that deals with attacks against UN peacekeepers, who are supposed to be neutral and therefore off bounds free from any attack. And then finally there is the new treaty that covers financing of terrorism, because the international community has decided that the people who pay for the bullets and the bombs are just as guilty as those that pull the trigger or plant the explosives. Now, that doesn't cover every possible international crime. And as you know from the readings, there are gaps in the international web of treaties that try to cover terrorists incidents without having a general definition of terrorism. So look, let's look at some of those gaps. One of them is the question of whether terrorism attacking civilians with something that's not an explosive can be covered. And the 9/11 incident shows that even if it's not an act of terrorism, it might be covered under the crime against humanity that we described and discussed in the last class session. So that as a review, covers attacks against civilians that are widespread and systematic. And since 9/11 was an attack against at least 3,000 civilians, in two different airplane crashes that were in New York and then another two that one landed in Washington, one in the countryside in Pennsylvania. That was systematic and widespread. So, even if it wasn't a clear act of terrorism per se, it could have been prosecuted as a crime against humanity, even before an international court. Now it, it was of course an act of terrorism too because they used planes, and if you attack planes, as I said earlier, that violates one of the anti-terrorism conventions. But what's not covered? One of the things not covered are attacks against trains. And, you know, a lot of people travel on trains all over the United States and Europe and, and elsewhere in the world. And if you don't use a bomb, because that would be covered, but rather you figure out a way to derail the train with something less, maybe something less high tech, then that's not covered. You know what else? Another public conveyance that many people travel in, are buses. And you can attack a bus, as long as it's not with a bomb again, because bombing is covered by the treaties. But let's say you attack it with a machine gun, or throw a rock through the window. These things can not be considered terrorism covered by the current treaties, even if your purpose was to try to instill fear in the public. And then finally, cyber terrorism. This is going to be one of the biggest kinds of problems facing the world in the future. We're very vulnerable to cyber attacks from everything to a terrorist group pushing a button and taking away all of our investments, all of our savings, making all of our accounts just disappear. That could cause massive panic in the United States, it could make the stock market crash but they could do other things too. They could, for example, push a button and make all the green lights turn to red lights, or red lights turn to green lights. In which case, you would have cars crashing into each other. They could get who through the cyber systems into our airports, and convince our airport traffic controllers that a blip on a screen is not really a plane and then suddenly planes would be crashing. So, cyber terrorism is an area that needs to be covered, currently is not. There is also not covered, attacks against business people, American business people, European business people, others around the world are basically sitting targets for terrorists. If a diplomat is attacked, the person is a terrorist, if he is found he has to be prosecuted or extradited. Not so much with the business person. Also, students and educators like myself and you. If you're attacked abroad, unlike diplomats, it's not considered terrorism. And then finally, fake attacks, attacks that scare the heck out of a population and they can cause all sorts of problems, but they're using fake weapons. So this is a picture of fake anthrax and there have been many cases in recent years where there had been these kinds of attacks that are very fearful. So what we have decided to do in our simulation for today is divide you up by the letter of your last name into two groups, A and B. And group A is going to be representing states that have been the target of international terrorism. And group B are states that are known to have terrorist groups active within their territory. Some maybe support those groups. Others maybe just are unable to control those groups. And you can pick whatever country you want from those general categories and we're going to have assimilation where we discuss. A general definition of terrorism where you think about it from the point of view of your assigned country. Now this is going to be difficult, because the countries in the world have different agendas, and it's going to be very hard for them to all come to agreement. On something that has eluded the international community for so long. Let's try with a draft definition. One way we could approach this would be to say, let's define terrorism as the peacetime equivalent of war crimes. Now, from the last session, you guys are all experts at what is a war crime, what is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions? So let's just say that if you target civilians, for example, during peace time. Indiscriminately and disproportionately, that is a peacetime equivalent of a war crime and therefore it's terrorism. There have been some proposals to do this both in the UN and various countries including the Indian Supreme Court. But what are the problems with that proposal? One is if you make an equivalence between war crimes and terrorism, it means that the terrorists get to use the same defenses that are available in the context of war. So they can use the obedience to orders defense, something that we're going to be focusing on in a couple of class sessions from now. But basically they can say oh, I was just following the orders of my commander, and I wasn't sure if this was clearly an illegal order. I, he told me to just take this box from one place to another. I didn't know that it had, you know, a bomb in it, I thought, maybe it did, but I wasn't sure, I was following orders. Well, we can't have the terrorists getting away with terror under that defense. Another problem would be the, fact that in war crimes in the context of war if you attack a legitimate target and some other civilians happens to be nearby and they die, that's just called collateral damage. And the people, when you attack the the enemy, that is not a crime at all. That's called combatant immunity. So the terrorist could basically say, look, we only targeted the military, we only targeted the government and therefore we didn't kill any innocents. And if did kill some innocents, they weren't disproportionate to our attack and therefore, they were just collateral damage. Now, obviously, these rules that apply in the laws of war should not apply to terrorists, because that would be the exception that would swallow up the entire effort to try to prosecute terrorists. So, let's look at another way that we might be able to define terrorism. Let's start with this general definition. Terrorism is the intentional use or threat of the use of violence against civilians or civilian targets in order to attain political aims. So, you have violence, you have these people who are being victimized, being civilians, and you have the intent to be, to attain political aims, which is the part that makes it terrorism. Any problems with this? Well, we will be having a debate offline where many of you will be discussing whether this is a failed and flawed definition. But basically the problem is when it says against civilians or civilian targets it makes it open season for killing the police. Now, if you have all the terrorists shooting all the police and anybody else who maybe is an officer of the government, but not a civilian. That's still terrorism and that's something that needs to be punished. So you don't want a definition that opens that up. It also would open it up to attacks against Federal buildings. This is a picture of the Oklahoma City bombing. This occurred in the United States about a decade ago and what happened was, a home grown terrorist named Tim McVeigh blew up an entire federal building including the floor that housed little children in day care. Clearly, that's terrorism. But under this definition, the target was a federal building and I guess the kids in day care would have been unsuspecting collateral damage. This definition isn't going to work. It's too narrow. Well, let's try to change it a little bit. Instead of saying civilian targets, maybe we'll call it non-military targets. And therefore, the police who aren't in the military, federal buildings that aren't military, those would be covered and any attacks against them would be terrorism. All right, we're getting there, maybe this is a little bit more nuance. Let's look at another problem with the definition however. And that is, it says that it's in order to attain political aims. Well, what about terrorists who aren't doing it for political aims? You might think, well, I can't really think of a terrorist who doesn't have a political motive. But what about the Somalia pirates? They are taking people hostage, that's an act of terr-, of terrorism but they are not doing it for political reasons, they are doing it because they are poor and impoverished and need the money. And so they wouldn't come within terrorism but if they fall outside of piracy, for example if they are acting on the land, you would want them to be defined as terrorists. Another example, Narco-Terrorist. These are the major narcotics groups, the cartels in Latin America and Central America. The groups that operate through out Asia and Russia and elsewhere. Well they're using terrorist acts. They use things like coercion, and they kidnap Judges, and they threatened public officials and they do this not because of a political aim. But rather, because they want to grease the wheels of their very profitable narcotics delivery systems. So that wouldn't be covered. And then what about high school pranks? There have been a rash of cases throughout the United States and Europe, where people call in fake bomb threats and these have a huge economic impact. But Like the fake anthrax, these high school pranks are not done for political reasons, they are done because there are juvenile delinquents that think they are having fun. And haven't learnt the lessons of how, how much trouble they are causing for their community and those people need to be prosecuted too. And what about, the mafia? The mafia use acts of terrorism on a widespread basis but they don't do it for political reasons. They do it to become rich mafioso's. And finally there's hate crimes people who use terrorist acts because they hate another group, an ethnic group or a religious group. And they do it not for any political reason but just to terrorize the people they hate. So, maybe we'll revise our draft definition a little bit to try to get at this. In addition to changing civilians to non-military targets, let's change political aims to creating fear in the general public. It's broader and it would capture all of those examples that we just discussed. Well, there's still other problems with the definition. For example, should there be an exception for people who are fighting against repressive regimes? It's one thing to say there should be no terrorism allowed in a democracy, where you can go to the ballot box if you want to change the way things are. But if you live in a repressive regime, or if you live under the yoke of a former, of a, a, another country that is treating you as a colony and you have no way of changing things. Then maybe it's courageous to be a freedom fighter, to be a, a rebel, to be a revolutionary. Think back for example to George Washington. Here is a picture of George, what did he do? Did he fight the British during the American Revolutionary War in a conventional sense? No. He knew he couldn't win that way so instructed his subordinates to act as the native Americans have done, to basically adapt terrorist tactics. To snipe from afar and from hidden places, to not wear a uniform on the battlefield. To do all sorts of things that would be considered acts of terrorism today. But back then, he was a revolutionary hero, one of the founding fathers of the United States. Of course we have that quote I showed you at the beginning of the session, where Ronald Reagan said, The Taliban. The Taliban, these are the people who work with Al Qaeda now, who are the major terrorist threat to most of the world. And Ronald Reagan said, these Gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America's Founding Fathers. Well, is he right if some group is fighting against Russian occupation, does that change, whether they should be considered a terrorist or not? And then, this latest picture is what's going on in Syria. So in Syria, basically, the Assad government was repressive for many years. When the spread of democracy and the Arab Spring finally made its way to Syria, many people joined together and created a spontaneous uprising. They were joined by groups including Al-Qaeda who were fighting against the repressive regime, and just recently the Europeans and the United States have to started to funnel millions and millions of dollars in aid to these groups to help them topple the Syrian government. But they're not fighting fair,they're using assassination and bombs, civilians have been killed, they've kidnapped people, they're basically using terrorist tactics. But should they come within a general exception because of the context? This is a really tough question. Maybe the toughest one of all, when countries are trying to come up with a definition of terrorism. So let's maybe, add that to our definition and it would then say that terrorism is the intentional use or threat to use violence against non-military targets in order to create fear in the general public. And then we'll add this sentence. It does not include acts by groups fighting against repressive or colonial regimes. Now, that's going to be very, very controversial, because just like one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. One person's repressive or colonial regime is another person's democracy. And this is going to make this very hard to come up with a definition. Now, one of the things that might move along this process that's very recent is that Security Council together with the government of Lebanon, has created a new international court. That is the first international court devoted to a terrorist act and this is the special tribunal for Lebanon. It sits in the Netherlands, the Hague, where the other international tribunals sit, most of them. And it has jurisdiction over the bombing attack against the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Mr Hariri. And so, they have had proceedings, they've had a lot of judicial debate. And finally, the special tribunal for Lebanon's chief Judge, Judge Cassese has given us a definition of terrorism that would govern this case. And, and here behind me now you see the picture of Mr Hariri and pictures of the explosion. The bomb was so big in that case, by the way, 22 people died including him and it was felt as far away as 300 miles. So, Mr Cassese is, is pictured here and Judge Cassese, who just passed away unfortunately. Was a very aggressive Judge when it came to creating new international law. He was also a Judge at the Yugoslavia Tribunal who came up with one of their key decisions, which we'll talk about in the next session, a decision that created a kind of liability called Joint Criminal Enterprise Liability. But in this context, he said, hmm, I know that the world has been having trouble defining terrorism, but I think that there's enough evidence out there that there is a definition of terrorism. And this is the definition that he promulgated. He said, terrorist acts consist of the following three key elements. First of all, they have to a criminal act well, such as murder, kidnapping, hostage-taking, arson and so on. secondly, there has to be the intent to spread fear among the population, which is similar to definition that we've been talking about. And third, it has to be an international act. So in Lebanon, if the case was solely a home ground terrorist that committed this atrocity, it wouldn't fall within the international terrorist definition. But if in fact there were elements from Syria or Iran that were involved helping these terrorists as they believe to be the case of Lebanon then it would fall within the international definition of terrorism. So, here we have another way of looking at the definition of terrorism. It might push the international community forward. I think one of the problems with this definition is by saying this is a criminal act, you're sort of starting out you know how they say you should never define a term by use of the term. Well, here if you're going to say something's criminal you shouldn't start out by saying it's already criminal and there are things that may not be criminal or clearly criminal that should be covered within the definition of terrorism. So that might be a problem. But I think we're getting there and I think what's important is that this is the first time an international tribunal has weighed in on this. And it might be the case that the international community will use this as a starting point and this will move the debate forward. Because after all, it's been thirty years since they proposed the definition of terrorism and they haven't been able to get one. And that's why the international community has instead just simply created a number of narrow treaties that define types of acts that everybody can agree on without the general umbrella of a definition. Now lets turn to the other, really interesting crime that is plaguing us in this day and age that is modern day piracy. You know, the history of piracy goes back 400 years, and it includes some very famous historical figures that many people read about when they were children. you have for example the original pirates, who were the vikings and they would go into Ireland and England and other places outside of Scandinavia and they would commit traditional piratical acts. Then, later on, you had the Barbary pirates. In the United States, we have this famous marine corps hymn. It says from the house of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, and most Americans don't have any idea why it refers to the shores of Tripoli. The reason is because during the creation of the marine corp, it's first use was against the Barbary pirates who had been based in Libya, they taken over really and were a threat to the entire Mediterranean. And they were scourged for years until they were totally wiped out. Then more recently, you have other pirate names. Blackbeard, for example, Morgan, and the famous Billy the Kid, William Kid. So pirates were a thing of the past. Most people knew about 'em. But then all of a sudden they returned. So here we have a graph that shows from 2001 to 2011, the number of piratical attacks. And the ones in red, the area that's growing, are the Somalia pirates. here Underneath this is a picture of the parts of the world where pirates generally operate. And if you look off the coast of Somalia, this is the area where almost all of the oil from the Middle East must travel. It is a major shipping area. And because of these attacks, the international community is suffering about $12 billion a year in losses. There's over 1,000 people that are currently being held hostage, hundreds of vessels have been captured. This is a major problem for the world community. Now, piracy has a modern definition that is in the UN Law of the Sea treaty. And it's been defined as illegal acts of violence for private ends committed by a crew or passengers of one ship against another ship, and it has to be in the high seas. And anybody who is defined as a pirate, can be arrested and prosecuted under universal jurisdiction. Which is the kind of jurisdiction we've been talking about in the last class session. Where when an offender shows up on your territory, even if he's not your nationals, even if the crime wasn't against your nationals, even if he's never been to your place territory before you can prosecute him. And in terms of pirates, you don't have to wait till they come to your territory, you can grab them on the high seas, wherever they're found. They are the enemies of all humankind. Now, the situation at Somalia is basically caused by two things. One is that the Somalia state has been without a functioning government for over 20 years. It's basically a failed state, and in a failed state you always have organized crime that takes over. You have rebels, you have terrorists groups that take over and in this case, piracy has flourished. Secondly, the people of Somalia who are poor, orphaned, subject to starvation and drought, use to do a lot of fishing of their coast. But they claim, and there's some evidence to back this up, that the Europeans and the Asians and the Africans, have all been fishing this area that was rich with fish stocks until recently. And now, most of the fishing is gone. So they don't have any other options. So if you're a poor, starving Somalian citizen, what are you going to do? You're going to make a lot of money joining a pirate fleet. And so the business model has been very successful in particular because every time they hijack a ship, and hold people hostage, the insurance companies are paying for it. And in a few minutes, we'll talk about how do you combat that. But the first thing that's happened is that a number of countries are starting to prosecute these pirates. And the Europeans, the United States, and other countries are starting to apprehend them. In the high seas and bring them to these countries. So for example, we have the first piracy court setup in Kenya, in the coastal town of Mombasa. The next one was set up in the Seychelles. And the last one that is just been set up is in Mauritius. And these three areas have become similar to an international court for pirates in this area. And the UN has been paying a lot of money to equip them with jail facilities, to help modernize their court system and there is a lot of new jurisprudence coming out in the area of piracy. And the incidents of piracy are starting to go down. Let's look at some of the, the difficulties in the definition of piracy. This is the famous case of the Achille Lauro hijacking. This happened in 1986. There was a cruise ship registered to Greece that was sailing around the Mediterranean and a terrorist group, The PLO, hijacked it, led by a PLO leader named Abu Abbas. This terrorist took the ship and held it hostage for many days, saying that the reason was that it would not free the ship until the Israelis freed 1,000 Palestinians that the Israelis were holding in jail. To show that they were serious, they took an elderly Jewish man named Leon Klinghoffer, who was in a wheelchair, and they shot him and they threw him overboard. So, the question was, was this covered under universal jurisdiction as an act of piracy? And at the time many countries felt that it was not. Why? Because remember the definition of terror, of piracy says It has to be an attack from one ship to another ship. These PLO people smuggled themselves in, posing as staff of the cruise ship, and then it was more like they were doing mutineers than actual piracy. So they entered, the international community said, well we've gotta close that gap and they entered into something that's now called the SUA convention, SUA. it's the maritime terrorism treaty, it was negotiated under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization. And it says that when you hijack or attack a crew ship or another civilian boat, it doesn't matter if you're doing it on the high seas, it doesn't matter if you are doing it from another vessel. It doesn't matter whether your intent is to have money, which is part of the definition of piracy, it's covered under this new treaty. Another one of these questions that has come up a lot recently is this. Say you're a European or American military vessel, or an Asian vessel, you're patroling the Indian waters, and you come up against a vessel that's full of piratical equipment. Now, here is the picture of piratical equipment. It's basically things like grappling hooks, special ladders, RPG's, machine guns, things that you just wouldn't need if you were an ordinary fisherman sailing around in the Indian ocean. So the vessels of the Europeans or the Americans grabbed this thing and they say uh-huh, you're a pirate. And when it goes to trial the defense says well, they weren't engaged in piracy they weren't chugging steaming towards a pirate, target. You don't know where they were coming or going you don't know what they were doing with the goods. Well, the question then is a really important one. Because almost always, you don't catch the pirates right in the act but, you often come against these vessels. And what the Supreme Court of the Seychelles did in a landmark decision was go back to the old cases involving the slave trade from 300 years ago. And in those cases, they would capture slave ships that were full of manacles and rice and extra beds things that were clearly to be used for slaving. And even though they weren't engaged in slaving at the time or about to commit an act of slavery, which would have made them attempting to commit slavery. They felt that, that was enough to exercise universal jurisdiction. So the Supreme Court of the Seychelles took this old precedent and dusted it off and applied it. And now, we've got this huge weapon against pirate ships because any country can exercise universal jurisdiction against ships that have piratical equipment. Now, it could be that other countries will relitigate this issue because that was a bit of stretch in the law but for, from the point of view of the prosecution it was a golden magic bullet. and they were very thankful around the world that the Seychelles supreme court bravely pushed the bounds of law and created this precedent. Well what about the fact that many of the pirates don't ever go off into the high seas? In Somalia you've got certain people that go off and they commit the acts of piracy, but you've got others that are support staff. These are the ones that hold the hostages, they prepare the vessels, they process the money, they negotiate the hostage releases, there's a lot of things that go on, on land. And so the question is, if piracy has to be only something that's on the high seas, how can you prosecute these people if you can get your hands on them? Now, these people may be more important to prosecute than the actual pirates that are on the ocean, because these people may include the financiers, the pirate kingpins, the higher ups, that recruit the pirates. And so, therefore, they're the ones who need to start to prosecute but they're safe on land. And so, this is an issue that is currently being litigated in several courts around the world to decide whether piracy and conspiracy to commit piracy should include those who are on dry land. And even by the time that this airs, I think there will probably will be some more precedent on that issue. Now one of the biggest problems with the pirate trade is that it is a business model that simply works really well. That's because when some ship is taken hostage its insurance will pay to negotiate the release including paying a ransom. So, here's a picture of a ransom. This is an actual picture of ransom money being dropped on a ship full of pirates that was seized and then here are the pirates with their boxes of money sailing back to Somalia where they will spend it. And in fact this is an interesting twist, the cities where the pirates operate have been the economically most benefited in all of Somalia. And international groups such as hotel chains and others are starting to go where the money is. And these little cities are doing quite well but it's all pirate money. So the question is this, could you make the payment of a pirate ransom an act of terrorism or an act of piracy as well. And there is the precedent that says you're not allowed to, to give material support to terrorists. Well, since pirates are committing acts of hostage taking, which is a form of terrorism, maybe not for political ends but still it, it's covered by those conventions. Then why couldn't the international community just say it's not allowed? You can no longer be paying these ransoms. This is a issue that's been debated in capitals the British parliament has debated this. And on the one side are those that say wow, it would be against public policy to basically say to the pirates, go ahead and kill our hostages. If we could rescue them we should, and there's the other side that says, if you ever really want to dry up piracy the only way you can do that is by making it illegal to pay the pirate ransoms. And again this is one of these big ethem, ethical conundrums. It's a philosophical question. If you can same someone's life but in the end you're going to facilitate the pirates who will continue to attack others. Which way should you go? So this is one of those issues that's playing out even as we're having our discussions today online. Now, the biggest new problem in the area of piracy is what to do about child pirates. Child pirates? You're probably surprised. In fact, a growing number of the pirates that are being seized claim to be under the age of 15. And it's hard to tell whether they are or not, because in Somalia they don't get a lot of food, so their teeth and, and their bones don't grow as robustly as well fed children. So you may have someone who's older, who, who looks, under, X-rays, as someone who's younger. But why would everybody claim to be under 15? The reason is because the international community has for the last couple of years been using a catch and release approach to child pirates. You know, if you go off and you're fishing in a lake or in the ocean and you find that you have on the end of your rod a very small fish. And you say well that's too small, I can hardly eat that. I'm going to send it back so it can grow up to be a bigger fish. That's catch and release. And that is what the international community has been doing with the child pirates. So they go out, they get caught. And unlike the adults who get prosecuted and sometimes given large prison sentences, the children are simply returned to Somalia. Well that has only encouraged the pirate recruiters the pirate kingpins the pirate financiers to go out and get more children. And the parents of these children basically say oh, go ahead we know you'll be coming back because they have catch and release. So something has to be done about this or else almost all the children will be sucked into piracy, and all the pirates will be children, and that cannot be good. So, one of the questions is whether you could make recruitment and use of child pirates in international crime. Maybe a crime against humanity, because it's targeting the civilian population, it's systematic, it's widespread, and it's got a horrible affect on people. And it's not true that all the children come back safely, because often the pirate ships engage in military actions and are sunk and the people on board, including these children are killed. Well there is a precedent for this, at the International Criminal Court in its very first case. They prosecuted Lubanga from the Congo for the crime of recruiting child soldiers. And if it's a crime to recruit child soldiers, why shouldn't it be a crime to recruit child soldiers who happen to be on piratical vessels committing acts of piracy. So, if in fact the precedent can apply, then you will see the courts in Mombasa Kenya, you'll see the courts in the Seychelles, you'll see the courts in Mauritius starting to prosecute not just the pirates but those who are involved in recruiting the children. And you know what? The children also need to be prosecuted. They should be treated as juveniles but you can't just release them because, in the end, piracy is basically a business model, and the only way you're going to defeat it is by taking away the engine of the business. You take away the ransoms, you take away the ability for children to engage in this without any kind of risk and only then will you start to defeat piracy. So, we can conclude then, our session on terrorism and piracy. We've learned now that these are very urgent crimes, that are plaguing the international community. They are plaguing not just people in the Indian Ocean but they're having an effect worldwide. The terrorists are everywhere, and it's a battle that every country is engaged in, and yet we've learned that these are very complex legal issues. But not so complex as to be insurmountable. And hopefully, the kinds of insights that you have gotten today will help us push the law along and help us enforce the law that we have. So that we can continue to struggle valiently against terrorism and piracy. [MUSIC] And that concludes our session for today. In our next session, we are going to be looking at the modes of liability that are unique to international crimes. Until then, do your work online, do the online simulations and role play exercises, and I'll see you at the next session. [MUSIC].
