Jurisdiction Over Crimes on Board Aircraft
by D.H.N. Johnson* Over the last decade few matters having some connexion with international law have aroused public interest to the same extent as "hijacking", "aerial piracy", "unlawful seizure of aircraft", "unlawful interference with aircraft"--call i
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JURISDICTION OVER CRIMES ON BOARD AIRCRAFT
by
SAMI SHUBBER Lie. en Dr. (Baghdad) Post-graduate Dip. in Law (London) LL.M. (London), Ph.D. (Cantab)
MARTINUS NIJHOFF/THE HAGUE/1973
ISBN 978-94-015-0227-6 ISBN 978-94-015-0737-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-0737-0
© 1973 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands.
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form.
To Professor R.Y. JENNINGS in Gratitude and Appreciation
FOREWORD by D.H.N. Johnson*
Over the last decade few matters having some connexion with international law have aroused public interest to the same extent as "hijacking", "aerial piracy", "unlawful seizure of aircraft", "unlawful interference with aircraft"--call it what you will. Unfortunately, few matters have also contributed to the same extent to create in the public mind a sense of disillusion with international law arising from its apparent inability to suppress an unprecedented menace to freedom of communication. In 1944 the governments that concluded the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation referred in their preamble of that instrument to their "having agreed on certain principles and arrangements in order that international civil aviation may be developed in a safe and orderly manner". What is now at issue is the extent to which this important obligation has been carried out. Few people are more qualified to examine this question than the author of this work. A lecturer in international law at the University of Baghdad, with a background of postgraduate studies in London and in Cambridge, also having some experience as an international civil servant, Dr. Sami Shubber is well aware of the political, practical and legal obstacles that have prevented the international community from living up to the pledges given in 1944. Even the plethora of terms, cited above, used to describe the menace is itself an indication of the strength of these obstacles. Although the most spectacular, "hijacking" and sabotage are by no means the only crimes that can be committed on board aircraft, and it is to the general problem of jurisdiction over such crimes that the author addresses himself. He has concentrated specifically upon the Convention on Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board
*
Professor of International and Air Law, University of London.
VIII
FOREWORD
Aircraft which was adopted in Tokyo on 14 September 1963 and entered into force on 4 December 1969. The excessive lapse of time involved in bringing so important a convention into force, and even then only among a relatively small group of States, gives some idea of the complexities of the problem. The Tokyo Convention has proved woefully inadequate to deal with the problem of hijacking and has been followed by other instruments (some not yet in force) enacted through the same cumbersome and dilatory process and not much more adequate in their terms, let alone more effective in their implementation. Nevertheless, the Tokyo Convention, as the seminal conv
