Spain hopes to create 'international terrorism court'
Tuesday, April 14, 2015 @ 11:16 AM
SPAIN'S foreign affairs minister suggested setting up an international 'terrorism tribunal' in a bid to fight the incessant spread of Jihad at the Euro-Arab summit meeting in Barcelona yesterday (Monday).
José Manuel García-Margallo says this would be a completely separate entity from the existing International Criminal Court in The Hague (Den Haag), The Netherlands, and would allow countries which have not yet signed up to the latter – such as China, the USA and Israel – to join forces in the war on terrorism.
A meeting is planned this Friday in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, with representatives from this and other countries including Spain and The Netherlands, and from UNESCO, to discuss the matter further.
UNESCO's presence relates to the recent destruction of historical heritage sites in northern Iraq, including Ninive and Nimrud, by the Islamic State.
Margallo says Spain intends to present its idea of an international court focusing entirely on terrorism to the United Nations' Security Council in October.
The suggestion has already been floated before in Europe, but not in recent decades.
An international terrorism tribunal was briefly launched in 1937, three years after the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.
The main obstacle for a 21st-century version, however, is that the definition of 'terrorism' as a crime is full of grey areas and loopholes, Margallo admits.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com