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13 Crim. L.F. 1 (2002)

handle is hein.journals/crimlfm13 and id is 1 raw text is: KAI AMBOS and STEFFEN WIRTH*

THE CURRENT LAW OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
An analysis of UNTAET Regulation 15/2000
The following paper is based on a legal brief requested by the Office of
the Prosecutor General, Serious Crimes Investigation Unit, of the United
Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET), in April
2001. The Office of the Prosecutor General required that the brief analyse
the applicable law of crimes against humanity under UNTAET Regulation
15/20001 with regard to the crimes committed in East Timor between 1
January and 25 October 1999. This period is covered by the temporal
jurisdiction of the Serious Crimes Panel of the District Court of Dili (s. 2.3
of Reg. 15/2000). The exact scope of the brief was to cover the following
crimes against humanity, which are deemed to be the most important ones
with regard to the situation in East Timor: murder; deportation and forcible
transfer of persons; imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty;
torture; persecution; inhumane acts. The sexual crimes defined in section
5.1(g) of Regulation 15/2000 are not included as they were dealt with in a
separate brief.
Substantive parts of Regulation 15/2000, including section 5 dealing
with crimes against humanity (see annex 2), are adopted almost liter-
ally from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).2
Therefore, the Serious Crimes Panel is the first court to apply substantive
provisions of the Rome Statute, and its case law may be regarded as
precedent for future prosecutions before the ICC. These prosecutions,
however, will probably take place in completely different settings than that
* Kai Ambos, Privatdozent Dr. iur. (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen);
Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law,
Freiburg, Germany; Steffen Wirth, Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Foreign and
International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany. The authors wish to express their appre-
ciation for the support of the Serious Crimes Unit, in particular from Marco Kalbusch,
and for the financial support provided by the International Coalition for Justice. We are
also grateful to Dr. Claus Kress, University of Cologne and Prof. Johan D. van der Vyver,
Emory University, Atlanta for helpful comments. Guy Cumes of Charles Stuart University,
New South Wales, contributed to the part on the law of murder. Tobias Wenning (MPI)
assisted us in the final editing.
1 Available at <http://www.un.org/peace/etimor/untaetR/r-2000.htm>.
2 U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9 (1998).

Criminal Law Forum 13: 1-90, 2002.
© 2002 Kluwer Law International. Printed in the Netherlands.

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