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       THE CONCEPT OF MENS REA IN INTERNATIONAL
                    CRIMINAL LAW
The purpose of this book is to find a unified approach to the doctrine of mens rea
in the sphere of international criminal law, based on an in-depth comparative
analysis of different legal systems and the jurisprudence of international criminal
tribunals since Nuremberg. Part I examines the concept of mens rea in common
and continental legal systems, as well as its counterpart in Islamic Shari’a law. Part
II looks at the jurisprudence of the post-Second World War trials, the work of the
International Law Commission and the concept of genocidal intent in light of
the travaux préparatoires of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Further chapters are
devoted to a discussion of the boundaries of mens rea in the jurisprudence of the
International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The
final chapter examines the definition of the mental element as provided for in
Article 30 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court in light of the recent
decisions delivered by the International Criminal Court.
   The study also examines the general principles that underlie the various
approaches to the mental elements of crimes as well as the subjective element
required in perpetration and participation in crimes and the interrelation between
mistake of law and mistake of fact with the subjective element.
                               Editorial Committee:
                       Mohammed Ayat (Rabat/Morocco)
                         Robert Cryer (Birmingham/UK)
                        Caroline Fournet (Groningen/NL)
                          Tomoya Obokata (Belfast/UK)
                      Alex Obote-Odora (Arusha/Tanzania)
                        Dawn Rothe (Norfolk (VA)/USA)
                      Silvia Tellenbach (Freiburg/Germany)
                          Helen Xanthaki (London/UK)
                             Liling Yue (Beijing/China)
Mohamed Elewa Badar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to
                          be identified as the author of this work.
   All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
   or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of Hart Publishing,
or as expressly permitted by law or under the terms agreed with the appropriate reprographic rights
organisation. Enquiries concerning reproduction which may not be covered by the above should be
                        addressed to Hart Publishing Ltd at the address above.
ISBN: 978-1-84113-760-5
Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea is helpfully rendered, by ‘Google Translate’,
as: ‘An act does not make the person guilty unless the mind be also guilty.’ I first
heard of the idea several decades ago when an activist academic friend who was
also quite a talented amateur lawyer advanced the concept in the magistrates’
court as a basis for anti-war demonstrators charged with disturbing the peace to
take the stand in their own defence in order to make political speeches. When the
judge challenged them as to the relevance of their motivation, which was to
oppose American involvement in Viet Nam, the clever answer was that the
absence of a guilty mind was surely germane to the case as it was to all criminal
justice matters. The argument never led to an acquittal, but some judges were left
unsettled by the argument and let the testimony proceed.
   Like most people trained in the law, the local magistrates knew that mens rea
was a sacred principle in criminal law. Their understanding did not appear to go
much further. They did not regularly deal with trials of serious crimes where dis-
tinctions between negligence, recklessness and full intent might be more likely to
arise. A nuanced discussion of the mental element of crime rarely surfaced else-
where than in landmark rulings of the Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeal.
Inevitably, sophisticated explanations in the rulings of the highest courts were
subsequently transformed into little more than slogans so that they could be used
by lawyers and judges, and dutifully recited by students in bar school examina-
tions.
   After a lull of several decades, international criminal law began to revive in the
early 1990s. When in 1993 the Secretary-General of the United Nations proposed
a draft statute and accompanying commentary for what became the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to the Security Council in 1993,
nothing was said about the mental element of crime. Presumably it was assumed
that judges would know how to deal with the matter. It soon became evident that
the limited volume of existing case law did not offer much help.
   The post-war trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo as well as isolated national cases
like Eichmann formed the basis of initial understandings of general principles
including the mens rea requirement. In reality, there was precious little to go on.
The International Military Tribunal only came close to considering the concept
when it dealt with the fitness to stand trial issues that arose with defendants Hess
and von Krupp. Furthermore, some of the accused had suggested that they lacked
criminal intent because they were only following orders, to which the judges
replied that this excuse was formally excluded by the enabling statutes. When the
accused suggested that they had behaved as vehicles for government policy, the
                                         ix
                                     Foreword
judges famously responded that ‘crimes against international law are committed
by men, not by abstract entities’.
   The attention to the matter remained relatively perfunctory, however, until in
1994 the General Assembly established an Ad Hoc Committee to study the draft
statute of the future International Criminal Court. For the first time in interna-
tional criminal law, there was considerable momentum for a codification of gen-
eral principles. A point-form outline indicating the matters to be addressed
included ‘Mens rea’ as one of its headings. This was followed by a list of terms:
‘Intention (culpa, dolus/intentionally, knowingly, recklessly/dolus eventualis, gross
negligence); General intention – specific intention? (motives)’. Most of the law-
yers involved in these discussions would have been familiar with some of the
vocabulary, but not all of it. This was a multi-cultural nomenclature, drawing
upon notions used in different legal traditions. The more well-informed under-
stood that dolus eventualis and gross negligence, for example, were not actually
exact translations.
   Great attention to the matter followed. In the course of several sessions of the
Preparatory Committee, specialists searched for a text on which some consensus
might be reached. Some genuinely desired that a common standard be set out,
melding the approaches used at the national level. There were significant schools
of thought regarding the general perspectives of the common law and the
Romano-Germanic and Islamic traditions, but it became evident that even within
a particular system, there were huge differences. The common law in Australia
does not always view the issue of mens rea in the same way as it does in the United
States, Ireland and India. And even within Australia and the United States, where
criminal law falls largely within the jurisdiction of the constitutive federal units,
there are variations.
   This debate eventually led to a dedicated provision on the mental element in
the Rome Statute. It begins with the words ‘Unless otherwise provided’, an excep-
tion whose scope will be debated by judges for decades to come. Article 30 of the
Rome Statute goes on to state that ‘a person shall be criminally responsible and
liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the
material elements are committed with intent and knowledge’. An explanation is
offered for both ‘intent’ and ‘knowledge’.
   Of course, the Rome Statute’s definitions of crimes, as well as the modes of lia-
bility, contribute further. The immutable definition of genocide, taken without
significant alteration from the 1948 Convention, sets out a crime that must be
perpetrated with ‘intent to destroy’. The more lengthy provision on crimes against
humanity requires acts to be perpetrated ‘with knowledge’ of a widespread or sys-
tematic attack on a civilian population. Some of the war crimes must be commit-
ted ‘wilfully’. Further guidance may be drawn from a secondary instrument, the
Elements of Crimes.
   Alongside the International Criminal Court, whose case law is only beginning
to explore the scope of the mental element, is an increasingly fertile discussion of
dolus, specific intent, motive and related notions at the United Nations ad hoc
                                         x
                                    Foreword
tribunals and the various hybrid institutions. The debate is also taking place
before national courts where international crimes figure increasingly on the
docket.
   Mohamed Elewa Badar has taken this complex landscape of mens rea at the
international level and prepared a thorough, well-structured monograph. Dr
Badar’s rich grasp of international criminal law is uniquely informed by an exten-
sive knowledge of comparative law. He masters several of the relevant languages,
including Arabic and German, and in this respect alone he is the envy of academic
commentators who are forced to work with simplistic translations. This book is
destined to become an indispensable tool for lawyers and judges at the interna-
tional tribunals.
William A Schabas
Professor of international law
Middlesex University
                                       xi
                                  PREFACE
This book is the culmination of more than a decade’s work and research, and
consists of my analysis and observations on substantive criminal law issues with
which I have been struggling during my work at the Egyptian judiciary, my work
with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia and throughout my participation in the judicial reform pro-
gramme of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
   During my work at the Public Prosecution Office in Egypt I was frequently con-
fronted with the illusive concept of mens rea. In April 1998, a fatal car accident was
reported to the Office of the North Court of Alexandria, Egypt. The defendant who
was driving a bulldozer had crashed into the victim’s car causing some serious dam-
ages. The defendant realised that he would be in trouble if the traffic police arrived
and asked about his driving licence. He tried to avoid arrest by fleeing the scene of
the incident, but the victim (V) stepped in front of the bulldozer in an attempt to
prevent him from escaping. The defendant continued driving and V took a few
steps backwards but then grabbed onto the left-hand door of the bulldozer in a last
attempt at stopping him. The defendant tried to push him away, but when that
failed, continued driving regardless, until eventually V fell off the bulldozer and was
killed by its back tyres. The defendant was arrested and when confronted with the
evidence he admitted that he drove off in the bulldozer with the victim clinging
onto it but denied having any intention to kill him. The case was assigned to me in
my capacity as the public prosecutor for the Muharrambek district, Alexandria. In
preparing the indictment, I found that the facts of the case did not fall under any of
the provisions of the Egyptian Penal Code (EPC). I could not indict him under
Article 234 of the EPC ‘Whoever kills a person deliberately without premeditation
[…]’, as the evidence indicated that this was not a deliberate murder. On the other
hand, as some of you will agree, this was not merely a case of reckless driving which
resulted in the death of a pedestrian as stated in Article 238 ‘Whoever causes by
mistake the death of another person, as a result of his neglect, imprudence, careless-
ness […]’. The last resort was to indict him under Article 236 of the EPC ‘Whoever
wounds or beats someone on purpose … without meaning to kill, but doing that
had led to the death […]’ but it was difficult to prove that V was assaulted by the
defendant while clinging onto the bulldozer.
   I came to the conclusion that a written code was perhaps not the most satisfac-
tory approach to the complex issue of mens rea; due to their rigid nature, such
codes fail to cover all possible scenarios that may arise for consideration before
prosecutors and judges. They require facts to be moulded to fit the parameters of
their provisions and leave little room for unpredicted scenarios.
                                         xiii
                                      Preface
                                        xiv
                                     Preface
  Much of this research was done in Ireland in 2002 and 2007, and I would like to
thank Dr Saber El Safty and John and Ann Cummins for their very kind support
and encouragement. I would also like to thank Mohamed El Zeidy, Aly Mokhtar,
Vivienne O’Connor, Lorraine Finn and all my colleagues and friends at Brunel
Law School.
  Much gratitude goes to the excellent editorial skills of Ms Melanie Hamill and
Ms Anne Bevan, copy editor at Hart Publishing. Special thanks go to Mr Richard
Hart, Mr Tom Adams, Ms Rachel Turner and Ms Emma Swinden as they have all
been a pleasure to work with.
  Last but not least, words cannot express my love and thanks to my wife, Patricia
Gawenda, to my daughter, Mariam Elewa, to my in-laws Max and Ruth Gawenda,
and to my sister Professor Lamia Salah Elewa.
                                       xv
                            CONTENTS
Foreword                                                                 ix
  William A Schabas
Preface                                                                 xiii
Table of Cases                                                          xxv
1. Introduction                                                           1
   I     The Mens Rea Enigma                                              1
   II    General Principles of Law                                        4
         A The Determination of General Principles of Law                 6
         B The Process of Establishing a General Principle                8
         C Abstracting a Legal Principle from National Laws               8
         D Verifying whether the Principle is ‘Generally Recognised’      9
         E Adapting the General Principle to the International Sphere    10
         F The Role of General Principles                                11
   III   The Study                                                       12
2. From Vengeance to Mens Rea to Mentes Reae                             13
   I    The Mental Requisites for Criminality in the Early Law           13
   II   The Babylonians – The Code of Hammurabi                          15
   III  Ancient Hebrew Law                                               15
   IV   The Athenians – The Epic Period                                  16
   V    Plato and Aristotle                                              16
   VI   Roman Law – ‘The Twelve Tables’: Cicero                          17
   VII The Irish – St Patrick’s Time: Brehon Law                         19
   VIII Islamic Legal Tradition                                          22
   IX   Early Medieval Period                                            22
   X    Old Dutch Statutes                                               23
   XI   Leges Henrici Primi                                              23
   XII Bracton                                                           25
   XIII Dolus and Culpa                                                  26
   XIV Early Critiques of Mens Rea in the Criminal Law of England        27
   XV General Remarks                                                    29
3. Mens Rea in the Common Law of England and Wales, Australia
   and Canada                                                            31
   I    Introduction                                                     31
        A The Sources of Criminal Law: Common Law versus Statute         32
   II   Mens Rea Standards in Common Law Systems                         33
                                    xvii
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