Legal Aspects of Suppression of Hijacking in the Light of 11th September Legal Developments

One of the challenges facing the aviation is the problem of unlawful seizure of aircraft or what the most people say “hijacking” and how to deal with it. In a broader framework, a focused action to deal with the hijacking began at the end of the 60s. It was partly considered in the first aviation security treaty known as Tokyo Convention of 1963. However, due to the importance of suppression of hijacking, it was separately focused in an independent document called Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft known as the Hague Convention 1970. This convention has concentrated on the hijacking in international civil aviation. The author believes that the Hague Convention has achieved its primary goal and somehow as one of the most widely accepted treaties for the suppression of terrorism was successful. However, developments after September eleven which posed new challenges inter alia for aviation, led to a conference in Beijing in 2010 and two new international documents were adopted. One of these documents is the Beijing protocol 2010 which supplements the Hague Convention 1970 and in many ways has strengthened the Convention. Current research is focused on the most important aspects of the updated international rules governing the phenomenon of hijackings in the light of the documents concerned.