The Complementarity Regime of the International Criminal Court and the Crime of Aggression

According to the principle of the complementarity, the national courts have priority in prosecuting crimes committed within the International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction. On the subject of the crime of aggression which recently the circumstances of the prosecution have been provided in the international criminal court, exercising (practicing) the mentioned principle has been faced obstacles and limits specially in the national (domestic) proceedings. Some of these limits are because of the quiddity of the crime aggression and its perpetrators that in spite of being committed by a senior member of a government, necessarily it follows the act of a government and it is committed against another government. Some other obstacles are because of the provisions of exercising the jurisdiction to the crime of aggression which in addition to ratifying the amendments to the Rome statute held in Kampala (2010), it includes cases such as the absence of issuing declaration excluding the jurisdiction of the international criminal court and the interferences of The United Nations Security Council. While studying the principle of the complementarity of the international criminal court, this paper carefully examines the obstacles and limits of the national trials of the States Parties to the Rome Statute in exercising the crime of aggression.