Obstacles and Restrictions of National Prosecution of International Crimes

During the past century, millions of children, women and men have been victims of unimaginable atrocities that deeply shock the conscience of humanity. Such grave crimes threaten the peace, security and well being of the world, and concern to the international community as a whole. The most serious crimes that must not go unpunished but their effective prosecution must be ensured by taking measures at the national level and by enhancing international cooperation, to end impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes and thus to contribute to the prevention of such crimes. In order to achieve these targets, in addition to establish a permanent international criminal court and sometimes special and ad hoc international criminal courts, it is the duty of every state to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes. Specially this important duty of national courts, has been established by “universal criminal jurisdiction”. Although the prosecution and punishment of the criminals of such crimes is gradually developing by the national courts on the base of this jurisdiction, but if this jurisdiction is not undertaken or its exercise is failed by some practical and theoretical obstacles and problems which are not identified and are not thought to remove or modify, the idea of pursuit and punishment of the international criminals, would never be administrated. Practical, political and legal restrictions and obstacles and other following challenges of this competency and finding strategic and common approaches in this field are the aims of current paper.