2019-119284 PIL - Finals

Case Digest No. 1

ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ISRAEL v. EICHMANN,

36 Int. L. Rep. 5

TOPIC/S: State Jurisdiction; Universality Principle.

EXCERPT: This case involves the question of whether Israel has jurisdiction to try
the case of a high-ranking SS officer on the basis of the Nazi Collaborator’s Law, a
law intending retroactive application, despite the acts being committed outside its
borders by a person who is not a national.

FACTS:

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the Accused was a member of the Austrian
SS and later volunteered for a position with the Head Office of the Security Service
in Berlin. He was transferred to Vienna in 1938 to administer the Central Office for
the Emigration of Austrian Jews.

The Accused devised and carried out the mass deportation of Jewish persons
and explored the possibility of setting up a slave Jewish state in Madagascar. In
particular, Eichmann headed the Eichmann Special Operations Unit in Hungary and
did his utmost to carry out the Final Solution. These "Transport Jews" were taken to
concentration camps and those who were unfit for hard labor were exterminated
immediately. In 1942, a cover up effort was begun as bodies in mass graves were
burned in an effort to hide the slaughter. The concentration camps were evacuated –
the Accused in particular was responsible for all administrative matters connected
with the Terezin Ghetto and the camp at Bergen-Belsen.

In 1960, the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, abducted Eichmann from his
hiding place in Argentina and transferred him to Jerusalem to face an Israeli court,
where the trial commenced in 1961 with the indictment charging Eichmann with 15
counts of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes
and membership in an organisation declared criminal by the International Military
Tribunal in Nuremberg 15 years earlier.

ISSUES:

Whether or not Israel has jurisdiction to try a case of a foreigner inside its borders.

RULINGS:

Yes, the Court’s jurisdiction is founded upon it by the Nazis and Nazi
Collaborators (Punishment) Law. This law does not violate the principles of
international law. Israel’s “right to punish” is founded on two elements: First, the
universal character of the crimes in question, which are grave offences against the
law of nations itself and, in the absence of an international court, grant jurisdiction to
any domestic court. Second, the specific character of the crimes, which was the
extermination of the Jewish people, provides the necessary linking point between the
Accused and the newly-founded State of Israel, a State established and recognised
as the State of the Jews. The crimes committed by the Accused concern the vital
interests of the State, thus it has a right to punish the Accused pursuant to the
protective principle

The offense of genocide is a grave offense against the law of nations itself
(delicta juris gentium) and is the gravest type of act against humanity. In this case, it
is a just retroactive law. As to the universality principle, power is vested in every
State regardless of the fact that the offence was committed outside its territory by a
person who did not belong to it, provided he is in its custody at the time he is brought
to trial.

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