English abstract
Although the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, which were established after the Second World War, used the concept of war crimes in their status, the birth of modern international humanitarian law, particularly the Geneva Conventions of 1949, was the most important in highlighting of the violations that constitute war crimes. And than the legitimacy of these crimes has been devoted. This was clearly confirmed by the refering to war crimes in the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1993) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (1994). After that the Statute of the International Criminal Court came to elaborate more on these crimes by establishing an integrated legal system.
This research will examine how war crimes acquire international criminal legitimacy, which means that an individual is only responsible for a conduct that at the time of its occurrence constitutes as a war crime in accordance with International Criminal Law. War crimes can be defined as acts that constitute violations of some rules of International Humanitarian Law that would raise individual criminal responsibility under International Criminal Law. However, finding a legal basis for this identification or determination that reflects international criminal legitimacy requires examination the occasions in which the concept of war crimes was applied starting from the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals that were established after the Second World War, then the ad hoc international criminal tribunals, and ending with the Statute of the International Criminal Court.
For further clarification and confirmation of the international criminal legitimacy of war crimes, this research will highlight the elements of these crimes, which have been set by Article 8 of the Rome Statute and the Annex on the Elements of Crimes, as well as the practices and case law concerning tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
