LCIL Friday Lecture: 'Judging ISIS Fighters Before Non-State Kurdish Courts in Syria: Is a Fair Trial Possible?'

A lecture delivered by Professor René Provost, McGill University at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL) on 29 April 2022. Several hundred European ISIS fighters, reportedly including nine British men and fifteen British women, have been held without trial by Syrian Kurdish forces for several years. The UK, like many European governments, are reluctant to repatriate their nationals, and would prefer them to be tried “where the crimes were committed”, concretely meaning prosecutions before the courts of the unrecognised administration of the Kurdish enclave in North-East Syria. Would such trials be lawful under international and European human rights law? How are the requirements of a fair trial transformed when transposed to the courts of a non-state armed group? Does human rights law impose extraterritorial obligations upon the state of nationality of these foreign fighters? René Provost Ad.E. FRSC is Professor of Law at McGill University, where he was the founding Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. His books include: Rebel Courts – the Administration of Justice by Armed Insurgents (Oxford University Press, 2021); International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Cambridge University Press, 2002); State Responsibility in International Law (Ashgate/Dartmouth, 2002); Mapping the Boundaries of Belonging: Law Between Religious Revival and Post-Multiculturalism (Oxford university Press, 2014); Culture in the Domains of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017); Confronting Genocide (Springer Verlag, 2011); and Dialogues on Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (Springer Verlag, 2013). Chaired by: Prof Sandesh Sivakumaran For more information see https://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/