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9 - Criminality of organizations under international law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2009

André Nollkaemper
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Harmen van der Wilt
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Summary

Introduction

In system criminality the organization itself is central and behind its mask criminal programmes are carried out. In his book, Shake Hands with the Devil, General Dallaire describes his meeting with the leaders of the Interahamwe. He was expecting ‘frothing at the mouth’ but his meeting turned out to be with humans. Dallaire's meeting took him behind the mask of the organization known as the Interahamwe. One of the individuals he met with is now standing trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on charges of conspiracy to commit genocide.

Justice Jackson referred at Nuremberg to the calculated and decisive part certain organizations played in the ruthless extremes of the Nazi movement: ‘They served primarily to exploit mob psychology and to manipulate the mob. Multiplying the number of persons in a common enterprise always tends to diminish the individual's sense of moral responsibility and to increase his sense of security.’ Or, as Maurice Punch has noted, the institutional context provides the motive, opportunity and means for ‘ordinary’ individuals to commit criminal acts.

The frothing at the mouth that Dallaire expected of the individual perpetrators is the image created by the organization, or in other words the mask. Masks may be more than a simple disguise. The individual beneath the mask ceases to exist and instead the character of the mask comes to life. In the same way, a criminal organization takes on its own identity. The question to be addressed, therefore, is what role can international law play in confronting the identity of the mask?

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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