Jurisdiction over aircraft hijacking under the Hague Convention 1970

Fayadh, Juma Abed (1990) Jurisdiction over aircraft hijacking under the Hague Convention 1970. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

One of the most serious by-products of the jet age has been the unlawful seizure of, or interference with aircraft engaged in commercial air transport. During the past few years there have been many examples of hijacking for extortion, hijacking for a joyride, hijacking for the achievement of political ends, and hijacking purely as a terrorist activity. However, in several tragic instances, hijacking has ended in the death of innocent persons and the destruction of aircraft worth many millions of dollars.

Hijacking incidents have been reported ever since 1930, but in the last three decades, the number has considerably increased. For this reason, the International Civil Aviation Organization instructed its Legal Committee to look into crimes in the air, and a draft convention was prepared for a diplomatic conference at Tokyo in 1963. Unfortunately, the Tokyo Convention did not deal properly with the problem of aircraft hijacking.

However, the vast increase in the number of aircraft hijackings and the growth of peril to international civil aviation posed by such incidents, together with some of the gaps in the Tokyo Convention led the I.C.A.O. to search for a new international instrument that could provide a more effective remedy and deterrent against hijacking of aircraft. Thus, the Legal Committee was once again ordered to draft a new convention which was presented to another diplomatic conference, this time at The Hague in the Netherlands in December 1970.

This thesis examines the question of hijacking of aircraft under the regime of The Hague Convention 1970, with reference to other international instruments and some national legislation. The work begins, in Chapter 1, with an historical development of the notion of a convention applicable to aircraft hijacking. Chapter 2 involves a study of the objectives of The Hague Convention. Chapter 3 then goes on to discuss the concept of hijacking and the scope of The Hague Convention. Jurisdiction over hijackers will be discussed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 deals with the extradition of hijackers. Chapter 6 involves a comparative study between hijacking of aircraft and piracy. Chapter 7 involves the possible solutions to combat aircraft hijacking. Chapter 8 deals with the processes required for bringing The Hague Convention into operation, namely, signature, ratification and accession. Finally, Chapter 9 will consist of an assessment of the whole question in the form of general conclusions.

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