Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Re-examining absolute universal jurisdiction and the experience of Belgium, under the pretext of the bill prepared by members of parliament entitled "The Jurisdiction of the Courts of the Islamic Republic of Iran Regarding International Crimes"

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Alireza Nourian
PhD in Criminal Law and Criminology
10.22034/jclc.2025.542707.2156
Abstract
Articles 18 and 19 of the bill prepared by members of parliament entitled "The Jurisdiction of the Courts of the Islamic Republic of Iran Regarding International Crimes", which was announced by the presidium of the Islamic Consultative Assembly on 16th of July 2025, establish the universal jurisdiction of domestic courts to deal with genocide, war crimes, blasphemy against humanity, and territorial aggression. Such jurisdiction allows national judicial authorities to deal with important international crimes that were previously under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The aforementioned articles have restricted the exercise of jurisdiction to limited conditions and do not mention other conditions of universal jurisdiction and the requirements of Article 9 of the Islamic Penal Code. Our attempt in this article is to use library resources and from the lines of these articles to understand the intentions that the drafters intended in determining criminal jurisdiction. At the beginning, we dealt with absolute universal jurisdiction. Then, we presented what we learned from the contents of these articles in the form of assumptions, and finally, we listed the ambiguities and shortcomings of the two articles mentioned, and we talked about the experience of the country of Belgium in the accelerated application of absolute universal jurisdiction. Emphasizing the importance of universal jurisdiction in holding individuals accountable for serious international crimes, the author argues that the jurisdiction envisaged in the proposed draft needs to be redefined in terms of its limits, limitations, and specifications.
Keywords
Universal jurisdiction
absolute universal jurisdiction
international crimes
Article 9 of the Islamic Penal Code
the bill prepared by members of parliament entitled "The Jurisdiction of the Courts of the Islamic Republic of Iran Regarding International Crimes"
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 09 February 2026