Lecture by Judge Helmut Türk

Judge Türk explained that, while piracy is an age-old phenomenon plaguing mankind, terrorism at sea has only manifested itself in recent times with the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985 serving as a wake-up call. As the rules of international law relating to piracy are not applicable mutatis mutandis to terrorism, the international community has since been striving to adopt a series of legal as well as practical measures in order to prevent a recurrence of such a terrorist act. The Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation adopted in 1988 for the first time addressed terrorism at sea, representing an important extension of a cooperative law enforcement regime into a wholly new area, containing a finely balanced aut dedere aut iudicare scheme.