Criminal confrontation of illicit trafficking in nuclear materials

Abstract

Perhaps, legislating texts that criminalize certain conducts, and determine penalties for perpetrators is originally considered as a preventative step before it is committed and remedial step after it is committed. It is deemed to be preventative at the time of announcing it, and confirming the application of penalties upon criminals will lead to deter people from committing the crime, and it is remedial in the way laid down in the modal law in pursuance to the principle (No crime and punishment without law). For the criminal law to play its effective role in countering dangerous patterns of crime such as illegal nuclear materials trafficking on one hand, and to provide adequate legal protection for the human right to life and his/ her physical safety, and to maintain the environmental balance from risks of civilized development and advancement of technology on the other hand, it is necessary for the legislature to combat the risk from the inception to avert the damages, via drawing a privative criminal policy based on preventative criminalization, and deterrence punishment. However, yet the Iraqi legislator does not have proper confrontation towards illegal nuclear materials trafficking in the frame of an ad -hoc law and private strict explicit models of law which may suit the criminal danger, embodied into the fact that the imposed penalty suits the portion of danger and damages which may be resulted out of it, therefore, we propose the Iraqi legislator to review the formation of the legal provisions with regards to nuclear activity, and bring back the scattered and inflated legal texts together under various laws and private texts to confront the criminal danger. Thus, an objective preventative criminal policy can fulfill to face the crime and its effects.