Letter: Law appeal

We respectfully call upon the cabinet secretary for justice to bring forward, at the earliest practical opportunity, a bill before Parliament to amend the ICC (Scotland) Act 2001.

The 2001 Act already incorporates into Scots law the crimes defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998.

This amendment would now incorporate into the 2001 Act Scottish jurisdiction with respect also to the "crime of aggression" and its definition, as now set out in Article 8 bis of the Rome Statute. This article was adopted as an amendment as recently as June of 2010, at the Kampala Review Conference, with the consent of the UK government.

Our intention in this regard is to strengthen our own national law, so that we may more fully rely on its capacity to discourage the illegal use of force in international affairs.

This should be done to demonstrate Scotland's ongoing commitment to the international community and, indeed, to set an example in this respect, and also because we owe a solemn obligation to our own service personnel to ensure that they are never asked to participate in illegal wars.

(Dr) Bill Wilson MSP; Chris Harvie MSP; Patrick Harvie MSP; Bill Kidd MSP; Donald M Ferencz, Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression; Robbie Manson LLB, Institute for Law, Accountability and Peace (ILAP); Advisory Council of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression; George Farebrother, ILAP; Janet Fenton, Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre;

and six other signatories