Interlocutory Decision on the Applicable Law: Terrorism, Conspiracy, Homicide, Perpetration, Cumulative Charging (STL-11-01/I/AC/R176bis)

Antonio Cassese, as STL President, held that a customary international-law definition of terrorism in peacetime had crystallised — (i) a criminal act, (ii) intent to spread fear or coerce an authority, (iii) a transnational element. Treated by some as the most authoritative judicial pronouncement on the question. Read with the rebuttals: most international-criminal-law scholarship (Saul, Ambos, Kirsch) holds the Cassese formulation as overstated. The decision stands as authority for its own jurisdictional question; it does not establish a customary definition the rest of international law is bound by.