Technical and Forensic Support for the Investigation of Violations of Laws and Customs of the War
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32353/khrife.2.2023.02Keywords:
war crimes; investigation of criminal offenses; technical and forensic support; forensic methodology; violation of laws and customs of the war; forensic science.Abstract
The paper describes up-to-date issues of investigating the violation of laws and customs of the war that requires the use of forensic techniques. The author aimed (through the formal logical and system-structural methods) to identify the factors that influence the technical and forensic support of the investigation of violations of laws and customs of the war; characterize forensic techniques in accordance with the specific situations of the crimes under study; to provide practical recommendations on the use of types and means of forensic techniques in these situations. It is noted that the technical and forensic support for the investigation of violations of the laws and customs of the war is conditioned by criminal law and forensic aspects. It is substantiated that the inspection of the scene (as an important source of evidence) in the occupied and deoccupied territories has its own peculiarities (due to the danger of the territories where active hostilities are taking place; physical impossibility to carry out investigative (search) actions and/or detain the perpetrators, etc.):, in particular, the technical and forensic means investigating digital traces are of great importance in this case. The author proves the need to provide law enforcement officers with protective equipment and send specialists in the field of explosives engineering, genomic analysis, forensic 3D reconstruction, environmental profiling, etc. to help them during the investigation of violations of the laws and customs of war. The forensic records used for such investigations (in particular, multimodal ones) need to be improved with the latest foreign experience, which will help identify the maximum number of sources of evidence and improve the efficiency and quality of its receipt.
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