Criminal Responsibility for the Crime of Sabotage of Vital Facilities in Iraq

Abstract

We have addressed the crime of vandalism against vital facilities that represent a cultural and scientific heritage that represents the civilizational identity of peoples, and are directly related to the emergence and advancement of their civilizations throughout the ages and their effective role in providing human civilization with its first basic components, which necessitated recording this study on vital facilities, protecting and maintaining them, and preventing encroachment upon or vandalism of them, so that they remain visible to protect against people’s vandalism. Iraq is one of the countries that is characterized by The abundance of vital facilities, their diversity, their antiquity and the different historical eras to which they date back. There is no significant importance to wealth in any country, no matter how much it is, without these vital facilities. Iraq, as one of those countries, depends almost entirely on vital facilities of all types and specializations. It was necessary for the criminal legislator to provide criminal protection for these facilities by including in the provisions of the criminal law what guarantees the provision of protection for them. This is what the legislator headed towards when he stipulated in the Penal Code and in several chapters thereof the criminalization of acts that represent an attack or sabotage on vital facilities. He stipulated them in the second book, the first and second chapters thereof, and considered them among the crimes that affect the external and internal security of the state. He also stipulated them in the seventh chapter under the title of crimes of public danger. The criminal legislator was not satisfied with stipulating the criminalization of these acts in the Penal Code, but rather he proceeded to stipulate the punishment of their perpetrators in special laws, including the Anti-Terrorism Law No. (13) of 2005 and the Anti-Smuggling of Oil and Its Derivatives Law No. (41) of 2008. To clarify the nature of this crime, and to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of the current legal texts that dealt with it, whether in the Penal Code or special laws, in reducing this crime and protecting vital facilities, to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of these texts and what the legal texts related to protecting vital facilities should be in order to provide effective criminal protection and then the infrastructure of the national economy, and to identify the problems represented in the multiplicity of legal texts that dealt with this crime in different resources of the Penal Code and special laws, which requires shedding light on these texts and clarifying the requirements for their application in every place where they appear, especially since criminal intent plays a major role in conditioning criminal responsibility in this crime.