Legal Analysis of Adoption of the 2010 Beijing Convention in Strengthening International Aviation Security in the Light of the ICAO Preventive Approach

In recent years, the ICAO started to modernize international conventions concerning aviation terrorism. The result of such an approach was criminalization of large number of acts as an unlawful interference against commercial aviation. For the first time, the 2010 Beijing Conventions criminalize the use of commercial aircraft as lethal weapons and for transportation of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Moreover, the main achievements of the Beijing Convention can be summarized: a threat to commit criminal acts or causing any person to receive such threat is considered as offence itself, if the threat is credible, conspiracy to commit criminal acts, cyber terrorism against air navigation facilities, legal and criminal liability of financial institution as “Al-Qaeda Clause”, assistance of offender of acts to evade criminal investigation and prosecution, agreeing with others to commit terrorist acts, regardless of whether the terrorist crime is actually committed or not. As a result, the Beijing Convention would greatly reduce the weaknesses and shortcomings of the former international conventions in relation to preventing, combating and suppression of unlawful acts against civil aircraft and provide a suitable ground for the development of multilateral international cooperation between state parties and the creation of an effective and uniform legal mechanism.