As professor Antonio Cassese rightly said in a public speech on September 26, the terrorist attacks on the US not only caused an unbearable number of innocent victims, but they are also disrupting some of the most important international legal categories that seemed to be consolidated until September 11, 2001.

On February 14, 2002, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rendered a judgement in Case Concerning the Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of Congo v. Belgium). The dispute had arisen after a Belgian investigating judge issued an international arrest warrant - based on charges of war crimes in an internal armed conflict and crimes against humanity - against the incumbent Minister for foreign affairs of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mr. Abdulaye Yerodia Ndombasi. The arrest warrant was issued under the Belgian Law of 16 June 1993 (as amended by the Law of 10 February 1999) which establishes that Belgian courts shall have “pure” universal jurisdiction in respect of serious violations of international humanitarian law. The Court found that Belgium violated its legal obligations towards the DRC in that it failed to respect the immunity from criminal jurisdiction and the inviolability which the then Minister for Foreign Affairs of the DRC enjoyed under international law. The Court also found that Belgium must cancel the arrest warrant and so inform the authorities to whom it was circulated.