Iran’s Criminal Policy Regarding Double Punishment in International Criminal Law

Different nations’ tendency to expand their judicial and legislative territory outside their ruling kingdom has caused conflicts in the criminal qualification and the coming into existence of legal bad effects. Among these bad effects is the double or additional punishment of someone who has been tried and received their penalty in another country before, which is at odds with the principles of fair judgment and is regarded as being in contradiction with the human rights emphasized by international criminal law. In order to prevent the harmful consequences of these contradictions, and to guarantee the right of the accused and the convict, and also to protect people’s legal security, and to guarantee a fair judgment alongside other conditions, the law of prohibiting the double punishment of the convict was formed. According to that, the convict should not be prosecuted due to a criminal act he has done previously in another country and due to which he has been punished, unless under specific conditions which would be explained in the course of the study. In this research, besides going through the opinions of the theorists of Islamic and conventional retributive law, the situation of the mentioned law in Iran’s criminal law using the new Islamic punishment law (approved 1392) is studied. The new Islamic punishment law has had some significant steps concerning the recognition and following the mentioned law, but there are still many points remaining to be studied.