Criminal jurisdiction of states on unlawful acts against the security of civil aviation in international law

Offenses committed on board aircraft, hijacking, attacks on aircraft and airports, using aircraft as a weapon of mass destruction, and transportation of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in aircraft endanger both civil aviation security and international peace and security. Combating these acts effectively depends on states taking preventive measures by making uniform regulations and establishing criminal jurisdiction to punish the offenders. States accept that multilateral international treaties are the most convenient tools to serve this purpose. The general rules of international law regarding the state's criminal jurisdiction, giving the states complete discretion in the exercise of this jurisdiction, ensure that the offenses go unpunished. The fact that it does not prioritize any states with jurisdiction leads to conflicts of jurisdiction. For this reason, unlawful acts against civil aviation security have become crimes in some specific international conventions, and the states have been obliged to prosecute these crimes. In conventions, states other than the general authorized states gain criminal jurisdiction. Those are the states, such as the state where the aircraft landed with the offender and the state where the business center of the person who chartered the aircraft without a crew is located. States parties have tried to approach the universal jurisdiction system as much as possible. With the 2010 Beijing Regulations, political offenses are no longer an exception, and actions carried out through cyber attacks have become crimes, which are very positive developments. In addition, civil aviation security conventions are generally applicable to attacks involving unmanned aerial vehicles. Thus, international protection is provided against terrorist acts of these types, which are state-of-the-art technology products. General rules of international law regarding criminal jurisdiction apply to actions not regulated by existing conventions and to the new types of actions that may arise with the development of technology.