Features of Examining a Scene of Actio, and the Identification of Victims in the Criminal Cases in Relation to Acts of Terrorism

Features of Examining a Scene of Actio, and the Identification of Victims in the Criminal Cases in Relation to Acts of Terrorism

Dmitriy A. Turchin[1]

Sergey A. Sinenko[2]

Abstract:

Keywords:

The investigative technique with respect to acts of terrorism has not been established yet to a sufficiently profound and thorough extent in criminalistics. There is no textbook on criminalistics written by any well-known author, which would contain a section dealing with investigative techniques for terrorism. The reasons for such situation are that terroristic offences become more widespread for relatively a short period of time, and therefore rather many of them have not been studied closely at the scientific and the practical levels in spite of a number of statutes currently in force in this country, which define the legal intension of offences qualified as acts of terrorism[3].

It is necessary to dwell specifically upon two tasks that are, in our opinion, essential in investigating a particular event of terrorist acts. These tasks are the examination of a scene of actio and the identification of victims in the event of an act of terrorism.

There are rather a lot of publications about the tactics of examining a scene of actio. However, due to the above reasons, they do not deal with any other features of examinations in respect of terrorist offences than those related to fires[4]². It should be noted as a positive aspect that there have been recently a number of studies which display due attention to the examination of a scene of actio with respect to terrorist offences[5].

In principle, the examination of a scene of actio in relation to a criminal case of terrorism is subject to a set of general and basic tactical methods adopted according to the recommendations of criminalistic science[6]. Nevertheless, there are certain tactical features with respect to a particular type or subtype of such offences and they should be dwelt upon. For instance, though the course and the tasks of investigation in a case of any terrorist act committed by way of arson will remain generally the same[7], yet only a few tactical criminalistic methods of investigation in criminal cases related to the use of any explosive assembly have been described in the respective publications and only a few of them have been duly assessed with regard to their reliability.

The scene of actio with respect to a case of such category is known to be characterized by explosive force resulting in a great scatter of the explosive assembly and separate objects immediately adjacent to the explosive assembly, together with splitted fragments thereof. It is very difficult to cover the entire information area of a scene of actio for investigation, and, besides, there is no procedural necessity to do so in many cases. Under such circumstances, it is recommended by M. Kekhlerov that the scene of actio should be divided into sectors and a separate team under the direction of an investigator or a prosecutor-criminalist should be charged with examination of each sector[8].

It appears to us that the above arrangement is not advisable as the separation would involve departure from the principle of an investigator’s individual responsibility in the course of such an important investigative action. In addition, that is none other than the examination of a scene of actio by the “node-based” method recommended in 1960, which failed to become customary and has been forgotten by now[9]. The node-based tactical method disintegrates the forming dynamic system of the  mechanism of an offence committed.  Moreover, it  may cause loss of the connection between the parts, sectors and nodes which provide their portion of information. It appears that the immediate limits of a scene of actio created by an explosion will be dependent on the explosion epicenter which is determined by the investigator in association with a skilled professional bomb technician who must always be engaged in the examination. If the explosion was set off in a room (apartment, office, workshop facility, school, etc.) the issue of determining the limits of the scene of actio will be easier to decide. Such limits will be the boundaries (walls) of the respective room.

The task of examination will become much more complicated if the bomb has been set off by a suicide bomber. In this event all adequate steps should be taken to identify the dead person by using the remaining parts of his body, and any remnants of the person’s clothes, footwear or other human attributes. Any found physical remains of the suicide bomber must be used to draw all information that may represent his identity. If the suicide bomber’s head is found, the forensic medical examiners should be assigned with the task of making “toilet” of the face on the spot and photographing it in order to apply the photographs in detection actions.