Legal Nature and Procedural Forms of Using Special Medical Knowledge in the Investigation of War Crimes
Abstract
Abstract. The article provides a comprehensive theoretical and legal analysis of the legal nature and procedural forms of using special medical knowledge in the investigation of war crimes. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine has led to the large-scale commission of violations of the laws and customs of war, including killings of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, conflict-related sexual violence, unlawful deprivation of liberty, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the emergence of a significant number of unidentified, fragmented, burned or skeletonized human remains. Under these circumstances, special medical knowledge acquires not an auxiliary but a system-forming significance for criminal proceedings, since it is through such knowledge that bodily, biological, morphological, physiological and identification-related facts are transformed into procedurally usable evidentiary information. The article substantiates that the legal nature of special medical knowledge lies in the combination of scientific reliability and procedural legitimacy. A medical fact does not acquire evidentiary value outside the legally established procedure, whereas a proper procedural form ensures the admissibility, verifiability and evidentiary significance of the results of a special examination. The main procedural forms of using special medical knowledge in criminal proceedings concerning war crimes are identified: forensic medical examination, participation of a specialist in investigative actions, examination of the crime scene and the body, medical examination of living persons, exhumation, collection of biological samples, use of medical documentation, identification procedures, forensic dental, molecular genetic, anthropological and digital tools. Particular attention is paid to the role of forensic dentistry, electronic registers, genomic information and international standards for documenting unlawful deaths and torture. It is argued that the effective use of special medical knowledge contributes not only to establishing the factual circumstances of a war crime, but also to the identification of the deceased, ensuring the right of families to know the fate of their relatives, strengthening the evidentiary capacity of national justice, and developing Ukraine’s security and law enforcement sector.
Keywords: special knowledge; special medical knowledge; war crimes; forensic medical examination; forensic dentistry; identification of the deceased; proof; international humanitarian law.
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References
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