The Effects of Criminal Mediation on the Lawsuit and Punishment in Iraqi and Syrian Law

Abstract

Amidst the practical challenges facing traditional justice recently, as a result of the significant increase in cases brought before criminal courts, due to the increasing use of the right to impose punishment and the use of public prosecution, modern criminal policy has moved towards a policy of reducing criminalization and punishment, as it has focused on searching for alternatives to criminal prosecution to confront the criminal justice crisis. One of the most prominent mechanisms used to confront this crisis is criminal mediation, which seeks to adopt more flexible and scalable means to resolve disputes at lower costs, which helps reduce congestion in courts and alleviate the suffering of the judiciary from the increase in lawsuits and their continuous postponement, as it is considered a modern mechanism approved by comparative legislation to resolve criminal disputes.

     Criminal mediation has effects that arise from the outcome of the mediation, whether it fails or succeeds, which affects the lawsuit, as the latter results in punishment or not. Therefore, we must review the effect of mediation on the lawsuit in terms of stopping it and referring the dispute to mediation or the failure of mediation.

     When the dispute is referred to mediation according to the authority authorized to do so and considering that the mediation system is not applied in Syria and Iraq, we find that it may be submitted by the public prosecutor or the victim or any person, and we see that it can be submitted by anyone who has an interest; considering that the lawsuit is only submitted by those who have an interest, and mediation is an alternative to the lawsuit. Here, from legal logic, the public lawsuit is suspended until the dispute is decided.