The Case of The Corfu Minefield
| Date | 01 October 1947 |
| Author | Hector A. Munro |
| Published date | 01 October 1947 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1947.tb00058.x |
THE
CASE
OF
THE
CORFU
MINEFIELD
SIXTY
years ago, a Balkan incident like the mining of the
destroyers in the Corfu Channel would probably have led to an
immediate British ultimatum to Albania, with limitless vistas
of
punitive war and Great Power intervention on opposite sides.
This was in the days before observance of international law
had developed into the standard of conduct for civilised States,
and it is a mark
of
the advance made in at least some directions
that the damage and loss of life last October were not followed
at
once by anarchic reprisals, bombardments of the Albanian
coast, and demands for indemnities. Instead, Britain sub-
mitted the facts to the third party judgment of the Security
Council of the United Nations, and, when the Russian veto
blocked a decision in her favour, allowed the dispute to go
before the International Court, thus transforming
a
serious
political embroilment into a legal issue, and incidentally giving
a
lesson in the way to stop war. The British claim that the
decision must rest on the simple question whether
or
not
Albania laid the mines, or knew that they had been laid,
everything else being irrelevant. As in all other legal systems,
this problem has to be solved by evidence, but we already
know a great deal about the allegations of the contending
parties, whose cases were elaborately investigated by a sub-
committee
of
the Security Council, and the object of this
article is to give an account
of
the contentions on each side,
together with some observations on the procedure in this first
international lawsuit since the foundation of the United
Nations. For the facts which follow, the writer is indebted to
the
United Nations Weekly Bulletin.
1.
The admitted jacts:-
On October
22, 1946,
the British cruisers
Mauritius
and
Leander,
accompanied by the destroyers
Saumarez
and
Volage,
were moving northwards in the Corfu Channel between the
island of Corfu on the west and the extreme southern part of
the Albanian mainland on the east. The ships were close to
the Albanian coast, not far from Saranda, when their crews
heard the firing of machine guns from the shore. The shots
missed (as perhaps was intended), but were followed
by
a
severe explosion on the
Saumarez,
which
so
crippled her that
363
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