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The Nature, Purpose and function of Criminal Law and Punishment: The case of Van Anraat Background issues: On 23 December 2005, the District Court of The Hague delivered its judgment in the van Anraat case. During the 1980s, the Dutch vendor of chemical materials Frans van Anraat sold huge quantities thiodiglycol (TDG) to the Iraqi regime of then Saddam Hussein who in turn utilize the TDG chemical as raw material for the production of mustard gas which was deployed both in the war against Iran and his own people in the Kurdish village of Halabja, where according the court documents, approximately 5000 Kurdish citizens died from that attack. Frans van Anraat was arrested in December 2004, on criminal charges of complicity in genocide. The District Court in 2005 found Frans van Anraat guilty not of complicity to genocide but of complicity to war crimes and sentenced to 15-year in prison for sales of TDG,a component for the production of mustard gas that was used in the 1988 massacre of civilians. The defence appealed against the verdict on two grounds, arguing that the defendant had done nothing but engage in business transaction within which it was difficult for him to foreseen or articulate the consequences that might have resulted from the sale of those goods and that the district court could not find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, arguing that it was unlikely the judges could determine the parties selling chemicals to Iraq at the time. The Appeal court in 2007 rejected the appeal and instead, increased the prison sentence by two years on the ground that the defendant was excessively greedy and showed no remorse on the crime he indirectly but clearly participated in. This paper shall tackle the proposition that the Dutch court of Appeals decision to extend the sentence term from 15 to 17 years is unfounded in the light of the purposes of criminal law and the specific of the case. INTRODUCTION The paper discusses on the one hand, the nature and function of criminal law in international context. International crimes (since the criminal case before us is of international nature),purpose and justification for punishment of such crimes on the other hand, and then, articulate under what conditions can it be argued that the Appeal court's decision to extend the prison sentence by two years is justified in the circumstances surrounding the case. However, before making any claim of the justified nature of the appeal court’s decision, the paper examines two conflicting theories on the principle of punishment before concluding that the Court decision is justified insofar as some elements from these two basic principles of punishment are present in the court's verdict. International Crimes; The principle of international criminal law often point to two distinct fields of law: the international aspect of national criminal law on the one hand ; and international criminal law base on the development of substantive criminal law and legal institutions at the international level itself but I with the first context that this discussion shall emphasize. Notwithstanding, that national police as well as Courts are operationally restricted within their territorial jurisdiction to pursue certain legal matters, criminal actions knows no territory and as such national states had to generate certain legal apparatus to approach and oversee criminal situations where the crime committed as well as the evidence is located outside the territorial boundary, provided the accused is a national of the prosecuting state and that there is a legal provision prohibiting such crime in the national code. While the Dutch penal obligations for crimes against humanity is construed as having risen out of, and independent of any international treaty obligations (not entirely), but mostly based on the national provision. One might ask whether the successful trial and conviction of Frans van Anraat could still have been possible had the Dutch Legal system not requested and received bilateral legal assistance from countries and institutions affected by the international nature of the crime in question. Clearly, this international perspective of national criminal law implementation, accommodate external jurisdiction as well as numerous instruments of cross-border cooperation in criminal issues, such as extradition and or enforcing international arrest warrant to mention but few. Although in the case of Van Anraat there was no need for extradition since he was arrested in the Netherlands but had once been asked to be extradited from Italy at a certain time after which he allegedly escaped to Iraq.Nevetheless, the Dutch public prosecution office received other valuable assistance from many countries in other to establish the ground for criminal prosecution on Dutch soil; such as the expert witness invited from the (UNESCOM), and witness testimonies arranged from all the countries affected or concerned with the criminal proceeding without which the national prosecution of international crime is not possible. This might not be as simple as that, since one could easily counter this proposition arguing that, even with the bilateral legal assistance received by the public prosecution office which although serve and established the ground for criminal indictment, the public prosecutor’s office was unable to convince the van Anraat's court of Appeal of the defendant's complicity in genocide which could have carried stiffer sentence, instead, the Court convicted him of complicity in war crimes with a lesser sentence of 17 years. But if we further analyse the case from the perspective of the Courts understanding of the extent of Van Anraat participation and responsibility in the charges against him, it then appears as if an effective and efficient criminal prosecution and expedient sentencing of a reasonable and justified legal punishment served. But how can the formal, legal punishment imposed by the state on van Anraat be justified' To answer question, we must understand the purpose of criminal law and punishment. The purpose of Criminal Law and Punishment: Retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation and protection of society are all purposes of the criminal law system and have been argued about in courts for centuries, but the two most recognized purposes of criminal law are: Retributive and Deterrence. Retribution is when the state issue punishment for anti-societal behaviour base on lex tailionis.While deterrence is when the state issue a punishment so as to deter future occurenece.The principle of deterrence is one of the foundations of criminal law. Generally. The principle states that, if the state set and publicized punishment for crimes, then anyone who think of committing a crime would be less likely to do so out of fear of purnishment.Deterrence include specific and general Deterrence. While specific deterrence deters and discourage a criminal act from been repeated, general deterrence serves to deter and discourage other members of society from committing the same act, for example, Van Anraat got 17 years for engaging in an illegal business, other business who intend engaging in such business might reference to the severenity of Anraat's sentence and decide to decide to abstain from such business venture even though it is materially profitable. However, relevant is the question of whether Van Anraat could proceeded to sell the chemicals used in making those deadly weapons even with knowledge of what such chemical was capable of, had he close friends or relatives in Iraq at the time even while not having the knowledge of whether or not those chemicals could have been converted to something else' An answer to this hypothetical question could serve as a rationale and perhaps for the Appeal Court in coming to the decision to impose stiffer sentence on the defendant while still reasoning that, the defendant did not have a genocide intent but an individual of pure greed with a primary intent to profit which made him culpable of complicity in war crimes rather than the other way around. The inquisition over whether and how, legal punishment can be justified is fundamental to all legal systems. Specifically, what could justify the Dutch public prosecution office and the Appeal court in using the legal apparatus of the state to inflict painful sanctions on van Anraat' The abolitionist theorists contend that, states should project to replacing legal punishment rather than trying to justify it, but because this contention lacks any substance and practicality, we shall ignore this abolitionist ideal and turn to other two distinctive theorists: the consequentiality and the retributionist so as to espouse the normative as well as the practical nature of punishment, and then move on with our attempt to determine whether the Appeal Court's decision is justified in the light of the purpose of criminal law. It is important to note that, there are different types of punishment but the concern of this paper shall be restricted to legal punishment here: not because the other categories of punishment do not establish relevant regulatory arguments nor because such arguments could be addressed in terms of an initial justification of legal punishment as being the paradigm tool but because legal punishment, aside been cohesive and burdensome in nature in contrast to other categories of punishment, activates extraordinary arguments about the role of the state and its relationship to its citizens on the one hand and the role of criminal law on the other hand. Legal punishment involves the imposition of something that is intended to be painful, on a convicted criminal for a for a certain crime, by an authoritative body, but how can such a convention, that encroaches on the freedom of those subjected to it, which not only instigates but attempts to motivate suffering, be justified ' Hart warned against the supposition that there is only one question and answer of justification. According to him, we must differentiate, at least between three justificatory issues. Firstly, what is the ‘general justifying aim’ of a system of punishment and what justifies the creation and maintenance of such a system, such as what duty can it fulfil' Secondly, who may be punished: what principles or aims should determine the allocations of punishments to criminal perpetrators' Third, how should the appropriate amount of punishment be determined, such as how should prosecutors determine what sentence to impose on a given crime' (Hart 1968: 1-27) It might of course turn out that answers to Hart's questions will proceed from a single theoretical foundation—for instance from a consequentiality principle that maintain that there is goodness that punishment tend to or should achieve, or from some version of the retributionist principle which holds that, the sole and the legitimate purpose of punishment is to impose on the guilty some burdens and pain equal in proportion of their act. But, in this as in other matters of normative legal theory, matters might not be as easy and simple as that: we might find that great many conflicting values are important to different aspects of punishment; and that any complete normative account of punishment will have to find a room for these conflicting and varied value, as well as to find compromises between them when or if they conflict. References: Hart, H. L. A. (1968,pp 1-27), Punishment and Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.