There's a damn good reason I post links and hyperlinks to sources. Wouldn't hurt to actually read them. And https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...2019-06o.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2JKHweHhVtpy3mnyzAqFn8 The SANCTIONS REGULATIONS 2019, issued on July 3d, is just a consequence of Gibraltar's decision to enact international sanctions, not the decision itself. Such regulations are in fact legal tools that allow the government to take appropriate action in each particular case.
You'll have to ask the ship's captain what made him sail into Gibraltar's waters. The decision to enact international sanctions, including the EU embargo on Syria, was published by Gibraltar in March. The Sanctions Regulations 2019 was, as I explained in my previous post, a legal tool that allowed the government to deal with the specific issue posed by the presence of Grace 1 in Gibraltar's territorial waters.
I guess you don't understand the point still. There is no violation of EU sanctions (whose applicability would be in dispute regardless) or "international commitment" (regardless of how it was defined misleading in the legislation) because an Iranian oil tanker is "suspected" to be in taking oil to a Syrian oil refinery. Leaving aside certain other issues, even if delivering oil to a Syrian oil refinery violates EU sanctions, that violation would occur after the oil is taken. Not before. Nothing in the enabling legislation you quoted states otherwise because that enabling legislation isn't the legislation that defines EU sanctions (or the misnomer in the act, "international sanctions"). Nor is the investigative powers of the "Chief Minister" the issue here. Instead, it was the regulation that purported to authorize seizure of the Iranian tanker on "suspicion" of taking oil to a designated entity. In other words, the regulation (enacted a day before the seizure of the Iranian tanker) now purported to authorize the "Chief Minister" to act essentially preemptively to stop a possible act which would not be a violation of EU sanctions the minute tanker would have passed out of those waters anyway, because EU sanctions wouldn't apply anymore! In any case, you are spending way too much time, and giving way too much credence, to a legal fiction created to justify this act of piracy. But to each his own.
Not sure why you posted a long diatribe about sovereignty territorial waters - when this is the point I have been making all along. Any nation bordering these narrows straits can claim territoriality over those waters. By convention nations do not restrict traffic on this basis. This is bad precedent.
Embargo definition: https://www.britannica.com/topic/embargo-international-law This is exactly what Gibraltar did - it prohibited movement of oil from its territorial waters to the Banyas refinery in Syria. Perfectly legal. Read the damn entry.
Are you suggesting the enabling legislation stated that an embargo would be going into effect for any oil shipments suspected of heading to Syria's oil refinery? I mean: How is the "definition" of embargo under international law relevant to a domestic legislation and issues of this domestic law being discussed? Never mind, I have already wasted too much time on this issue, which will find its appropriate resolution sooner or later and not because of any legal arguments. (Except to provide a face saving solution to the Brits, if they are interested in saving face and want to find a compromise which they can claim was as a result of an adverse ruling from some court in Gibraltar).
https://www.ft.com/content/5d0fef56-b9da-11e9-8a88-aa6628ac896c British guards pulled from Gulf ships over Iran capture fears Seizure of UK tanker prompts security groups to remove UK citizens from vessels
