V. Legal Framework and Analysis 106 In the Republic of Kenya case, the Pre-Trial Chamber examined the systematic nature of the attacks to determine that an organization existed within the meaning of the Rome Statute. The Pre-Trial Chamber focused on the “strategy and method,” noting that the attacks were “well organized” and “regimented.” 473 As highlighted above, trafficking of Rohingya was similarly well organized, regimented, and financed—from the traffickers in Myanmar and Bangladesh coordinating the movement of Rohingya onto boats, to shipboard traffickers involved in transporting, confining, and torturing captives en route to Thailand and Malaysia, to the Midway group who passed the captives off to the Destination Group for eventual placement in human-trafficking camps. The fact that individuals in the chain could request additional victims from others lower down the chain helps demonstrate the organized nature of the operation.474 At least one wealthy financier made the trafficking activities and prohibited acts associated with them possible by paying off a key Thai general and a local powerbroker. A more holistic analysis of the widespread and systematic nature of the attacks is set out below.475 Primary Purpose The next prong is “whether the group directed its criminal activities against the civilian population as a primary purpose.” This prong has not been expressly tested, though in the Republic of Kenya case, the chamber identified facts that arguably point to such a primary purpose. There the chamber stressed that despite accounts of “opportunistic crime which accompanied the general situation of lawlessness” the “violence was not a mere accumulation of spontaneous or isolated acts.”476 To demonstrate this, the chamber cited evidence of meetings when attacks were coordinated and funding organized.477 The violence perpetrated against trafficked Rohingya was “not a mere accumulation of spontaneous or isolated acts;” rather, the violence inflicted in the course of the prohibited acts—in particular, imprisonment, killings, and torture—was a key component of the extortion process.478 The syndicate existed to engage in for-profit, coercive violence against trafficked persons. Thus, despite the limited information currently known about the internal dynamics and the unclear case law on this point, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the transnational criminal syndicate directed its criminal activities against Rohingya refugees as a primary purpose. Control over territory It is well established that the enumerated acts “do not even have to be directed or instigated by a group in permanent control of territory” for that group to be considered an organization.479 Indeed, under international law, “control over the territory was rejected to be a requirement for the existence of an organized armed group.” That said, a factor weighing in favor of finding that a group constitutes an organization is its having “de facto control over, or [ability] to move freely within, [a] defined territory.” The transnational criminal syndicate never had complete control over territory, though its members appear to have had substantial freedom of movement on islands in the Andaman Sea off the coast of Thailand and in the areas along the Malaysia-Thailand border until the regional crackdown on human-trafficking activities in 2015. 480 473 Situation in the Republic of Kenya, Pre-Trial Chamber II, para. 126. 474 Ibid. 475 See, Chapter V. Section, “The Contextual Element of Crimes Against Humanity.” 476 Situation in the Republic of Kenya, Pre-Trial Chamber II, para. 117. 477 Ibid. 478 See, Chapter V. Section, “The Contextual Element of Crimes Against Humanity.” 479 Prosecutor v. Tadic, Case No. IT-94-1-T, Opinion & Judgment, May 7, 1997, para. 654. 480 See, for example, “Rise and Fall of General Manas: Thailand’s Top Trafficker,” The Straits Times (“The discovery [of a