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In 2006, Jennifer Harbury, the wife of ex-rebel commander Efrain Bamaca-Velasquez who was killed in Guatemala in the early 1990s, brought a complaint against U.S. governmental officials. Harbury claimed that her husband was captured in 1992 by Guatemalan army officers who were affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Harbury claimed that Bamaca was physically abused and tortured during his detention in order to extract information from him about the Guatemalan rebel forces.

Harbury’s tort claim was dismissed because the District Court found that it did not have authority to rule on it since the damage occurred in another state, namely in Guatemala. On appeal, the decision was upheld by the Court of Appeals. The Court ruled that the case involved political questions which are non-justiciable, and, in addition, that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to consider Harbury’s tort claim.

On 12 August 2001 the village of Ljuboten, located in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), was attacked. The police killed ethnic Albanians and set fire to homes in the village. Ljube Boškoski was the Minister of the Interior of the FYROM while Johan Tarčulovski was a police officer. For their role and participation in these events, they were brought before Trial Chamber II of the ICTY. While Trial Chamber II acquitted Boškoski of the charges, it did find Tarčulovski guilty of war crimes.

Tarčulovski presented seven grounds of appeal to the Appeals Chamber, arguing that Trial Chamber II made incorrect interpretations of the law with regard to the elements of war crimes, his individual criminal responsibility and in considering evidence.

The Prosecution appealed the acquittal of Boškoski on the ground that he should have been held responsible for his failure to punish his subordinates for committing the crimes at Ljuboten.

However, the Appeals Chamber disagreed with both the Accused and the Prosecution; Tarčulovski's sentencing was upheld, and so was Boškoski's acquital.

Following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the success of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in gaining control of the country, members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and the Interahamwe militia who were widely considered to be responsible for the genocide, fled to the Kivu provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These exiled forces organised themselves into political and military groups designed to oppose the new Rwandan government.

One of these groups was the Forces Démocratiques pour la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) led by Ignace Murwanashyaka. The FDLR, composed of a military and a political wing, was coordinated by its Steering Committee of which the Suspect, Callixte Mbarushimana, was a member. The Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleges that Mbarushimana was responsible for the FDLR’s perpetration of attacks against the civilian populations in the Kivu provinces throughout 2009. The objective of these attacks, which included murder, rape, torture, mutilation and pillage, was to create a humanitarian catastrophe that would place pressure on the international community and draw attention to the FDLR’s political demands.

Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC declined to confirm the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Mbarushimana thereby refusing to allow the case to continue to trial on the grounds that the Prosecution had not proved a number of key elements including the existence of a policy to attack the civilian population, and the existence of a group of persons acting with the common purpose of perpetrating crimes. Mbarushimana was subsequently released from the custody of the ICC and returned to France where he had been living since fleeing Rwanda. 

On 6 November, a Belgian Court handed down its judgment in a case concerning five foreign fighters and another individual who assisted the fighters travelling from Belgium. The foreign fighters had travelled to Somalia or Syria where they had joined jihadist groups, including Al-Shabab and Jabhat al Nusra. One of the accused, Kamal A, is thought to still be fighting in Syria with Jabhat al Nusra and another, Sami L, is believed to have died while carrying out a suicide attack in Iraq. The defendants received sentences ranging from 3 to 10 years’ imprisonment for having participated in the activities of a terrorist group via their various actions of support, assistance or actual fighting in the conflict. 

The crimes perpetrated by the Nazis during Hitler’s reign against Jewish citizens were some of the worst recorded in history. Although accurate figures may never be known, it is estimated that some 6 million Jewish individuals died – men, women, and children from all over Europe. They were deported from their homes in large freight trains in appalling conditions, others starved or froze to death, others still were taken away to concentration camps where the fit were forced to perform manual labour whilst the weak were shot to death or later, gassed to death in their thousands.

The Appellant, Adolf Eichmann, was an Austrian by birth who volunteered to work for the Security Service (SD) in Berlin. He rose through the ranks and eventually occupied the position of Head of Section (Referant) for Jewish Affairs charged with all matters related to the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. In this capacity, he oversaw the transport and deportation of Jewish persons, set up and personally ran an operations centre in Hungary in order to implement the Final Solution there, organised the transfer of money from evacuated Jews to the State and was responsible for the administration of the camps at Terezin and Bergen-Belsen.

He was captured by Israeli Security Forces in Argentina and handed over to the District Court of Jerusalem to stand trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people. He was convicted of all 15 counts and sentenced to death by the District Court of Jerusalem. His appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court of Israel and he was executed by hanging a few minutes before midnight on 31 May 1962.