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In 1994, an armed conflict between the Rwandese government forces and the Rwandese Patriotic Front and the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens in Rwanda and the elimination of approximately 75% of the Tutsi population.

Joseph Mpambara was a member of the interahamwe militia who fled Rwanda for Kenya and finally the Netherlands after 1994. He is charged with having murder, rape, kidnapping, hostage taking and torture against several Tutsi individuals including young children who were hacked with machetes after being forced out of an ambulance with their mother. Since the Accused is a non-Dutch national and the crimes with which he is charged did not occur on Dutch territory and did not implicate Dutch nationals in any way, the question of jurisdiction arose.

By a decision of 24 July 2007, the District Court of The Hague determined that it did not have jurisdiction to try the Accused for crimes of genocide as it lacked a statutory basis to do so. Further, it could not exercise indirect jurisdiction as one of the three criteria set out in the Dutch Penal Code was not met. 

In 1994, an armed conflict between the Rwandese government forces and the Rwandese Patriotic Front and the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens in Rwanda and the elimination of approximately 75% of the Tutsi population.

Joseph Mpambara was a member of the interahamwe militia who fled Rwanda for Kenya and finally the Netherlands after 1994. He is charged with having murder, rape, kidnapping, hostage taking and torture against several Tutsi individuals including young children who were hacked with machetes after being forced out of an ambulance with their mother. Since the Accused is a non-Dutch national and the crimes with which he is charged did not occur on Dutch territory and did not implicate Dutch nationals in any way, the question of jurisdiction arose.

In the present decision, the Court of Appeal of The Hague confirmed the decision of the District Court of The Hague that the Dutch courts have no jurisdiction over the crime of genocide allegedly commited by the Accused. This does not, however, bar prosecution of the Accused for war crimes and torture. 

Jadranko Palija, a former member of the Serbian army, was accused of having committed war crimes against civilians and crimes against humanity during the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia. The indictment against him accused him of participation in 19 murders and some counts of intimidation and rape committed against Bosniak and Croatian civilians. On 28 November 2007, Palija was found guilty on all charges by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and sentenced to 28 years in prison. He appealed against his conviction, but this did not help him: on 24 April 2008, the Appellate Panel of the Court ruled that the Trial Panel had been correct in both its analysis of the facts and the application of the law. Therefore, the conviction and prison sentence were both confirmed.

After the takeover of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995, several thousands of Bosniak men fled and attempted to reach Bosnian territory. Many of them were detained and over one thousand men were brought to a warehouse and executed. It is up to the Court to decide whether 10 men who allegedly were involved in the capturing, detaining and killing of these Bosniaks can be found guilty of genocide.

These men were certainly not the genocide masterminds, but members of a police force. The Court states that in a case of genocide, a distinction must be made between those who conceived and directed the acts of genocide (referred to as a joint criminal enterprise) and the common soldiers. Where the former group can be held accountable for all crimes that ensued, the latter group is only responsible for the acts they physically participated in. However, after the Court reviewed several witness statements, it considered Stevanovic’s presence during the transferring of prisoners and their execution unproven and his role in all this to be trivial. According to the Court, when Stevanovic became aware of what was expected of him, he was distinctly unhappy about and therefore he removed himself from the scene. As such, neither genocidal intent nor his participation in acts of genocide could be proven; the Court acquitted him from all charges.