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On 1 December 2014 Ms. Shukri F., a young Dutch woman, was acquitted on two charges by the District Court of The Hague. She was charged with 1) recruiting people to join the armed struggle in Syria, and; 2) incitement to commit terrorist crimes and dissemination of and collecting inciting material. Although the Court acquitted her, the Prosecutor appealed. 

The defendant was allegedly active in spreading the virtues of Islamic orthodoxy in multiple ways. First, she used social media and gave lectures about Islam. Second, she encouraged multiple women (some underage) to marry and to depart to Syria. Third, she married a man who she supported in his wish to go to Syria. After he had left for Syria she divorced him and married another man, Maher H., who she also encouraged to depart to Syria.

The Court of Appeal ruled that it could not establish that the defendant recruited people to join the armed struggle in Syria. It could establish, however, that 2 videos she had posted on Twitter amounted to the dissemination of inciting materials. For that reason she was sentenced to a suspended imprisonment term of 6 months and a probation period of 2 years.

Anton Lekaj, born in 1980, was a member of the ‘Cipat’ group within the military police forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1999, there was an ongoing conflict between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Kosovo.

Between 12 and 15 of June 1999, Lekaj, together with other members of the KLA, detained 13 non-Albanian civilians and transferred them to premises in the Pastrik Hotel. The 13 civilians were beaten, tortured, sexually abused, and some of them were even killed.

Lekaj was arrested in August 2004 and charged with war crimes against civilians. He was subsequently tried in Serbia. On 18 September 2006, he was found guilty for his participation in the crimes and was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment.

Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovač, and Zoran Vuković were brought before the ICTY for their roles in the commission of crimes against the Bosnian Muslim civilians between April 1992 and February 1993. During this time, an armed conflict existed between the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Muslims, and the Bosnian Serb Army and paramilitary groups detained Bosnian Muslim women and subjected them to repeated rapes, torture and other mistreatments.

Trial Chamber II found that the acts of the Bosnian Serbs amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It found the three accused responsible for these crimes.

Dragoljub Kunarac was found guilty of crimes against humanity (torture, rape, enslavement), and war crimes (torture and rape) and, subsequently, sentenced to 28 years of imprisonment.

Radomir Kovač was also found guilty of the war crimes of rape and outrages upon personal dignity, as well as the crimes against humanity of enslavement and rape. He was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment.

Zoran Vuković was found guilty of torture and rape as both war crimes and crimes against humanity. Trial Chamber II sentenced him to 12 years of imprisonment.

Marko Samardžija was the commander of the 3rd Company of the Sanica Battalion within the 17th Light Infantry Brigade. He has been accused of ordering soldiers under his command that the Bosniak (Muslim) men from the settlements of Brkići and Balagića Brdo (in the Ključ Municipality) leave their houses. Men older than 18 and younger than 60 were then consequently murdered in groups of 5 to 10. This resulted in the deaths of at least 144 Bosniak men.

While taking into account the ICTY and ICTR case law, and while pointing out that the issue of legality was not violated, the Court determined that Samardžija assisted in the commission of crimes against humanity. As a result, on 3 November 2006, the Trial Panel of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found Marko Samardžija guilty of crimes against humanity (murder) and sentenced him to 26 years’ imprisonment

In the period of April 1992 until March 1993 a large-scale armed conflict was taking place in the Foča municipality. During this time Neđo Samardžić was a member of the army of the so-called Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As part of this army, Samardžić committed and helped commit killings, forced people to relocate, forced women into sexual slavery, held women in a specific camp where they were raped, and persecuted (Muslim) Bosniak civilians on national, religious, ethnical and gender grounds.

The first instance Court sentenced Samardžić to imprisonment for a term of 13 years and 4 months. Where in first instance the accused was found guilty of 4 counts, on appeal the Appellate Panel established that the accused had committed the acts in counts 1 through 9. Furthermore the Court found that there were several aggravating circumstances, such as the fact that the accused repeated the acts, he expressed particular brutality, which caused severe physical and mental pain to the injured parties and the fact that at the time of the crimes some of the injured parties were still very young girls. Moreover the accused had a prior conviction for murder. Therefore on 13 December 2006, believing that it corresponded with the degree of his criminal responsibility, his motives and the intensity and degree of the protected value, theAppellate Panel found Samardžić guilty of Crimes against Humanity and sentenced him to an imprisonment of twenty-four years, more than ten years more than in first instance.