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The decision is the first of its kind in France to hold accountable the French State and the national railway company, the SNCF, for complicity in the deportation of Jewish individuals during World War II. The case was brought by the Lipietz family who sought damages for the prejudice they suffered as a result of being deported from the city of Pau in southern France to the internment camp at Drancy, near Paris in 1944. They argued that the State and the SNCF were responsible because their deportation was conducted with the assistance of the SNCF and with the approval of the Home Secretary.

The Administrative Tribunal of Toulouse held that both the French state and the SNCF were complicit in the deportation of the claimants, having committed egregious errors and were accordingly fined a total of 62,000 Euros. 

Georges Lipietz and his half-brother were arrested in southern France in 1944 on account of their Jewish descent. They were deported to an internment camp at Drancy via Toulouse and Paris.

Although the internment camp was liberated in August 1944 and the Lipietz brothers were freed, they sued the French state and the French National Railway Company (SNCF) for complicity in their deportation, as they had been transported by French rail and detained at the authority of the Home Secretary. Having initially won their case before the Administrative Court of Toulouse and having been awarded 61 000 Euros in damages, the decision was reversed on appeal by the Administrative Court of Appeal of Bordeaux. In the present decision, the Court held that the SNCF were acting under the command of the German authorities and could not therefore be held responsible.

Between December 1944 and April 1945 Michael Seifert (also known as Misha), a Ukranian national who had joined the SS, served as a guard at the Bolzano transit concentration camp. He moved to Canada in 1951, obtaining Canadian citizenship by claiming he was born in Estonia and withholding the fact that he had been a Nazi SS prison guard.

On 24 November 2000, the Italian military tribunal of Verona convicted Michael Seifert in absentia of 11 murders committed at a prison camp in Bolzano during World War Two and sentenced him to life in prison. The Italian government started a procedure to have him extradited to Italy and the Canadian authorities started a procedure to have him stripped of his Canadian Citizenship and extradite him. Seifert acknowledged that he was at the Bolzano camp, but denied being involved in atrocities. The Federal Court of Canada ruled that the government was within its rights to revoke Michael Seifert's citizenship as he had lied to obtain it. The Court held that Seifert obtained entry to Canada and Canadian Citizenship by misrepresentation of his activities in World War II and non-disclosure of material facts. During the 1950’s, Canada had an immigration policy that barred former members of the SS and related units such as the SD (the German intelligence agency to the SS) from gaining entry to Canada and obtaining citizenship. Therefore the Court ruled that had he told the truth, Seifert would not have been allowed into Canada.

After the takeover of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995, several thousand Bosniak men fled and attempted to reach Bosnian territory. Many of them were detained and over 1000 men were brought to a warehouse and executed. Vaso Todorović, a former policeman who was involved in capturing and detaining these men and who stood guard as these men were killed, was initially charged with genocide. However, these charges were amended to a charge of crimes against humanity, and Todorović entered into a plea agreement. The Court had to assess whether there was enough evidence for a conviction and whether his plea was credible. After establishing that a widespread or systematic attack against civilians had taken place in Srebrencia, the Court established that Todorović knew about the attack and that his actions should be regarded in the context of the attack. The Court considered proven that Todorović had participated in detaining men in a warehouse, after which he prevented them from escaping their subsequent execution. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment.

The armed conflict in Sierra Leone, from 1991 until 2002, opposed members of the Revolutionary United Front and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council to Civil Defense Forces, loyal to the ousted President Kabbah. The hostilities were characterised by brutality as civilians and peacekeepers were targeted. In particular, young women were forced to become ‘bush wives’ for rebels, and children were recruited not only to fight in the hostilities, but also as bodyguards, cooks, cleaners, and spies.

Trial Chamber I of the Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted Sesay, Kallon and Gbao, as high-ranking members of the RUF, for multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In particular, this decision was the first time that an international criminal tribunal entered convictions for forced marriage as a crime against humanity separate from sexual slavery. The Chamber also defined active participation in hostilities broadly so that the crime of using children to actively participate in the hostilities would extend to more children in different roles, for which their perpetrators could be punished.