Search results

Hungary joined the Axis powers during World War II, effectively bringing the Hungarian police and the Gendarmerie, a paramilitary police unit, under the control and direction of the German SS. Imre Finta, originally a Hungarian national, was an officer and later a captain in the Hungarian Gendarmerie. In 1944, he was dispatched to Szeged to implement the Baky Order, a decree introduced by the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior calling for the isolation, exporpriation, ghettoization, concentration, entrainment and eventual deportation of all Hungarian Jews. In connection with this order, Finta was allegedly responsible for the detention of 8 617 Hungarian Jews in brickyard, forcibly stripping them of their valuables and deporting them to concentration camps under appalling conditions.

Under new Canadian war crimes legislation, Finta (a Canadian national and resident since 1956) was brought before the Toronto court to stand trial for eight counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was acquitted by a jury and this decision was upheld by a majority of the Court of Appeal of Ontario. The present decision was rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada and constituted the final appeal in the case against Finta. By a narrow margin of 4:3, the appeal was dismissed, as Finta did not possess the necessary mens rea for war crimes and crimes against humanity and the Baky Order, on which he relied, did not appear as manifestly unlawful at the time of its enactment.

During the 1990s, several complaints of unlawful physical interrogation methods by the General Security Service reached the Israeli Supreme Court. In 1999, it assessed the essential question posed in most of these complaints: was the GSS even allowed to conduct interrogations and if so, did their interrogation methods fall within the scope of torture as prohibited by Israeli and international law. The Court answered the first question in the affirmative and deduced from a general provision in Israeli law the GSS’ authority to interrogate. However, the Court also stated that the GSS was not authorised to use most of the interrogation methods presented to the Court. These included long sleep deprivation, shaking suspects, covering suspects’ heads, and having them crouch on their toes for five minutes intervals. The GSS had argued that the ‘necessity’ defense provided sufficient authorisation to use these interrogations, as information obtained from interrogation might prevent terrorist attacks. The Court did not agree, stating that while the necessity defense might be used by an individual investigator during criminal proceedings, it cannot provide authorisation prior to using the prohibited interrogation methods.    

Frans van Anraat was a Dutch businessman who, from 1984 until 1988, purchased large quantities of the chemical thiodiglycol from the United States and Japan. This chemical was then sold, through a number of different companies located in different countries, to Saddam Hussein’s government of Iraq. After 1984, Van Anraat was the government’s sole supplier of the chemical. The chemical is a key component in the manufacture of mustard gas and was in fact used for this purpose by Hussein’s government who then proceeded to employ the gas in attacks against Iranian military and civilians in the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. The effect was devastating, thousands of individuals were killed and many thousands more were injured with long-term effects including blindness and cancer. Van Anraat was convicted by the District Court of The Hague as accessory to war crimes committed by Hussein and his men. His conviction was upheld on appeal by the Court of Appeal of The Hague and the Supreme Court of The Netherlands. He was sentenced to 16 years and 6 months’ imprisonment.

The present decision is the result of Van Anraat's appeal to the European Court of Human Rights challenging the jurisdiction of the Dutch courts to try his case. His application was rejected as the European Court of Human Rights found, notably, that the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons in warfare was a crime under customary international law at the time the applicant supplied thiodiglycol to Iraq and he could therefore rightly be convicted of violations of this custom of war.