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Hissène Habré was the President of the Republic of Chad from 1982 until 1990. During that time, he established a brutal dictatorship which, through its political police, the Bureau of Documentation and Security (Direction de la Documentation et de la Sécurité (DDS)), caused the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals.

Residing in exile in Senegal, victims of Habré’s regime instituted proceedings against him in Belgium on the basis of Belgium’s universal jurisdiction law. In order to try Habré, Belgium requested Senegal to extradite him. By the present decision, the Court of Appeal of Dakar held that it was incompetent to grant the request as Habré enjoys immunity from jurisdiction by virtue of his position as the former Head of State of the Republic of Chad. This decision is the precursor to a line of litigation that will culminate in the decision of the International Court of Justice regarding Senegal’s obligation to prosecute or extradite Habré.

During the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after the Serb Army overran a Bosniak settlement on 2 June 1992, two brothers took part in beating a group of approximately 20 to 30 Bosniak men. The Court convicted them for war crimes against civilians. As some of the victims were injured, and all of them had surrendered, when the brother started their onslaught, they had attained the status of civilian under international humanitarian law. The Court heavily relied on witness statements to establish that the brothers had intentionally targeted Bosniaks, in the context of the armed conflict, and that they had intentionally inflicted severe pain on them. Zoran Damjanović was sentenced to 10 years and 6 months of imprisonment. Goran Damjanović was sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment, as he was also convicted for illegal manufacturing and trade of weapons or explosive materials.   

During the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after the Serb Army overran a Bosniak settlement on 2 June 1992, two brothers took part in beating a group of approximately 20 to 30 Bosniak men. In first-instance, the Court convicted them of war crimes against civilians but the brothers appealed against this verdict. The defence had branded several witness testimonies to be inconsistent and contradictory, but the Court’s Appeal Panel held in second instance that the testimonies were consistent on the most important aspects. Discrepancies were explainable, according to the Appeal Panel, and to this extend the appeal was rejected. However, Goran Damjanović had also been convicted for illegal manufacturing and trade of weapons or explosive substances, and the Appeal Panel considered it unproven that the weapons found in his family’s home belonged to him. To that extend, the verdict was revoked and a re-trial ordered.

Milorad Pejić was born on 4 April 1969 in the village of Vukovar located in eastern Croatia. Pejić, who lived in the United Kingdom since 1999, was arrested in March 2008 at the airport in Belgrade when he wanted to bring a visit to his mother. He was charged with being involved in a horrific massacre that took place in November 1991. At that time, ethnic Croat prisoners were taken from the Vukovar hospital and subsequently brought to a pig farm in Ovčara, outside Vukovar. The prisoners were beaten, tortured and subsequently killed. Their bodies were buried in mass graves.

The Prosecutor v. Ratko Mladić case before the ICTY concerns the events which occurred from October 1991 to November 1995 in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. The conflicts in the former Republic of Yugoslavia have been estimated to be the cause of a death toll of approximately 100,000 people, leading to over 2,000,000 people being displaced. The present case was tried before the ICTY’s Trial Chamber I, and the victims of the crimes were the ethnic groups of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats residing in the targeted municipalities, U.N personnel, and residents of Sarajevo.  

At the time when these events occurred, Mr. Mladić was a Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) Main Staff in the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), including Srebrenica. In his leadership position, Mr. Mladić took control of municipalities in the so-called Serbian Republic of BiH, mainly in the Northwestern and Eastern regions of BiH. In these municipalities, the Bosnian Serb Forces participated in a campaign of persecution to drive the non-Serb populations from these territories, aiming to create an ethnically pure Bosnian Serb State by territorially dividing BiH. 

Mr. Mladić was initially charged together with Mr. Karadžić; however, the judgement in the case of Mr. Mladić was delivered a year later than that of Mr. Karadžić. Mr. Mladić was indicted for 11 charges, 10 of which he was found guilty of, including several charges of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, and one charge of genocide. The Chamber sentenced Mr. Mladić to life imprisonment.