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During Indonesia’s illegal occupation of East Timor from 1975 until 2002, independence supporters were the object of attack by local militia groups who favoured Indonesian autonomy. The Accused, Joao Sarmento, was a member of one such militia group, the Tim Sasurat Ablai. During his involvement in the militia, he was involved in the murder of a number of independence supporters and the forcible transfer of approximately 15 000 villagers from East to West Timor. In particular, he pleaded guilty to two counts of murder; one involved the stabbing of a villager who refused to be deported, and another the murder of a boy as his mother attempted to shield him from the militia. He was sentenced to 8 years and 8 months’ imprisonment by the Special Panels. 

Members of the Herero (the Hereros), an African tribe from Namibia, brought a claim against German company Deutsche Afrika-Linien GmbH & Co. The Hereros claimed that this company used slave labor and ran its own concentration camp during Germany’s occupation of South Africa in the late 19th- and early 20th- century. The Hereros sued the German company for damages suffered during the occupation.

The case was dismissed by the District Court because the Hereros failed to state a claim in their complaint. On 10 April 2007, the dismissal was affirmed by the Court of Appeals.

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.

Radmilo Vuković was born on 28 July 1952 in the village of Rataje located in the municipality of Foča, southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. In his capacity as member of the military forces of the so-called Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as “Republika Srpska”, Vuković allegedly had sexual intercourse with a woman from the Foča municipality without her consent. On 13 August 2008, the Appeals Panel of the War Crimes section of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not find Vuković guilty, because the main piece of evidence provided by the victim and presented before the Appellate Panel contained inconsistencies. Therefore, it could not be established beyond reasonable doubt that Vuković raped the woman.