Search results

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, on 10 July 1992, that the Bosniak (Muslim) population from the settlements of Brkići and Balagića Brdo (in the Ključ Municipality) leave their houses, after which the men older than 18 and younger than 60 were brought to the primary school in Biljani. From there, the men were murdered in groups of 5 to 10, which led to the deaths of at least 144 Bosniak men.  

On Appeal, the Court found the Accused guilty of Crimes against Humanity for the deprivation of liberty of these men, since they were forcefully moved from their homes and taken to the primary school. The Court did not find him guilty of aiding in the murders, since this was not a clear and obvious consequence of his acts.

Therefore on 15 October 2008, the Appellate Division of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found Marko Samardžija guilty of crimes against humanity (depriving of liberty) and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment. 

In 1994, an armed conflict between the Rwandese government forces and the Rwandese Patriotic Front and the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens in Rwanda and the elimination of approximately 75% of the Tutsi population.

Joseph Mpambara was a member of the interahamwe militia who fled Rwanda for Kenya and finally the Netherlands after 1994. He is charged with having murder, rape, kidnapping, hostage taking and torture against several Tutsi individuals including young children who were hacked with machetes after being forced out of an ambulance with their mother. Since the Accused is a non-Dutch national and the crimes with which he is charged did not occur on Dutch territory and did not implicate Dutch nationals in any way, the question of jurisdiction arose.

In the present decision, the Supreme Court of The Netherlands rejected the appeal of the Public Prosecutor against the earlier decision of the Court of Appeal of The Hague. The Supreme Court confirmed that Dutch Courts have no jurisdiction over the crime of genocide allegedly committed by the Accused. This does not, however, bar prosecution of the Accused for war crimes and torture.

The claimant’s father was a French Jew who was interned in France and deported to a concentration camp by the Vichy regime during World War II. The claimant brought proceedings for reparations before the Administrative Tribunal of Paris alleging that the French State and the French railway company that facilitated the transfer and deportation, the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais (SNCF) was at fault.

The case was transferred to the Conseil d’Etat, the highest administrative body in France, for advice. The Conseil d’Etat ruled that the acts of the French State, which contributed to the deportation of persons considered as Jews by the Vichy regime, constituted faults for which its responsibility was engaged. The Advice was the first time that the Conseil had ruled that reparation of such exceptional suffering could not be restricted to financial measures: they implied a solemn acknowledgement of the collective prejudice suffered by those persons, because of the role the French State played in their deportation, quoting the 1964 law suppressing time limitation on crimes against humanity, or the 1995 Presidential statement acknowledging the responsibility of the French State.

The Advice is to be eminently helpful for the 400 similar cases currently pending before French administrative courts. 

The case of Branimir Glavaš marks the first time that a high-ranking Croatian politician was sentenced for war crimes committed during the Croatian war of independence (1991-1995).

Glavaš has always denied any wrongdoing and he protested his detention and trial in Croatia by going on a 40-day hunger strike in 2006. He considered his case to be politically motivated and Nikica Grzić, his defence attorney, alleged that the trial was based on “political, not legal statements.” Nevertheless, after several appeals, on 2 June 2010, the Croatian Supreme Court sentenced Glavaš to eight years’ imprisonment for the war crimes of murder and torture of civilians. Glavaš attempted to evade sitting out his sentence by fleeing to Bosnia, but to no avail: there, he was arrested as well and the Bosnian courts upheld the verdict issued by their Croatian colleagues.