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Zentai: Minister for Home Affairs of the Commonwealth v. Zentai

Order, 15 Aug 2012, High Court of Australia, Australia

Charles Zentai is an Australian citizen, who is accused of involvement in the killing of a young Jewish man, Mr Balazs, in Budapest in November 1944. The young man was not wearing his yellow star, upon which Zentai allegedly dragged him to an army post and, with others, beat him to death.

In 2005 the Republic of Hungary asked Australia to extradite Charles Zentai. In 1944, there was no offence of war crime in the Hungarian Criminal Code. Although murder was a crime in the National Code in 1944, the Republic of Hungary did not seek the accused’s surrender for prosecution for murder, but for war crime.

On 12 November 2006, the Minister determined that the accused was to be surrendered to the Republic of Hungary. A judge of the Federal Court and later on the Full Court of the Federal Court required that the accused should be released.

On 15 August 2012, the High Court determined that the Minister could not extradite the accused, because the Treaty on Extradition between Australia and the Republic of Hungary determines that extradition may only take place for a crime that was an offence in the Requesting State at the time the acts constituting it occurred. 


Samantar: Bashe Abdi Yousuf et al. v. Mohamed Ali Samantar

Memorandum Opinion, 28 Aug 2012, District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria Division), United States

Under the authoritarian regime of Major General Barre in Somalia, the Somali Armed Forces perpetrated a number of human rights abuses against the Somali civilian population, in particular against members of the Isaaq clan.

The petitioners, all members of the Isaaq clan, allege that in the 1980s and 1990s they suffered ill-treatment at the hands of the Somali military including acts of rape, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention. They instituted a civil complaint against Mohamed Ali Samantar, the then-Minister of Defence and later Prime Minister of Somalia on the basis of the Torture Victims Protection Act.

After a line of litigation spanning 3 years and culminating in a Supreme Court decision in 2010, proceedings against Samantar were allowed to continue as he did not enjoy immunity.

Samantar accepted responsibility in February 2012; the present decision by the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia held Samantar liable as a superior for the crimes perpetrated by his subordinates in the Somali Armed Forces and the affiliated national intelligence services against the plaintiffs who were awarded $21 million in damages. 


Corrie v. Israel: Estate of the Late Rachel Corrie et al. v. The State of Israel - Ministry of Defense

Judgment, 28 Aug 2012, District Court of Haifa, Israel

On 16 March 2003 American Rachel Corrie, together with other International Solidarity Movement members, protested in the "Philadelphi Corridor" in the Rafiah area of the Gaza Strip against the demolition of Palestinian houses in the area. Two bulldozers and an Israel Defense Force (IDF) tank were present. When one of the bulldozers was driving towards a house in order to demolish it, Rachel stood in front of it to protect it and the inhabitants, meanwhile climbing the growing pile of dirt that was formed in front of the bulldozer. At a certain moment she slipped, fell and got stuck under the dirt and the bulldozer. After her fellow protesters made the bulldozer's operator aware of the situation, she was removed from underneath and taken to the hospital, where she died. 

Rachel's parents filed a lawsuit against Israel and the IDF for killing or negligently causing the death of their daughter. 

The Haifa District Court dismissed their claims, stating that the bulldozer's operator had never intended to kill Rachel and had also not been able to see her due to the "blind spot" in front of the bulldozer blade. Furthermore, it found, Rachel had taken the risk of entering the closed-off area and chose to climb the pile of dirt, thus putting herself in the dangerous situation. The Court concluded that she "was accidentally killed in the framework of a "war-related activity""; therefore, "the State bears no responsibility for the damages inflicted on the plaintiffs resulting from a war-related action".


Bignone (Plan Sistemático): Reynaldo Bignone “Plan Sistemático” / Franco Rubén O. et al.

Verdict, 17 Sep 2012, Federal Criminal Oral Tribunal No. 6 of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Reynaldo Bignone, born in 1928, was the de facto president of Argentina from 1982 to 1983 and the last dictator to hold power in the country. As such, he was appointed by the military junta and sought to impose amnesty laws for perpetrators of gross human rights violations before transferring power to the democratically elected Raul Alfonsin. Nevertheless, in 2005 the Argentinean Supreme Court overturned these amnesties and opened the way for prosecutions of those involved in the country’s 1976-1983 “Dirty War”. Since then, Reynaldo Bignone was charged and convicted of crimes against humanity in several trials on the basis of his involvement in the Dirty War. 

In the current case, Federal Criminal Oral Tribunal No. 6 of Buenos Aires sentenced Bignone to 15 years' imprisonment for crimes against humanity for the implementation of a systematic plan to abduct and appropriate 31 children between 1976 and 1983. Other accused were sentenced to terms ranging from 5 to 50 years in prison.


Mutua et al. v. UK: Ndiki Mutua, Paulo Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyingi, Jane Muthoni Mara and Susan Ngondi v. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Approved Judgment, 5 Oct 2012, The High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, Great Britain (UK)

The claimants in this case claimed that they were victims of severe atrocities at the hands of the colonial government during the struggle for independence in Kenya. They argued that the British government carried responsibility for this. In this phase of the proceedings, the British government basically argued that the events in Kenya happened too long ago to be considered on trial. The Court rejected this argument, stating that British law allowed Courts to let cases proceed which happened a long time ago. Moreover, the Court held that there were sufficient primary sources to establish what took place in the detention camps in Kenya and the UK Government’s involvement in this matter.  


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