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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.

Anjem Choudary and Mohammed Mizanur Rahman were charged with inviting support for the Islamic State, which is designated as a proscribed organisation in the United Kingdom. Both men are well-known speakers who have publicly supported the Islamic State, including by attending protests at which Islamic State banners were displayed.

While Choudary and Rahman’s speeches did not explicitly invite violence, the Court found them to be clear statements of support for the Islamic State, based on the common-sense meaning of the word “support.” According to the Court, “support” is not limited only to assistance that is practical or tangible, but also extends to support in the form of endorsement of approval of a proscribed organisation.

Finally, the Court addressed the appellants’ contention that the law in question violated their right to freedom of expression. The Court found the right to freedom of expression to be not absolute, specifically when the law prescribes the criminalization of the conduct and its purpose is to respond to issues such as national security which are listed in the European Convention on Human Rights.

Al Bahlul is a Yemeni national that has been imprisoned at the United States Detention Camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, since 2002. After over a decade of legal proceedings related to his role as a media and propaganda secretary in al Qaeda and his involvement in the 2000 Bombing of U.S.S. Cole and the 9/11 Attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, USA, the D.C. Circuit Court rejected his appeal for resentencing and upheld his life sentence.

While Al Bahlul’s legal team argued that the lower courts and the Military Commission failed to adequately reconsider his sentencing after his initial 2008 convictions were appealed and evidence of potential torture was introduced, the D.C. Circuit disagreed. It held that the CMCR adequately considered the appropriate sentence for the conspiracy conviction and that evidence on the grounds of torture was inadmissible because regulations on admissible evidence were stricter at the time of Bahlul’s original sentencing and he should have made that claim in the previous decade of appeals.

Dinko Ljubomir Šakić was born on 8 September 1921 in the village of Studenci in Perušić, Croatia. Šakić was the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp from April until November 1944. During that time, more than 2,000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were killed under his command. Moreover, detainees were hanged, starved, brutally tortured and murdered. Šakić personally killed at least four detainees, two of them just for smiling.On 4 October 1999, he was found guilty for the crimes and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In July 2008, Šakić died at the age of 86 in a hospital in Zagreb.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen, was Osama bin Laden’s driver. Captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by members of the United States Armed Forces, he was transferred to the United States detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. By an order of the President of the United States, Hamdan was designated to stand trial before a United States Military Commission for charges of conspiracy to commit multiple offenses, including attacking civilians and civilian objects, murder by an unprivileged belligerent, destruction of property by an unprivileged belligerent and terrorism. Hamdan’s counsel applied for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that the military commissions were unlawful and trial before them would violate Hamdan’s rights of access to a court.

The District Court for the District of Columbia in a decision of 8 November 2004 found that Hamdan could not be tried by the military commission until such time as a competent tribunal has determined whether he is entitled to prisoner of war status. Only in the event that the outcome of such a determination is negative may Hamdan be tried by military commission, provided that the military commission amends its rules which currently preclude the presence of the accused at certain hearings of his own trial. Without such amendments, trial by military commission would be unlawful. The decision is the first in a line of case law before the United States courts and military commissions in the case of Hamdan.