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General Efraín Ríos Montt was a former head of state of Guatemala.

In 2007, Montt was elected for a seat in the Congress. In 2012, his term of office as a member of the Congress came to an end. As a result, his immunity (heads of states are given protection from being suit without their consent) was lifted. Complaints were brought against Ríos Montt for crimes that resulted in the deaths of 1,771 indigenous Ixil people during his 17-month rule.

On 10 May 2013, Ríos Montt was found guilty of crimes committed against the indigenous Mayan population between 1960 and 1996 and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. On 20 May 2013, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court annulled the decision and set back the trial to the proceedings of 19 April 2013.

Ríos Montt is the first former head of state to be convicted of genocide by a court in his own country.

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands affirmed the strong approach to dual attribution taken by the Court of Appeal and dismissed the appeal. It found that it is possible for both the Netherlands and the UN to have effective control over the same wrongful conduct and that attributing this conduct to the Netherlands did not in any way determine whether the UN also exercised effective control over the Dutchbat troops (pp. 22-23, para. 3.11.2).

This case is important, as it marks the first time an individual government has been held to account for the conduct of its peacekeeping troops operating under a UN mandate. Liesbeth Zegveld, the Dutch lawyer who represented the victims, stated that “a U.N. flag doesn’t give...immunity as a state or as an individual soldier.” As a result of this judgment, two Bosnian families are now expected to receive damages from the Dutch state, and other cases may follow.

In April 2012, Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, was found guilty of providing arms, financial and moral support to the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council rebel forces. With the aim of destabilizing the country and gaining access to the natural resources of Sierra Leone (mainly diamonds), he supported the RUF in the preparation of military actions in Sierra Leone (in the districts of Bo, Kono, Kenema, Bombali, Kailahun, Freetown). During the military actions, civilians were killed, beaten, terrorised, raped, and abducted. Children were also abducted and involved in the military actions.

Charles Taylor was sentenced to fifty years of imprisonment.

On 26 September 2013, the Appeals Chamber of the SCSL confirmed that Charles Taylor assisted and planned numerous crimes committed during the Sierra Leone's civil war by the RUF and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council rebel forces. The Appeals Chamber also confirmed the fifty years’ sentence. 

Viktor Bout, a notorious international arms dealer also known as the Merchant of Death, was alleged of trafficking weapons to several African warlords, dictators in the Middle-East and the Colombian FARC. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) decided to catch him through a sting operation in which DEA officers posed as FARC fighters and attempted to order about hundred anti-air missiles and weapons "to use against Colombian and United States nationals" in Colombia. The operation succeeded and Bout was caught by police forces in Thailand.

The US charged him with conspiracy to kill US nationals and officials and with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organisation (the FARC). Initially, Bout managed to have the Thai Criminal Court prohibit his extradition due to it being politically motivated. However, in appeals the decision was overturned and Bout was extradited to the US in 2010. A jury found him guilty on all charges in 2011 and op 5 April 2012, he was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

Bout appealed his conviction, claiming that he was innocent and that he had never intended to harm or even contribute to harming US nationals. The Court of Appeal did not agree with him, however, and his conviction was affirmed on all points.

This is the one of the first cases in Europe in which a person was tried for attempting to travel to Syria to join the jihad. Mohammed G., a 24-year old Dutch national, made several preparations for his departure; he booked an airplane ticket from Amsterdam to Gaziantep (Turkey), he packed his suitcase and expressed his support for the jihad multiple times. The District Court of Rotterdam found Mohammed G. not guilty of preparatory acts for and/or the committing of terrorist crimes. However, it did find the defendant guilty of preparatory acts to commit murder. According to the Court, these acts had to be seen ‘within the framework of terrorism’.

The defendant suffered from a psychotic disorder, meaning that he suffered from hallucinations in which he heard a voice in his head ordering him to take action within the framework of jihad. On the basis of this fact, the Court found the defendant not criminally responsible and acquitted him. Instead, the defendant was ordered to spend a year in a psychiatric hospital.