Search results

The decision is the first of its kind in France to hold accountable the French State and the national railway company, the SNCF, for complicity in the deportation of Jewish individuals during World War II. The case was brought by the Lipietz family who sought damages for the prejudice they suffered as a result of being deported from the city of Pau in southern France to the internment camp at Drancy, near Paris in 1944. They argued that the State and the SNCF were responsible because their deportation was conducted with the assistance of the SNCF and with the approval of the Home Secretary.

The Administrative Tribunal of Toulouse held that both the French state and the SNCF were complicit in the deportation of the claimants, having committed egregious errors and were accordingly fined a total of 62,000 Euros. 

Vladimir Kovačević was a Commander of the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army (JNA)  during the Croatian War of Independence (1991-1995). On 6 December 1991, Kovačević allegedly ordered his troops to bombard the city of Dubrovnik. As a result, two people were killed, three others were seriously wounded, six buildings were destroyed, and 46 buildings were substantially damaged.

In February 2001, Kovačević was officially charged with violation of the laws of war (attack against civilians and civilian objects). Even though Kovačević was initially to be tried at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), he was declared mentally sick and not fit to stand trial.

In November 2006, the ICTY referred the case to the authorities of the Republic of Serbia.

On 26 July 2007, the Serbian Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor issued an indictment against Kovačević, charging him with war crimes against civilians.

Colonel Abdi Aden Magan, the defendant, was a member of the Marehan sub-clan of the Darod clan and held high positions (as Colonel and Chief) at the National Security Service (NSS) of Somalia. The plaintiff, Abukar Hassan Ahmed, was a human rights attorney and law professor at the Somali National University. He was detained at the NSS for approximately three months. During his detention, he suffered severe physical and psychological injuries.  Ahmed claimed that, as a Chief of NSS Investigations, Colonel Magan was responsible for ordering and participating in his interrogation and torture.

A Rwandan national who had lived in exile in Denmark under a false name was brought before a Danish court for committing genocide, namely heading a death squad and participating in the slaughter of 25,000 Tutsis in a Rwandan town in 1994.

The Danish Supreme Court was asked to decide whether the 1955 Genocide Act permitted Danish courts to prosecute persons accused of genocide, even where the genocide was not committed in Denmark and the Accused was not a Danish national. The Supreme Court reversed the decisions of two lower courts and found that the charge of genocide in Rwanda by a Rwandan national could be raised before Danish courts indeed. The wording of the 1955 Genocide Act made genocide a criminal offense in Denmark, even if it was committed outside Denmark; moreover, Danish law did not require the accused to be a Danish national. It suffices that genocide is a crime both under Danish and Rwandan law: therefore, T. could be prosecuted before a Danish court

The accused, Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven, was suspected of involvement in smuggling arms to Liberia (through his Liberian-based timber factories) during the Second Liberian Civil War - in violation of UN arms trade bans - and accomodating/complicity in the numerous war crimes that were committed with these weapons. He was taken into custody by the Dutch police in 2005, and put on trial.

Although the Court of First Instance found him guilty of arms smuggling (but quashed the war crimes charges), the Court of Appeal later found that he could not be convicted for any of the charges due to lack of evidence. The prosecution appealed and ultimately the Supreme Court found that the Court of Appeal had erred by not properly motivating its decision not to allow an examining judge to assess whether two anonymous witnesses - who were allegedly very close to Kouwenhoven and Charles Taylor, and therefore key to the prosecution's case - should be admitted as protected witnesses, could be provided a protected witness-status so as to testify in the case. The appeals judgment was declared null and void and the case was referred to another Court of Appeals.

The case is currently still before the Court of Appeal: due to the case being assessed anew on all facts and evidence, an enormous amount of requests relating to the admission of (new) evidence has been filed.