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The 1998 United States Embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on 7 August 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the embassies of the United States in the East African cities of Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. The date of the bombings marked the eighth anniversary of the arrival of American forces in Saudi Arabia.

Members of the al-Qaeda (terrorist group) were charged for planning and committing the bombing of the Embassies of the US in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Usama bin Laden is the head of Al-Qaeda and as such was amongst the people charged. The charges included also conspiracy to murder of US nationals anywhere in the world, US military personnel in Somalia and the Saudi Arabia Peninsula, US nationals serving in the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the concealment of any such plans of Al-Qaeda. 

In June 1944, German occupation forces in Greece massacred more than 300 inhabitants of the village of Distomo and burnt the village to the ground, as reprisal for a partisan attack on German troops. In 1995, proceedings against Germany were instituted before the Greek courts, by over 250 relatives of the victims of the massacre, claiming compensation for loss of life and property. The Court of Livadia, Greece, held Germany liable and ordered it to pay compensation to the claimants. Germany appealed to the Greek Supreme Court, on the ground that it was immune from the jurisdiction of the Greek courts, on the basis of state immunity.

The Greek Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and rejected Germany’s claim of jurisdictional immunity. The Court denied German immunity applying Article 11 of the European Convention on State Immunity, considered to correspond to customary international law. Moreover, the Court held that violation of peremptory norms would have the legal effect of implicitly waiving the jurisdictional immunity. It reasoned that torts in breach of rules of peremptory international law cannot be claimed to be acts jure imperii, concluding that Germany, by breaching jus cogens, had implicitly waived its immunity.

A group of Dutch individuals and organisations filed a claim against the Netherlands asking for the arrest of George W. Bush. The proceedings were filed in advance of Bush’s visit to the Netherlands in his capacity as US President.

The American Service-Members’ Protection Act of 2002 (ASPA) allows the US to invade Dutch territory to liberate American or Israeli military personnel in the event that they are detained by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The petitioners said that such an incursion might result in many casualties and would violate international law. Therefore, they claimed that the ASPA constitutes a threat against the Netherlands, its citizens, and the ICC, and had to be assigned to George W. Bush.

On 5 April 2005, the District Court dismissed the case. The Court held that it cannot hear cases presenting political questions. In addition, the Court held that it could not prosecute George W. Bush because he enjoyed immunity as head of state.