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Georges Lipietz and his half-brother were arrested in southern France in 1944 on account of their Jewish descent. They were deported to an internment camp at Drancy via Toulouse and Paris.

Although the internment camp was liberated in August 1944 and the Lipietz brothers were freed, they sued the French state and the French National Railway Company (SNCF) for complicity in their deportation, as they had been transported by French rail and detained at the authority of the Home Secretary. Having initially won their case before the Administrative Court of Toulouse and having been awarded 61 000 Euros in damages, the decision was reversed on appeal by the Administrative Court of Appeal of Bordeaux.

On appeal to the Conseil d’Etat, the highest administrative court in France, the Court upheld the reasoning of the Administrative Court of Appeal. It considered that it was not competent to hear the appeal because the SNCF at the relevant time in question was a private company under the command of the German authorities and not exercising its own public authority. It is for the judicial order, and not the administrative one, to decide on the matter. 

The claimant’s father was a French Jew who was interned in France and deported to a concentration camp by the Vichy regime during World War II. The claimant brought proceedings for reparations before the Administrative Tribunal of Paris alleging that the French State and the French railway company that facilitated the transfer and deportation, the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais (SNCF) was at fault.

The case was transferred to the Conseil d’Etat, the highest administrative body in France, for advice. The Conseil d’Etat ruled that the acts of the French State, which contributed to the deportation of persons considered as Jews by the Vichy regime, constituted faults for which its responsibility was engaged. The Advice was the first time that the Conseil had ruled that reparation of such exceptional suffering could not be restricted to financial measures: they implied a solemn acknowledgement of the collective prejudice suffered by those persons, because of the role the French State played in their deportation, quoting the 1964 law suppressing time limitation on crimes against humanity, or the 1995 Presidential statement acknowledging the responsibility of the French State.

The Advice is to be eminently helpful for the 400 similar cases currently pending before French administrative courts. 

Zijad Kurtović, a commander of a military police platoon of the Bosnian army, was accused of involvement in war crimes committed during the war between Croatia and Bosnia (1992-1995). More specifically, he was charged with torturing and otherwise inflicting serious mental and physical harm to Croatian civilians and prisoners of war in a Roman Catholic church in October 1993, by beating them, forcing them to eat pages from the Bible, using and ordering others to use Croatian civilians and prisoners of war as human shields on the frontlines, and with forcing two detained HVO soldiers to perform an oral sexual intercourse. In first instance, Kurtović was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment.

Kurtović appealed on several grounds, arguing that the first instance Panel had erred in law (using the wrong law) and in fact (wrongly established certain facts). The prosecution also appealed against the sentence, which was, in its view, too lenient. The Appellate Panel partly agreed with Kurtović where it concerned the classification of the crimes. It could not be established with certainty which victims had been combatants; however, as it was evident that all detained persons were entitled to protection under common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and that they were to be qualified (as is usual under the law of war in case of doubt) as civilians. However, the findings on the facts remained further unchanged. Therefore, the Appellate Panel amended the conviction to only include war crimes against civilians and the wanton destruction of religious monuments. The prosecutor’s appeal was dismissed; the 11-year prison sentence was upheld.

On 31 July 1992, in Novo Selo (Kotor Varoš Municipality), Marko Škrobić, as a member of the Kotor Varoš HVO (Croat Defence Council) unit, entered the house of Glamocak family, together with four other armed persons. He ordered Boro Glamocak and his family to leave the house immediately. He also forced Stojko Glamocak, Boro’s father, out of the adjacent building and marched the family into the direction of the village of Ravne. On the way to that village, Marko Škrobić shot Stojko with a pistol, leading to his death.

A Trial Court had found Škrobić guilty of war crimes and sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment on 22 October 2008. Both the Defence and Prosecution appealed to this decision.

The Appellate Panel dismissed as unfounded an appeal filed by the Prosecutor’s Office; dismissed appeals filed by the Defence and upheld an appeal filed by the Defence regarding the sentencing. The Panel held that the Trial Court had failed to properly take account of the fact that Škrobić was a married father of two minor children. Therefore, the Panel revised the sentence of Škrobić to nine years’ imprisonment

On 8 May 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered obliging all forces under German control to immediately cease hostilities. Twenty-one individuals, all German nationals, were tried and convicted by a United States military commission in China for violating the laws of war, namely by continuing to engage in, permitting or ordering military activity against the United States after the surrender of Germany. They were then transferred to a German prison and remained in the custody of the United States Army.

The twenty-one individuals, represented by Eisentrager, petitioned the United States District Court for the District of Columbia arguing that their continued detention violated the Constitution of the United States and they demanded a writ of habeas corpus, which is the right to be brought before a Court. The District Court denied the writ arguing that the petitioners were located outside of its jurisdiction. The present decision by the Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia reversed the decision of the District Court to hold that any individual is entitled to a writ of habeas corpus, an inherent common law right, where they have been deprived of their liberty by an act of the United States Government and their detention is in violation of the United States Constitution.