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On 24 March 1980, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was killed in the Chapel of the Divine Providence Hospital in San Salvador. The killing was planned and coordinated by officers of the Salvadoran military, including Alvaro Rafael Saravia. As a result of the influence of these persons, no one was convicted for the killing of Archbishop Romero.

In 2003, the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) filed a suit on behalf of relatives of Archbishop Romero against Alvaro Rafael Saravia, who went into hiding after he was served with the complaint.

In November 2004, the U.S. District Court Eastern District of California found Saravialiable for the assassination of Archbishop Romero and awarded a total of $10,000,000.00 in damages.

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. In the present decision, the Court held that the SNCF were acting under the command of the German authorities and could not therefore be held responsible.

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.

At the end of the Second World War, Tomoyuki Yamashita was a Commander in the Japanese Army serving in the Philippines. His troops were allegedly responsible for killing, torturing and raping thousands of civilians.

On 3 September 1945, Yamashita surrendered to the United States army. A US military commission tried him for violations of the laws of war. Yamashita was charged with having failed to perform his duties as an army commander to control the operations of his troops, thus “permitting them to commit” atrocities. He was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.

Yamashita appealed at the US Supreme Court, because the military commission had lacked many procedural and evidential protections. The Supreme Court denied this appeal. The Supreme Court ruled that even if Yamashita did not know about the crimes committed by his subordinates, because of his position as a superior, he should have known. Yamashita was executed on 23 February 1946.

The outcome of this case has been much debated and criticised, because of the claimed lack of evidence and the ‘should have known’ criteria as described by the Supreme Court. 

The principle of non-refoulement prohibits deportation of a person if there is a significant risk of that person being subjected to torture in the country of arrival. The principle has been repeatedly in the spotlights since 2001, as states came under increasing obligation to deny safe havens to terrorists. However, as this case proves, the principle was an issue even before September 11, 2001.

Manickavasagam Suresh fled from Sri Lanka to Canada, was granted a refugee status there, but was ultimately denied a permanent status as it was alleged that he supported the Tamil Tigers. Since Canada considered the Tamil Tigers to be a terrorist organisation, it started the procedure to deport Suresh to Sri Lanka. Suresh went to court, stating, among other things, that deportation would violate the principle of non-refoulement. The Court disagreed, stating, most importantly, that the Minister was allowed to enter into a balancing act between national security and Suresh’s individual rights. The Court did not consider the result of this balancing act to be unreasonable, given the evidence of the Tamil Tigers’ activities and Suresh role therein. Also, the Court stated that Suresh had not established ‘substantial grounds’ that he would be subjected to torture.