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The President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, had planned a visit to the Netherlands from 6 to 8 October 2010. The government in exile of the Republic of South Moluccas (RMS) filed a complaint in the Netherlands and requested the Indonesian President to be arrested upon arrival in the Netherlands, and furthermore, that he would be prosecuted for human rights violations committed against Moluccan detainees.

On 14 October 2010, the District Court of The Hague dismissed the case because President Yudhoyono as head of state could not be prosecuted (head of state immunity).

On 22 November 2011, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision.

The Al-Aulaqi case is significant as it marks in all probability the first time that an American citizen has been killed by U.S. forces outside the borders of the U.S., without any trial, indictment or due process. The case revolves around Anwar Al-Aulaqi, an American-born cleric with dual U.S.-Yemeni citizenship who was a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and had gone into hiding in Yemen, from where he regularly published videos propagating the jihad. The U.S. Treasury Department had allegedly designated him for targeted killing. Therefore, his father, Nasser Al-Aulaqi, filed a complaint claiming that the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of the CIA unlawfully authorised the targeted killing, and seeking an injunction prohibiting them from intentionally killing his son, except in case he did present a concrete, specific, and imminent threat to life or physical safety, and when there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralise the threat. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights intervened with a memorandum supporting Al-Aulaqi senior’s complaint.

The Columbia District Court found that plaintiff Al-Aulaqi, the father, had neither legal standing in court for his claims, nor that was the claim justiciable under the Alien Tort Statute. And if this was not enough, the Court also ruled that the political question doctrine barred it from adjudicating the case. On 7 December 2010, Nasser Al-Aulaqi’s complaint was dismissed on those grounds, while the defendants’ motion to dismiss was granted.

Anwar Al-Aulaqi was killed by a drone strike in Yemen on 30 September 2011.

On 11 April 2000, a Belgian investigating judge of the Brussels Tribunal of First Instance issued an arrest warrant in absentia against the incumbent Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Abdulaye Yerodia Ndombasi, charging him with offences constituting grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions I–IV (1949); Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol I (1977); Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol II (1977), and crimes against humanity. In the warrant, Mr Yerodia was accused of inciting racial hatred in various speeches in the DRC in August 1998, which had contributed to the massacre of several hundred persons and, thus, he was charged as perpetrator or co-perpetrator of these crimes. The arrest warrant, which asked States to arrest, detain, and extradite Mr Yerodia to Belgium, was transmitted to the DRC in June 2000 and simultaneously circulated internationally through Interpol. On 14 February 2002, the International Court of Justice ruled that the issuance and circulation of the arrest warrant violated Belgium’s international obligations towards the DRC in that Belgium failed to respect, and infringed, Mr Yerodia’s immunity as Minister for Foreign Affairs and the inviolability enjoyed by him under international law. The Court required Belgium to cancel the arrest warrant and inform as such the authorities to whom it was circulated.