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Under the authoritarian regime of Major General Barre in Somalia, the Somali Armed Forces perpetrated a number of human rights abuses against the Somali civilian population, in particular against members of the Isaaq clan.

The petitioners, all members of the Isaaq clan, allege that in the 1980s and 1990s they suffered ill-treatment at the hands of the Somali military including acts of rape, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention. They instituted a civil complaint against Mohamed Ali Samantar, the-then Minister of Defence and later Prime Minister of Somalia on the basis of the Torture Victims Protection Act.

The District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed the claim for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on the grounds that Samantar enjoys immunity from proceedings before courts of the United States by virtue of his function as a State official at the relevant time under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed this decision, arguing that the FSIA is not applicable to individuals, and even if it were, the individual in question would have to be a government official at the time of proceedings commencing against him.

By the present decision, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Court of Appeals: the FSIA is not applicable to individuals so Samantar does not enjoy immunity from the present proceedings by virtue of it. Consequently, proceedings against him can continue. 

On 19 February 2009, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)’s Appellate Panel issued a second instance verdict in the case against Željko Lelek. In first instance, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity because, while performing the duties of a police officer in Višegrad, he committed unlawful imprisonment, torture and rapes, and participated in the forcible transfer of the population during a widespread and systematic attack directed by the Serb army, police and paramilitary forces against the Bosniak civilian population in the area of the Višegrad municipality in April-June 1992. The verdict was in large part upheld; the sentence, however, was increased in second instance from 13 to 16 years’ imprisonment, as the Appellate Panel attached greater weight to the aggravating circumstance of Lelek’s ruthlessness and insensitivity towards the victims.

This case revolved around three individuals who were working in prison camps during the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia in 1992: Željko Mejakić, Chief of Security of Omarska Camp; Momčilo Gruban, leader of one of three guard shifts at Omarska camp;Dušan Fuštar, leader of one of three guard shifts in Keraterm camp; and Duško Kneževic, who held no official position at any of the camps, but who regularly entered the camps at will, assumedly in search of information about the person who had killed his brother during the war. All four men were initially indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia for charges of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, torture and other inhumane acts. However, in 2006, they were transferred to Bosnia and Herzegovina to be tried there.

After the case was separated into two, Fuštar, in his own case, entered into a plea agreement with the prosecution and received a nine year sentence. The other three were still tried together. The Trial Panel found them guilty and sentenced Mejakić to 21 years’ imprisonment, Kneževic to 31 years and Gruban to eleven years. They appealed against their conviction; the Appellate Panel partly granted their appeal, but mostly for insignificant parts, leading to Mejakić’s and Kneževic’s conviction and sentence to be upheld. With regard to Gruban, however, the Appellate Panel found that the first instance verdict did not properly take into consideration the mitigating factors – namely, that Gruban had in several instances helped detained people in order to at least alleviate their suffering – and reduced his sentence to seven years.

What happens if a country suspects a national of another country of being involved in the murder of one of its officials? In many cases, the former country will request an extradition of the suspect. But what happens if the latter country refuses?

In this case, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, having lost one of its own at the hands of a Mexican drug cartel, took matters in its own hands and forcibly abducted one of the suspects, Humberto Alvarez—Machain. In the United States, he was indicted for participation in kidnapping and murder. The District Court established that the forcible abduction stood in the way of Alvarez-Machain’s trial in the United States. The Court of Appeals, relying on previous case law, agreed. It established that forcible abduction violated the extradition treaty between the US and Mexico. According to the Court of Appeals, this conclusion was substantiated by official Mexican protests against the abduction.

Dragoje Paunović was born on 19 June 1954 in the town of Mojkovac in northern Montenegro. Paunović was a senior officer of a small military formation attached to the Battalion of Rogatica, a battalion part of the Bosnian Serb Army. In the period May to September 1992, attacks were carried out by military and police forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina and by Serbian paramilitary formations against the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) living in the municipality of Rogatica. On 15 August 1992,  Paunović used 27 Bosniaks as protection during a clash between the army of the Republika Srpska and the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosniaks were detained in the Rasadnik detention camp in Rogatica, and later driven to the town of Jacen in Rogatica where 24 of them were subsequently killed under the orders of Paunović. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found Paunović guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.