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In the present case, the Court refused the appeals filed by both the Prosecutor’s Office and the aggrieved party Anđa Obradović and upheld the first instance verdict of 29 June 2009. In this verdict, the accused Ferid Hodžić was acquitted of the charges for war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war in the period between May 1992 and 26 January 1993 taking place in the municipality of Vlasenica.

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.

General Efraín Ríos Montt was a former head of state of Guatemala.

In 2007, Montt was elected for a seat in the Congress. In 2012, his term of office as a member of the Congress came to an end. As a result, his immunity (heads of states are given protection from being suit without their consent) was lifted. Complaints were brought against Ríos Montt for crimes that resulted in the deaths of 1,771 indigenous Ixil people during his 17-month rule.

On 10 May 2013, Ríos Montt was found guilty of crimes committed against the indigenous Mayan population between 1960 and 1996 and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. On 20 May 2013, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court annulled the decision and set back the trial to the proceedings of 19 April 2013.

Ríos Montt is the first former head of state to be convicted of genocide by a court in his own country.

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. 

Hissène Habré was the President of the Republic of Chad from 1982 until 1990. During that time, he established a brutal dictatorship which, through its political police, the Bureau of Documentation and Security (Direction de la Documentation et de la Sécurité (DDS)), caused the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals. Habré as well as members of the DDS, and its specialised branch the Special Rapid Action Brigade (Brigade Spéciale d'Intervention Rapide (BSIR)) were named in complaints filed by victims of the regime before the Court of First Instance in N’Djaména.

The Court held, however, that in light of an ordinance establishing a special criminal court of justice to try Habré and the other officials of the regime, it had no jurisdiction to proceed with the case or admit the complaints of the parties. This decision is the first in a long line of case-law spanning proceedings in Chad, Senegal, Belgium and The Netherlands attempting to bring Habré to justice.