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On 15 September 2011, while on patrol in the Helmand Province in Afghanistan, UK Marines Sergeant Alexander Blackman and his men were on patrol. They found a Taliban insurgent who had been seriously wounded (lawfully) by an Apache helicopter, and as such formed no longer a threat. After removing his AK47, magazines and a grenade, Blackman caused him to be moved to a place where you wanted to be out of sight of his operational headquarters at Shazad so that "PGSS can’t see what we’re doing to him". He ordered those of his men giving some first aid to stop, and when he was sure headquarters could not see him, he discharged a 9mm round into his chest from close range. He then told his patrol to remain silent about what happened, saying that he had just broken the Geneva Convention.

Taking into consideration Blackman's superior position as sergeant (under command of the patrol) and the consequences his acts could have for other British soldiers - namely possible reprisals - the Court found Blackman guilty of murder in violation of the laws of war (a war crime). He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a possibility for parole after ten years, stripped of his ranks and dismissed from service with disgrace.

On 27 January 2015, the Hague Court of Appeal convicted Omar H. for training for terrorism and making preparations to commit arson and/or an explosion. Thus, the Appeals Court agreed with the District Court of Rotterdam that Omar H. had prepared to commit arson and/or an explosion. However, it distanced itself from the District Court’s finding that Omar H. had not trained for terrorism as, according to the District Court, his actions could not be considered as “training”. On the contrary, the Hague Court of Appeal decided that training for terrorism had to be interpreted broadly. Researching how to make bombs online, and buying items to make explosive devices in light of Omar H’s interest in jihad and travel to Syria were sufficient to prove he had trained himself to commit a terrorist crime. Omar H. was sentenced in total to 18 months’ imprisonment by the Court of Appeal.  

On 22 July 2015, Burcu T., a Dutch national, was found guilty of violating the 1977 Dutch Sanction Law by transferring just over €2000 to an intermediary in Turkey as she ought to know the money would end up in the hands of terrorist groups. Burcu T. had been engaged to [T], who had informed her he was a member of the Taliban, and the court found that she ought to have known it was likely that the money she transferred would go to jihadist groups. In the same judgment, Burcu T. was acquitted of participating in a terrorist organisation due to a lack of adequate proof; the fact that the defendant was in a relationship with a terrorist and that she possessed documents, photos and videos linked to the jihad did not mean that she was a terrorist herself. She was sentenced to six months of imprisonment.

Following his initial conviction in December 2014, Maher H., the first convicted returning Dutch ‘foreign fighter’, was convicted again on 7 July 2016 and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment by the Court of Appeal in The Hague. Maher H., who the Court determined supported the jihad, had travelled to Syria in 2013, where he participated in the armed conflict. The Court found him guilty of: preparing to commit terrorist crimes, including murder and manslaughter; training for terrorism; and disseminating inciting materials, including via sharing videos, documents and posting a photo on social media. In contrast to his initial verdict, Maher H was found guilty of training for terrorism as he had, inter alia, acquired outdoor wear, searched the internet for information about the jihad and participated in the armed conflict. The Court of Appeal did find that these acts had a strong enough link to terrorist training. In contrast to the District Court’s judgment, it did not address the fact that this criminalisation could also potentially lead to the acts that constitute preparing to commit murder and/or manslaughter being punished twice. Similarly, the Court of Appeal disagreed with the District Court as it held that the uploading of pictures of jihadi flags did not constitute a direct or indirect call to commit terrorist crimes.

The Zadar County Court of Croatia, in its verdict of 24 April 1997, convicted in absentia 19 officers of the so-called Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) for the siege of the city of Zadar, which caused the death of at least 30 civilians and the destruction of significant parts of the city – including facilities and objects of large economic and cultural significance – without any military necessity to do so. The officers were found guilty of war crimes against civilians and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to prison sentences that ranged – depending on their military rank and degree of control over the campaign and, specifically, the targeting of unlawful targets – from ten to 20 years. However, as they had left Croatia before the initial indictment, the convicted persons have not yet been caught.