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In November 1993, Senad Ahmetašević, former member of a National Defense unit in Bosnia and Herzegovina, killed a prisoner of war in the Omica Brdo region. On 13 March 2007, the Minister of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina requested the extradition of Ahmetašević who resided in the Netherlands at the time. Ahmetašević opposed the extradition. On 5 June 2009, the District Court of The Hague approved the request for extradition. The Court held that the requirements for extradition were met and that there was no fear that Ahmetašević would not enjoy fair trial rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was arrested in July 2004 in Pakistan and transferred to the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) in September 2006. He was charged with terrorism and war crimes (among other) in connection with the 1998 attacks on the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. In June 2009, Ghailani became the first prisoner of Guantanamo Bay to be transferred to the United States for prosecution.

In November 2009, Ghailani’s lawyers filed a motion for dismissal of the case of his case arguing that the nearly five years that Ghailani spent in secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment.

In July 2010, the District Court found that Ghailani’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial was not violated becase, considering all circumstances, the delay did not infringe upon any interest protected by this constitutional right.

On 1 December 2003, Trial Chamber II of the ICTR delivered its judgment on the case against Juvénal Kajelijeli, former bourgmestre (mayor) of Mukingo. In its verdict on the 11-count indictment, the Tribunal found him guilty on three counts: genocide (count 2); direct and public incitement to commit genocide (count 4); and, extermination as a crime against humanity (count 6).

He was sentenced for genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity with imprisonment for the remainder of his life, and with 15 years imprisonment for direct and public incitement to commit genocide. The sentences would be served concurrently. He was given credit of five years, five months and 25 days for time already spent in custody.

The Accused was acquitted of the following three counts: conspiracy to commit genocide (count 1); rape as a crime against humanity (count 7); and other inhumane acts of crimes against humanity (count 9). Earlier, on 13 September 2002, following a Defence motion, the Tribunal found that the Accused was not guilty of the two counts of war crimes—i.e. the charge of violence to life, health and physical or mental well-being of persons (count 10); and causing outrages upon personal dignity (count 11). 

On 25 February 2010 the ICTR delivered its judgment on the case of Ephrem Setako, a former senior Rwandan military officer. Lieutenant Colonel Ephrem Setako was the head of the division of legal affairs at the Ministry of Defence in Kigali in 1994. The Prosecution charged him with six counts: genocide or complicity in genocide, murder and extermination as crimes against humanity, serious violations (violence to life and pillage) of common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II, for his role in the attacks against Tutsis in Ruhengeri and Kigali.

The Trial Chamber found Setako guilty of genocide, extermination as a crime against humanity and violence to life as a war crime for ordering the killings of between 30 to 40 ethnic Tutsi refugees at Mukamira military camp on 25 April 1994 and the death of nine or 10 Tutsis on 11 May 1994. The Chamber imposed on Setako a sentence of 25 years of imprisonment.

Al Bahlul is a Yemeni national that has been imprisoned at the United States Detention Camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, since 2002. After over a decade of legal proceedings related to his role as a media and propaganda secretary in al Qaeda and his involvement in the 2000 Bombing of U.S.S. Cole and the 9/11 Attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, USA, the D.C. Circuit Court rejected his appeal for resentencing and upheld his life sentence.

While Al Bahlul’s legal team argued that the lower courts and the Military Commission failed to adequately reconsider his sentencing after his initial 2008 convictions were appealed and evidence of potential torture was introduced, the D.C. Circuit disagreed. It held that the CMCR adequately considered the appropriate sentence for the conspiracy conviction and that evidence on the grounds of torture was inadmissible because regulations on admissible evidence were stricter at the time of Bahlul’s original sentencing and he should have made that claim in the previous decade of appeals.