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Anton Lelan Sufa, Agostinho Cloe, Agostino Cab, Lazarus Fuli, Lino Beno, Anton Lelan Simao and Domingos Metan were members of the ‘Sakunar’ militia, which was organised and controlled by the Armed Forces of the Republic of Indonesia (AFRI), operating within East Timor in 1999 to terrorize civilians who supported East Timor’s independence from Indonesia. The leader of the “Sakunar” militia for Bebo village was Anton Lelan Sufa. On 16 September 1999, in the village of Netensuan, Anton Lelan Sufa ordered the co-accused to attack Anton Beto, Leonardo Anin and Francisco Beto, civilians who supported independence. Anton Beto and Leonardo Anin were both killed by militia members, and Francisco Beto was tied up and severely beaten for about half an hour. These acts were part of a country-wide campaign of violence to intimidate and punish independence supporters.

All men were indicted with murder and inhumane acts as crimes against humanity. Lelan Sufa was charged with multiple forms of liability for these acts, namely both individual responsibility and superior responsibility, because he had ordered the acts. The Court held that Anton Lelan Sufa bears both individual as superior responsibility with regard to the crime of murder as crime against humanity. With regard to the inhumane acts as crime against humanity, he bears superior responsibility by failing to prevent the crime and to punish his subordinates while he had effective control over the militia members, individual responsibility by ordering the crime and individual responsibility by committing the crime.

All accused entered guilty pleas and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 4 to 7 years. 

Eleven Guantanamo detainees petitioned for habeas corpus, claiming that their continued detention without a right to judicial review was unlawful.

The Court partly agreed with the detainees. While they are not US citizens, they are being held under control of the US government. The fact that Guantanamo Bay is conveniently placed outside US sovereign territory does not change this. Hence, Guantanamo detainees have the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law, a fundamental constitutional right. This right had been violated, and the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) procedures were found unconstitutional. And regarding alleged Taliban fighters, the Court held that they are state forces - regular soldiers or combatants - and should therefore receive prisoner of war-status and -protection under the Third Geneva Convention. Where they had not received such protection without proper reasons, their detention was illegal.

All other claims (based on the Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment and the Alien Tort Claims Act) were rejected, they were inapplicable on the current cases.

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni national, was arrested in Pakistan together with other Yemeni citizens as part of a dragnet seizure of Yemeni nationals in 2001 and 2002. They were transferred to the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay (Cuba) in January 2002. In 2004, the Petitioners filed for writs of habeas corpus (a legal action requiring a court to determine the legality of the detention of an arrested person).

After partially rejecting a motion to dismiss submitted by the government of the United States, the District Court stayed the proceedings in order to give the possibility to the Petitioners to appeal the decision. In the meantime, the Petitioners filed for a preliminary injunction (which is a court order requiring a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts), requiring the US government to provide a 30 days’ notice of any intention to remove the Petitioners from the Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay (Cuba).

The District Court granted the motion, after being satisfied that a four-part test was fulfilled. This test required the Court to balance four relevant factors, namely: (a) the irreparable injury to the Petitioners in the absence of the injunction; (b) the likelihood of success of the habeas corpus motion; (c) the harm to the US government; and (d) the public interest.

The District Court ruled that the US government must give the lawyers of the detainees 30 days’ notice before transferring a detainee from Guantánamo Bay to the custody of foreign governments in order to allow the transfer to be challenged. 

The decision is the first of its kind in France to hold accountable the French State and the national railway company, the SNCF, for complicity in the deportation of Jewish individuals during World War II. The case was brought by the Lipietz family who sought damages for the prejudice they suffered as a result of being deported from the city of Pau in southern France to the internment camp at Drancy, near Paris in 1944. They argued that the State and the SNCF were responsible because their deportation was conducted with the assistance of the SNCF and with the approval of the Home Secretary.

The Administrative Tribunal of Toulouse held that both the French state and the SNCF were complicit in the deportation of the claimants, having committed egregious errors and were accordingly fined a total of 62,000 Euros.