Search results

During the outbreak of violence before, during and after the referendum on independence of East Timor from Indonesia, Marculino Soares was a Besi Merah Putih (BMP) militia commander from the village of Guico, in the district of Liquiça. The BMP militia was an anti-independence militia. On 17 April 1999, the house of Manuel Carrascalão, a pro-independence leader, was attacked, resulting in the death of 12 persons, and serious injuries to 9 others. On that day, Marculino Saores had ordered his men to go to a rally in Dili, from where the attack was launched. The group led by Marculino Soares joined the attack. Marculino Soares was indicted on 25 July 2003 by the Special Panel for Serious Crimes for participating in the attack, and charged with crimes against humanity, on the basis of individual and command responsibility.

The Court found that it had been proven that Marculino Soares personally participated in the organization and execution of the attack. Marculino Soares was convicted of crimes against humanity (murder, other inhumane acts and persecution) and sentenced to 15 years in prison (13 for the count of murder and 2 years for the count of other inhumane acts).

On 28 April 2005, Trial Chamber III of the ICTR sentenced Mikaeli Muhimana to imprisonment for the remainder of his life. The Trial Chamber found Muhimana, a former conseiller of Gishyita Sector in Kibuye prefecture, guilty on three counts: genocide, rape as a crime against humanity and murder as a crime against humanity.

The Chamber found Muhimana guilty of murdering several Tutsi civilians, including a pregnant woman whom he had disembowelled in order to see what the foetus looked like. The Chamber found that Muhimana’s active participation in the decapitation of Assiel Kabanda, and the subsequent public display of his severed head also constituted an aggravating factor. The Accused was found criminally liable for committing and abetting rapes as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Tutsi civilian population. He had personally raped several Tutsi women in his home and at other locations. He also raped a girl whom he believed to be Tutsi, and apologized to her when he later found out that she was, in fact, Hutu.

In April 1994, in the days following the death of President Habyarimana, thousands of Tutsi civilians in Gikongoro prefecture in southern Rwanda fled their homes following attacks by Hutu militiamen. They sought sanctuary at places such as Kibeho Parish, Cyanika Parish, Murambi Technical School and Kaduha Parish. Hutu militiamen assisted by local officials and gendarmes launched attacks against them resulting in the death of a large number of Tutsi civilians.

The Accused, Aloys Simba, was a retired lieutenant colonel and former member of parliament. The Prosecution contended that Simba was one of the principal architects of these massacres, and therefore charged him with genocide (Count 1), complicity in genocide (Count 2), and extermination (Count 3) and murder (Count 3) as crimes against humanity. At the close of the trial, the Prosecution withdrew the charges of complicity in genocide and of murder as a crime against humanity.

On 13 December 2005, Trial Chamber I of the ICTR found Simba guilty of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity for his participation in the aforementioned massacres and sentenced him to 25 years of imprisonment.    

Frans Cornelis Adrianus van Anraat was a Dutch businessman who, from 1984 until 1988, purchased large quantities of the chemical thiodiglycol from the United States and Japan. This chemical was then sold, through a number of different companies located in different countries, to Saddam Hussein’s government of Iraq. After 1984, Van Anraat was the government’s sole supplier of the chemical. The chemical is a key component in the manufacture of mustard gas and was in fact used for this purpose by Hussein’s government who then proceeded to employ the gas in attacks against Iranian military and civilians in the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. The effect was devastating, thousands of individuals were killed and many thousands more were injured with long-term effects including blindness and cancer.

The present case before the District Court of The Hague was brought by the Dutch Prosecutor against Van Anraat, a chemicals dealer who sold thiodiglycol to Saddam Hussein’s regime, which was used in the production of mustard gas. He was acquitted of the charge of complicity to genocide because it was not proven that at the time Van Anraat knew that the chemical would be used for the destruction of the Kurdish population. He was, however, convicted of complicity in war crimes and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.

Abduladhim Maktouf is a businessman with Iraqi-Bosnian roots. After investigations had started in 2004 with regard to economic crimes, the Bosnian prosecution discovered that he might have been involved in war crimes committed by the Al Mujahid armed group that formed part of the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the armed conflict against the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), the army of the Bosnian Croats, during the early nineties. In 2005, an indictment was issued, alleging that Maktouf had facilitated the Al Mujahid by transporting them, while they were about to take a number of civilians as hostages in order to exchange them with the HVO for earlier captured Al Mujahid fighters, in his van towards the crime scene as well as assisting them in the actual hostage-taking and the subsequent ritual beheading of one of the hostages.

The first instance panel of the Court found that he had been guilty as accessory to the hostage-taking and sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment; his involvement in the beheading was not established, though. Both defence and prosecution appealed. After a partial retrial was ordered because the evidence was wrongly assessed in first instance, the Appellate Panel ruled on 4 April 2006 in the same manner as the first instance panel had done: Maktouf was found guilty of a war crime against civilians, and he again received a five-year prison sentence.