Search results

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.

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. 

Under the authoritarian regime of Major General Barre in Somalia, the Somali Armed Forces perpetrated a number of human rights abuses against the Somali civilian population, in particular against members of the Isaaq clan.

The petitioners, all members of the Isaaq clan, allege that in the 1980s and 1990s they suffered ill-treatment at the hands of the Somali military including acts of rape, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention. They instituted a civil complaint against Mohamed Ali Samantar, the-then Minister of Defence and later Prime Minister of Somalia on the basis of the Torture Victims Protection Act.

The District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed the claim for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on the grounds that Samantar enjoys immunity from proceedings before courts of the United States by virtue of his function as a State official at the relevant time under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. This decision is the first in a line of proceedings that culminated in November 2012 by which the plaintiffs, victims of the regime, sought damages for the harm they suffered. 

Between 2004 and 2008, Italian courts had issued a number of judgments in which plaintiffs, victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the German Reich during WWII, were awarded damages against Germany.

Ultimately, in 2008, Germany filed an application instituting proceedings against Italy before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), arguing that "[i]n recent years, Italian judicial bodies have repeatedly disregarded the jurisdictional immunity of Germany as a sovereign State", thus violating international law. Italy disagreed, stating that the underlying acts were violations of jus cogens and therefore gave it the right to strip Germany from its immunity. Greece joined the proceedings as one of the Italian judgments concerned a declaration of enforcability by an Italian court of a Greek judgment that ordered Germany to pay compensation to victims of the Distomo massacre (in Greece). This declaration led to measures of constraint on German property in Italy.

The Court rejected Italy's claims and fully agreed with Germany's points. State immunity is part of customary international law, and the fact that the underlying acts (the WWII crimes) were violations of jus cogens did not deprive Germany from its jurisdictional immunity.

Importantly, though, the Court notes that while the current judgment confirms jurisdictional immunity of states, this does not in any way alter the possibility to hold individuals criminally responsible for certain acts.