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Stojan Perković was born on 3 October 1944 in the village of Lađevina located in the municipality of Rogatica. Between June and December 1992, Perković was Commander in the army of the so-called Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (VRS). In that position, he committed crimes, including murder, beatings, and rape, against non-Serb civilians in the villages of Surovi, Mesici and Varosiste in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moreover, Perković did not punish the members of his unit for participating in the commission of those crimes. On 24 December 2009, Perković was found guilty for the crimes and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al Odah was captured in Afghanistan for his involvement with the Taliban. Since 2002, Al Odah has been detained at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba). He filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus (a legal action allowing the detained person to challenge the legality of his detention) in May 2002. In 2008, the Supreme Court in the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States, considered that US federal courts have jurisdiction to hear petitions of habeas corpus. The District Court denied Al Odah’s petition on the grounds that the evidence adduced by the US Government was enough to permit his detention. 

Al Odah appealed the District Court’s judgment raising challenges with respect to the procedure admitting evidence as well as the sufficiency of evidence to support that he was part of the al Qaeda and Taliban forces.

The Court of Appeals dismissed both grounds of appeal since it did not find any errors either in the District Court’s procedure on admitting evidence or in the sufficiency of the evidence presented by the US Government. In this light, the Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of Al Odah’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Mr. Roy M. Belfast, Jr. (“Charles Taylor Jr.”), the first individual to be prosecuted under the Torture Act and the son of Former Liberian President and convicted war criminal Charles Taylor, was arrested and indicted in Florida, U.S., in December 2006 following a joint Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) / Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation.

In the indictment, Belfast was charged for his role in numerous acts of torture and other atrocities in Liberia between 1999 and 2003 while he was the commander of the States Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU). After hearing evidence from multiple witnesses describing the torture that the defendant had subjected them to, a jury convicted him on all counts and he was sentenced to 97 years in prison.

In 2010, he appealed that conviction before the United States Eleventh Circuit, arguing that Congress impermissibly expanded the prohibitions of the Convention Against Torture (CAT) through the Torture Act and that the Torture Act and U.S. firearms Statutes, under which he was convicted, could not apply to acts committed in Liberia before Liberia became a State Party to the CAT.

The Court rejected all of his arguments and upheld the conviction, finding that the U.S. Torture Act validly enacted CAT and he was convicted in line with the Constitution.

On 14 February 2005, a bomb in downtown Beirut exploded, killing 22 people, including the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon was established by the Security Council in order to prosecute persons responsible for the bombing.

In its interlocutory decision, the Appeals Chamber interpreted the STL Statute to require application of substantive Lebanese law as applied by Lebanese courts, but not before noting that binding international obligations, including customary international law, should inform any such interpretation. The Appeals Chamber held, inter alia, that not only does a customary rule exists between states to suppress terrorist act, but that terrorism is an individual international crime under customary law.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon Appeals Chamber examined state practice and binding international covenants to assert that the crime of terrorism is “commonly accepted at the international level.” As such, the Chamber derived the key components in formulating a general definition of terrorism: (1) the perpetration of a criminal act; (2) the intent to spread fear among the population or coerce a national or international authority to take some action; (3) and the act involves a transnational element.  For the first time, a tribunal of international character has established the existence of a customary rule of international law recognizing an international crime of terrorism in times of peace.

Radoje Lalović was born on 15 July 1946 in the municipality of Kalinovik, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the period between early May and mid-December 1992, Lalović was a warden at the Butmir Correctional and Penal Facility (KPD) in Kula, the Sarajevo municipality of Ilidža, which mostly functioned as a detention camp.

Soniboj Škiljević was born on 14 August 1948 in Izgori in the municipality of Gacko, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Škiljević served as a deputy warden at the Butmir Correctional and Penal Facility (KPD) in Kula, also in the period between early May and mid-December 1992.

Lalović and Škiljević were responsible for the functioning of the Butmir KPD and the actions of its guards. In 2001, they were not found guilty of charges that they, inter alia, ordered the killings, imprisonment, and torture of the detainees held at the Butmir KPD. Lalović and Škiljević were neither found guilty of the charges that even though they knew that the crimes were taking place, they did not prevent them or did punish the perpetrators.