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Maurice Papon was a civil servant in Occupied France during World War II holding the position of Secretary-General of the Gironde prefecture.

The Assize Court of Gironde – a criminal trial court hearing cases of defendants accused with the most serious crimes – convicted Papon of complicity in crimes against humanity, sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment and ordered him to pay a sum in excess of 700 000 Euros in damages to the victims admitted as civil parties to the criminal proceedings. Papon brought his case before the Conseil d’Etat­ – France’s highest administrative court – on the grounds that French law provides that, where the State is also at fault in the events that lead to the civil servant’s conviction, then the State shall pay a portion of the damages to which the civil servant was sentenced.

In the present case, the Conseil d’Etat found that a personal fault attached to Papon himself for actively assisting in the arrest, internment and eventual deportation of Jewish individuals in Gironde from 1942 until 1944 but that the French administration was also at fault, independent of Papon’s actions, by adopting measures that would facilitate the deportation. Consequently, the Conseil d’Etat ordered the State to pay half of the damages.

Indonesia’s illegal occupation of East Timor from 1975 until 2002 was characterised by the perpetration of a number of attacks against the civilian population, particularly those suspected of being pro-independence supporters.

One such attack occurred on the village of Lourbs in September 1999 when members of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) and various militias burnt down homes, and wounded and killed a number of persons. In the course of this attack, a young girl was abducted by TNI soldiers and stabbed through the back; her mother was shot through leg as she attempted to save her. The Prosecution alleged that the Accused, Paulino de Jesus, was responsible for the murder of the little girl and indirectly for the wounding of her mother although he is not alleged to have fired the shot.

The Special Panels for Serious Crimes acquitted De Jesus on the grounds that the witness evidence did not establish with sufficient certainty either that he was present in the village at the time of the attack, or that he was the author of the charged crimes. 

Maurice Papon was a civil servant in Occupied France during World War II holding the position of Secretary-General of the Gironde prefecture.

The Assize Court of Gironde – a criminal trial court hearing cases of defendants accused with the most serious crimes – convicted Papon of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment for having aided and abetted the unlawful arrest and detention of hundreds of Jewish persons from 1942 until 1944, who were eventually deported and exterminated at Auschwitz.

Papon appealed the conviction but the Court of Cassation held that Papon had forfeited his rights to appeal when, instead of surrendering himself to the custody of the Court as he was legally obliged to do, he fled to Switzerland. Following a decision of the European Court of Human Rights condemning France for having breached Papon’s right of access to a court by holding that he had forfeited such right, Papon sought and obtained the re-examination of his appeal by the Court of Cassation, the highest judicial body in France. The Court dismissed the appeal and confirmed the decision of the Assize Court, rendering irreversible Papon’s conviction. Papon died three years later.

In 2002, two human rights organisations filed a petition against Israel’s policy to eliminate alleged terrorists by targeted killings. Four years later, the Supreme Court provided a judgment. It acknowledged that Israel is engaged in an armed conflict with terrorist organisations and that therefore, the laws of war should apply. Terrorists, the Court reasoned, are neither combatants nor civilians in the legal sense. The Supreme Court therefore qualified the alleged terrorists as ‘non-legal combatants’. This does not mean, however, that killing these non-legal combatants is always legal. Nor is this always illegal. The Court establishes a framework with four conditions which have to be applied on a case-to-case basis to determine the (il)legality of a targeted killing. The Court reasoned that a targeted killing is only legal if the decision to kill is 1) based on reliable evidence, 2) if there are no other choices to alleviate the danger to Israel’s national security, 3) if the attack is followed by a thorough investigation and 4) if harm to innocent bystanders is limited to the absolute minimum.

In this second-instance verdict, the Appellate Division upheld the first-instance verdict and found the accused Mladen Blagojević guilty of crimes against humanity. The Division sentenced him to seven years of  imprisonment. The other three accused, Zdravko Božić, Zoran Živanović and Željko Zarić, were acquitted.