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Marić: Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Zoran Marić

First instance verdict, 29 Oct 2009, Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Section I for War Crimes, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Zoran Marić, a former soldier in the Army of Republika Srpska, was indicted by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) on suspicion of involvement in war crimes committed in 1992, during the armed conflict between the Army of Republika Srpska and, on the other hand, BiH and the Croatian Defense Council (HVO). Marić was charged with co-perpetration – together with fellow soldiers – of torture, inhumane treatment and murder of Bosniak civilians. Although he initially pleaded not guilty, he came to a plea agreement with the prosecutor, pleading guilty to the crimes he was indicted for. The Court of BiH, after evaluating the evidence, found the agreement acceptable and sentenced Marić to fifteen years’ imprisonment.


Kouwenhoven: The Public Prosecutor v. Guus Kouwenhoven

Judgment, 20 Apr 2010, Supreme Court, The Netherlands

The accused, Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven, was suspected of involvement in smuggling arms to Liberia (through his Liberian-based timber factories) during the Second Liberian Civil War - in violation of UN arms trade bans - and accomodating/complicity in the numerous war crimes that were committed with these weapons. He was taken into custody by the Dutch police in 2005, and put on trial.

Although the Court of First Instance found him guilty of arms smuggling (but quashed the war crimes charges), the Court of Appeal later found that he could not be convicted for any of the charges due to lack of evidence. The prosecution appealed and ultimately the Supreme Court found that the Court of Appeal had erred by not properly motivating its decision not to allow an examining judge to assess whether two anonymous witnesses - who were allegedly very close to Kouwenhoven and Charles Taylor, and therefore key to the prosecution's case - should be admitted as protected witnesses, could be provided a protected witness-status so as to testify in the case. The appeals judgment was declared null and void and the case was referred to another Court of Appeals.

The case is currently still before the Court of Appeal: due to the case being assessed anew on all facts and evidence, an enormous amount of requests relating to the admission of (new) evidence has been filed.


Mohamed v. Dataplan: Binyam Mohamed, Abou Elkassim Britel, Ahmed Agiza, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, Bisher Al-Rawi, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., Defendant-Appellee, and the United States of America, Intervenor-Appellee

Opinion, 8 Sep 2010, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, United States

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a claim against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing, on behalf of five individuals from Iraq, Yemen, Ethiopia, Italy and Egypt. The plaintiffs alleged that they had been victims of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme – covert operations whereby individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism were secretly detained, transferred all over the world by “black flights” and taken to “black sites” or secret prisons where they were tortured for years. The role of Jeppesen – a company specialised in the aviation sector, providing navigational information, crew and fleet management solutions, and other services in the sector – in this practice was, allegedly, that the company facilitated the CIA’s black flights, inter alia,by providing airports with false flight plans to conceal all information about the aircrafts.

In first instance, after the U.S. government intervened in the case on the side of Jeppesen, the claim was dismissed immediately as the California District Court found that the state secret doctrine prevented it from reviewing the case. This judgment was partly revoked in appeal when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that defendants had not properly proven that the state secret doctrine was applicable; the case was remanded for rehearing, though. Ultimately, in its 6-5 majority decision of 8 September 2010, the full bench of the Appeals Court ruled that in the current case the state secret doctrine indeed applied, concluding that ruling in the case would be impossible due to substantial information being “privileged” or non-disclosable. Therefore, the plaintiffs’ claim was dismissed.


Kovać: Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Ante Kovać

Verdict (Second Instance), 12 Nov 2010, Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Section I for War Crimes, Appellate Division, Bosnia and Herzegovina


John Doe v. Exxon Mobil: John Doe et al. v. Exxon Mobil Corporation et al.

Decision, 8 Jul 2011, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, United States

Several villagers from Aceh, Indonesia, filed a civil suit against oil and gas company Exxon Mobil. They argued that the company carried responsibility for human rights violations committed by Indonesian security forces by hiring these forces and because Exxon Mobil knew or should have known that human rights violations were being committed.

In an appeal against two previous rulings in this case, plaintiffs held that they should be allowed to sue Exxon for violations of the law of nations and for violations of state law. The question whether they were allowed to sue for violations of the law of nations hinged primarily on whether corporations can be sued for these violations and whether it is possible to sue for aiding-and-abetting international crimes. These questions were for the most part answered in the affirmative. The question whether they were allowed to sue for violations of state law hinged primarily on the question whether non-resident aliens could even bring a case before the Court. The Court stated that there was no absolute bar for non-residents aliens to sue and that this question had to be answered case-by-case. The Court of Appeals referred the case back to the District Court for further assessment.      


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