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Reynaldo Bignone, born in 1928, was the de facto president of Argentina from 1982 to 1983 and the last dictator to hold power in the country. As such, he was appointed by the military junta and sought to impose amnesty laws for perpetrators of gross human rights violations before transferring power to the democratically elected Raul Alfonsin. Nevertheless, in 2005 the Argentinean Supreme Court overturned these amnesties and opened the way for prosecutions of those involved in the country’s 1976-1983 “Dirty War”. Since then, Reynaldo Bignone was charged and convicted of crimes against humanity in several trials on the basis of his involvement in the Dirty War. 

In the current case, Bignone was sentenced to life imprisonment for his participation in 20 cases of illegal deprivation of liberty, robbery, torture and murder.

On 26 February 2015, Syrian citizen Mouhannad Droubi was sentenced by the Södertörn District Court in Sweden to five years in prison for crimes against international law (war crime) and gross assault. Droubi, who fought for the Free Syrian Army against the pro-government forces in the Syrian conflict, had taken refuge in Sweden and was granted residency in 2013. In July 2014, the Swedish police discovered a video of him, along with at least five other FSA fighters, violently assaulting a man who appeared to be a pro-regime fighter with a truncheon and a whip. The decision was overturned several times on appeal, leading to the final judgment of 5 August 2016 in which the accused was sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment.    

Case 002/01 concerns the charges of crimes against humanity against Khieu Samphan, former Head of State of Democratic Kampuchea and Nuon Chea, former Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, committed during the forced evacuation of Cambodians to labour camps and for the executions that occurred at Tuol Po Chrey. On 7 August 2014, the Trial Chamber found both accused guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment. Both the Prosecution and Defence appealed the decision. 

The Supreme Court Chamber on 23 November 2016 issued an appeals judgement reversing some of the convictions and affirming the rest. At issue in the appeal was whether the Trial Chamber correctly defined the elements of the murder and extermination crimes against humanity. The Supreme Court Chamber affirmed the murder definition and charges, while finding that extermination requires that the accused had the direct intent to kill on a large scale. Under this definition, the Chamber reversed the convictions for the crime of extermination. The Chamber found insufficient evidence to support convictions as there were too few witnesses to support key facts beyond a reasonable doubt. Even with this reversal, the Supreme Court Chamber affirmed the life imprisonment sentences of both accused.

Désiré Munyaneza was born in December 1966 in Rwanda. Between the beginning of April and the end of July 1994, Hutus killed approximately 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. During that period, Munyaneza was one of the leaders of the Interahamwe Hutu paramilitary organisation in Butare, which played a major role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In 1997, Munyaneza fled to Canada to avoid prosecution. However, in October 2005 he was arrested in Canada on suspicion of his involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In May 2009, the Quebec Superior Court found Munyaneza guilty for the criminal offences of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for abducting, raping, sexually assaulting, and killing Tutsis, and for pillaging of their properties. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen, was Osama bin Laden’s driver. Captured in Afghanistan in 2001, he was transferred to the United States detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. Initial attempts to make him stand trial for crimes of conspiracy before a United States military commission were ultimately unsuccessful as the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that trial before such a commission would be unlawful. In response, Congress passed the 2006 Military Commissions Act on the basis of which Hamdan was newly charged for counts of conspiracy and material support for terrorism. He was tried and convicted by a military commission for material support for terrorism and sentenced to 66 months’ imprisonment, which he concluded in his native Yemen in 2008.

The present decision is the result of his appeal against his conviction. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated Hamdan’s conviction on the grounds that material support for terrorism was not a war crime under international law prior to 2001 at the time of Hamdan’s relevant conduct, therefore the military commission could not try and convict him on this basis.