Search results

Abduladhim Maktouf is a businessman with Iraqi-Bosnian roots. After investigations had started in 2004 with regard to economic crimes, the Bosnian prosecution discovered that he might have been involved in war crimes committed by the Al Mujahid armed group that formed part of the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the armed conflict against the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), the army of the Bosnian Croats, during the early nineties. In 2005, an indictment was issued, alleging that Maktouf had facilitated the Al Mujahid by transporting them, while they were about to take a number of civilians as hostages in order to exchange them with the HVO for earlier captured Al Mujahid fighters, in his van towards the crime scene as well as assisting them in the actual hostage-taking and the subsequent ritual beheading of one of the hostages.

The first instance panel of the Court found that he had been guilty as accessory to the hostage-taking and sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment; his involvement in the beheading was not established, though. Both defence and prosecution appealed. After a partial retrial was ordered because the evidence was wrongly assessed in first instance, the Appellate Panel ruled on 4 April 2006 in the same manner as the first instance panel had done: Maktouf was found guilty of a war crime against civilians, and he again received a five-year prison sentence.

In the period of April 1992 until March 1993 a large-scale armed conflict was taking place in the Foča municipality. During this time Neđo Samardžić was a member of the army of the so-called Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As part of this army, Samardžić committed and helped commit killings, forced people to relocate, forced women into sexual slavery, held women in a specific camp where they were raped, and persecuted (Muslim) Bosniak civilians on national, religious, ethnical and gender grounds.

The Court dismissed Samardžić' complaints that he had had no opportunity to (sufficiently) cross-examine the witnesses, as it found that he had been sufficiently able to cross-examine the witnesses and test their reliability. On 7 April 2006 Samardžić was found guilty of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to thirteen years and four months imprisonment.

The Chagos Archipelagos are a collection of small islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Under British administration since 1814, they were home to approximately 1000 inhabitants by the 1960s who lived on and cultivated the land, educated their children and raised their families.

In 1964, the British and the United States governments entered into secret negotiations the outcome of which was the establishment of a military base on Diego Garcia, the Chagos Archipelagos largest islands. In order to do so, from 1965 until 1971, the population of Chagos was forcibly relocated: those who had left on trips abroad were denied re-entry, an embargo was put in place preventing the delivery of crucial food supplies and the remaining population was forcibly loaded onto ships and relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles.

The present civil suit is brought by the indigenous peoples of Chagos, their survivors and their descendants against the United States and a number of high-ranking individuals within the US Government whom the plaintiffs consider responsible for their forcible relocation. By a decision of 21 December 2004, the District Court for the District of Columbia held that the case was not justiciable as it required the judiciary to review political questions. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the decision of the lower court. 

The decision is the first of its kind in France to hold accountable the French State and the national railway company, the SNCF, for complicity in the deportation of Jewish individuals during World War II. The case was brought by the Lipietz family who sought damages for the prejudice they suffered as a result of being deported from the city of Pau in southern France to the internment camp at Drancy, near Paris in 1944. They argued that the State and the SNCF were responsible because their deportation was conducted with the assistance of the SNCF and with the approval of the Home Secretary.

The Administrative Tribunal of Toulouse held that both the French state and the SNCF were complicit in the deportation of the claimants, having committed egregious errors and were accordingly fined a total of 62,000 Euros. 

During the Second Liberian Civil War (1999-2003), Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven owned the Royal Timber Corporation and had an important position in the Oriental Timber Cooperation. Corporations like Kouwenhoven’s were an important source of income for the regime of Charles Taylor, and a close financial relationship developed between Taylor and Kouwenhoven.

On 7 June 2006, the Dutch Public Prosecutor charged Kouwenhoven with war crimes and with violation of the national regulation which implemented international prohibitions of supplying weapons to Liberia. The District Court acquitted Kouwenhoven of war crimes in first instance, stating that the link between him and those who actually committed the crimes was insufficiently substantiated. However, Kouwenhoven was convicted for his involvement in illegally supplying Taylor with weapons. According to the Court there was sufficient evidence that ships, owned by the OTC, within which Kouwenhoven held a prominent position, shipped weapons into the port of Buchanan, which was managed by OTC. These acts, the Court reasoned, did not only violate Dutch laws but also the international legal order. Given the serious consequences of supplying the Taylor regime with weapons, Kouwenhoven was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment: the maximum sentence.