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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.

During the Rwandan genocide Athanase Seromba was a Catholic priest at Nyange parish, Kibuye Prefecture. On 13 December 2006, Trial Chamber III of the ICTR convicted him of aiding and abetting genocide against Tutsi refugees who had sought refuge at Nyange parish in order to escape attacks committed against the Tutsis. The Trial Chamber also found that Seromba had assisted in the killing of Tutsi refugees as well as in the commission of acts causing serious bodily or mental harm. Thus, the Chamber convicted him of aiding and abetting the crimes of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity and sentenced him to 15 years of imprisonment.

The Trial Chamber considered the Accused’s authority as a respected Catholic priest, the trust he had from several Tutsi refugees who had taken shelter in his parish to elude massacres and his failure to live up to the trust of the refugees who thought their lives would be safe there as aggravating factors. Seromba’s good reputation prior to the events of 1994, his relative youth at the time of the events and his voluntary surrender to the Tribunal were considered mitigating factors. 

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 first instance Court sentenced Samardžić to imprisonment for a term of 13 years and 4 months. Where in first instance the accused was found guilty of 4 counts, on appeal the Appellate Panel established that the accused had committed the acts in counts 1 through 9. Furthermore the Court found that there were several aggravating circumstances, such as the fact that the accused repeated the acts, he expressed particular brutality, which caused severe physical and mental pain to the injured parties and the fact that at the time of the crimes some of the injured parties were still very young girls. Moreover the accused had a prior conviction for murder. Therefore on 13 December 2006, believing that it corresponded with the degree of his criminal responsibility, his motives and the intensity and degree of the protected value, theAppellate Panel found Samardžić guilty of Crimes against Humanity and sentenced him to an imprisonment of twenty-four years, more than ten years more than in first instance.

In July 1982, a convoy carrying the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was fired upon by unknown individuals as it was visiting the town of Al Dujail. In response to what the President perceived as an assassination attempt but which did not injure anyone, a systematic attack was launched against the residents of Al Dujail as they were fired upon from aircraft and their property was destroyed. A Revolutionary Court sentenced 148 residents to death without trial for their alleged involvement in the assassination attempt. Of those that were hanged, the Tribunal identified a number of children. Countless others died in detention, as a result of torture at the hand of the Investigation Services, or from malnutrition, lack of access to medical care and poor hygienic conditions.

At first instance, the Iraqi High Tribunal convicted seven of the eight defendants charged, including Saddam Hussein who was sentenced to death by hanging along with his brother, Barazan Ibrahim, the head of the Intelligence Services. On appeal, the Appeals Commission of the High Tribunal upheld the convictions and sentences and found cause to increase the sentence of Taha Yassin Ramadan, Deputy Prime Minister and General Commander of the Popular Army, to death. Since the judgement, the Iraqi High Tribunal has come under criticism for the alleged unfairness of its proceedings owing, partly, to the continued interference of the Iraqi government in the trial.