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During the conflict in the Former Yugoslavia, Zrinko Pinčić was a member of the Croat Defense Council (HVO). Between November 1992 and March 1993, he came to a house in the village of Donje Selo, Konjic Municipality, were Serb civilians were detained. During this time, Pinčić repeatedly took one woman from the room where other civilians were detained, and forced her to sexual intercourse, holding his rifle by the bed and threatening her that he would bring another 15 soldiers to rape her and other detainees, if she refused him.

On 28 November 2008 the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found Zrinko Pinčić guilty of War Crimes against Civilians and sentenced him to 9 years in prison. Both the Prosecutor’s Office and the Defence appealed the decision. The Prosecutor appealed the sentencing part of the Verdict, finding the sentence too lenient. The Defence appealed the Trial Verdict because of: essential violations of the criminal procedure provisions; violations of the Criminal Code; erroneously and incompletely established state of facts and the decision on the costs of the criminal proceedings.

The Appellate Panel of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina dismissed all Appeals as unfounded and upheld the Trial Verdict in its entirety.

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.

A Canadian human rights organization filed a complaint against a Canadian mining company which operated in the Democratic Republic Congo (DRC). It does so on behalf of several Congolese victims (and relatives of victims) of violence committed by the army of the DRC in October 2004. Allegedly, Anvil Mining Ltd. provided the army with, for example, jeeps and cars to reach the town of Kilwa, were the human rights violations were committed.

Anvil protested against the complaint filed, arguing that the Court in Québec did not have jurisdiction. The Court disagreed and stated that Anvil’s activities in Québec and the mining activities in the DRC were sufficiently linked for the Court to have jurisdiction. Moreover, the Court stated that it did not consider courts in either the DRC or Australia, were the main office was located, more suitable to deal with this case.

Five men, allegedly members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, a rebel group in Sri Lanka), were brought before the District Court of the Hague (the Netherlands) on charges of, among others, extortion, money laundering, and raising funds for a terrorist organization. The European Union (EU) placed the LTTE on a list of terrorist organizations in 2006. The present judgment was handed down against one of the suspects, identified only as Selliaha, who acted as the LTTE’s overseas bookkeeper.

The five men, including Selliaha, allegedly extorted millions of Euros through blackmails and threats in order to fund the LTTE in Sri Lanka.

The District Court found Selliaha guilty of invlovement with a criminal organization, but not of supporting terrorism. Furthermore, the District Court considered that the conflict in Sri Lanka amounts to a non-international armed conflict, but dismissed a large number of charges on the basis that the Netherlands was not party to the conflict. Moreover, the District Court ruled that the EU’s classification of the LTTE as a banned organization, made the fundraising operations unlawful in the Netherlands.

The District Court acquitted Selliaha of extortion but convicted him of threatening prospective donators. Selliaha was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment, the longest sentence of the five accused.

The claimants in this case claimed that they were victims of severe atrocities at the hands of the colonial government during the struggle for independence in Kenya. They argued that the British government carried responsibility for this. In this phase of the proceedings, the British government basically argued that the events in Kenya happened too long ago to be considered on trial. The Court rejected this argument, stating that British law allowed Courts to let cases proceed which happened a long time ago. Moreover, the Court held that there were sufficient primary sources to establish what took place in the detention camps in Kenya and the UK Government’s involvement in this matter.