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In this case appearing before the Criminal Division, the accused Dušan Fuštar was found guilty for crimes against humanity regarding his participation in the running of the Keraterm camp in Prijedor municipality. He was sentenced to 9 years of imprisonment after he entered a plea agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office.

This marked the first time that a case referred to the Court of BiH by the ICTY (in the case of Željko Mejakić et al.) was settled through a plea agreement. The Court found Dušan Fuštar guilty and sentenced him to nine years of imprisonment.

The case of Branimir Glavaš marks the first time that a high-ranking Croatian politician was sentenced for war crimes committed during the Croatian war of independence (1991-1995).

Glavaš has always denied any wrongdoing and he protested his detention and trial in Croatia by going on a 40-day hunger strike in 2006. He considered his case to be politically motivated and Nikica Grzić, his defence attorney, alleged that the trial was based on “political, not legal statements.” Nevertheless, after several appeals, on 2 June 2010, the Croatian Supreme Court sentenced Glavaš to eight years’ imprisonment for the war crimes of murder and torture of civilians. Glavaš attempted to evade sitting out his sentence by fleeing to Bosnia, but to no avail: there, he was arrested as well and the Bosnian courts upheld the verdict issued by their Croatian colleagues.

The armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo opposed numerous tribes of different ethnicities in their struggle to gain power and territory, particularly over the Ituri provence in the north-eastern part of the DRC, an area rich in natural resources such as gold and diamonds. One such group, the Union Patriotique des Congolais, was established in 2000 and appointed as its chairman, the Accused, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. He was also the commander in chief of the armed wing of the UPC, the Front Patriotique pour la Libération du Congo. This armed group was well-known for its use of young children to participate in the hostilities, from fighting, to cooking, cleaning, spying, and being used as sexual slaves.

Trial Chamber I, in the International Criminal Court’s first verdict, convicted Thomas Lubanga of the offense of conscripting, enlisting or using children to actively participate in hostilities. In defining active participation, the Chamber adopted a broad definition so as to include children involved even indirectly, so long as their contribution placed them in real danger as a potential target. Unfortunately, the Chamber did not discuss whether sexual violence against these children also fell within the scope of the offense.

After the fall of the Cambodian government in 1975, the Communist Party, under the leadership of Pol Pot, came to power and renamed the State the Democratic Kampuchea. An armed conflict broke out with Vietnam, which lasted until 1979. From 1975 until 1979, Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea sought to establish a revolutionary State and introduced a policy of ‘smashing’ their enemies, a form of physical and psychological destruction that consisted of arbitrary detention, torture and execution. This policy lead to the deaths of an estimated two million people.

The Accused, Ieng Thirith, was the highest-ranking female in the regime, Pol Pot’s sister-in-law and the wife of Ieng Sary, the regime’s former Foreign Minister. Ieng Thirith was indicted in 2010 on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide for her role in the events. In September 2012, on the basis of repeated examinations by multiple medical experts, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia found the now 80-year-old Ieng Thirith unfit to stand trial due to her dementia and released her subject to certain conditions. Although the charges have not been withdrawn, a trial is unlikely to happen in the future considering her age and mental state.

We often associate genocide with the act of killing members of a specific group, of which there have been many devastating examples throughout history. However, according to the Genocide Convention, other acts can also be regarded as genocide, if they are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, specific groups. In this case, the plaintiff held that building a bridge to Hindmarsh in South Australia would impede on the culture and way-of-life of the Ngarrindjeri in such a dramatic way that it would lead to the destruction of this group. However, at that point, genocide was not a crime under Australian national law. The plaintiff therefore invoked legislation from the UK, arguing that application of this legislation was possible because of the fact that the UK preceded the current Commonwealth of Australia in governing the Australian continent and its adjacent islands. The judge did not accept this argument and reiterated that even when international law prohibits genocide, someone can only be found guilty of genocide if national legislation explicitly prohibits genocide. The claim was denied.

In 2002, with the adoption of the International Criminal Court Act 2002, genocide became a crime under Australian law.