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The case involved a 21-year-old man of German nationality with Iranian roots. He became a radicalised individual of Salafist Islam while living in Germany and eventually decided to travel to Syria. During his time, there were three photographs taken of him posing with the severed heads of enemy combatants impaled on metal rods, together with another man, known to be involved with jihadists groups in Syria.

After his return to Germany, these photos were uploaded by Vedat V. onto a Facebook page, with limited privacy settings.  Additionally the accused had stored these photos on a computer belonging to the sister of a deceased foreign fighter and on his mother’s phone. The accused was arrested and charged with war crimes under the German International Criminal Code, for gravely humiliating and degrading treatment of protected persons, in this instance the bodies of deceased soldiers.

The trophy like treatment of the severed heads and knowledge of the fact that viewing such photos would horrify and shock a reasonable person demonstrated the intent of the accused to mock the dead.

He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for war crimes consisting of the degrading and humiliating treatment of protected persons.

Mr. Eyad Al-Gharib is a Syrian citizen who was a member of the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate until 2012. Due to his conduct during the Arab Spring protests in Syria, he was found guilty by a German court of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in the form of torture and deprivation of liberty and sentences to 4.5 years of imprisonment. 

The offences in question occurred in Branch 251 and Section 40, which are part of the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate. In September or October 2011, a demonstration took place in the town of Douma. Members of Branch 251 and Section 40, including Mr. Al-Gharib, were deployed to deal with the demonstration. The officers shot at the demonstrators, and when the demonstrators tried to flee, the security forces, among them Mr. Al-Gharib, chased and arrested a large number of them and forced them into waiting buses. Thirty demonstrators were then taken to Branch 251, escorted by Mr. Al-Gharib. They were beaten on the busses and upon their arrival. They were then held in Branch 251 for at least several days. The conditions of detention were typical for the Branch: severely overcrowded underground detention rooms, partly without daylight; scarce food; terrible hygienic conditions; no information of the reason of detention or its duration; and, no information for the relatives of the detainees regarding their fate. The vast majority of the detainees were subjected to systematic physical violence during their detention and interrogation. 

This judgment was the first court decision against a former agent of the Syrian government regarding the government-led crimes against humanity in Syria. This in turn permitted the Court to shed light on the repressive practices of the Syrian State apparatus.

In this landmark case, fourteen Guantanamo detainees petitioned for habeas corpus, requesting judicial review of their indefinite detention without charges. 

Revisiting the holding in Johnson v. Eisentrager (1950), the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that US courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in the course of armed conflict and subsequently detained outside the sovereign territory of the United States at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Rasul was found to differ from Eisentrager in the “plenary and exclusive jurisdiction” held by the US over Guantanamo; the Court ruled that US courts have jurisdiction to hear habeas challenges from Guantanamo detainees under the terms of the general federal habeas statute.

In 2003, bulldozers manufactured by the American company Caterpillar were used by the Israeli IDF to destroy several houses on the Gaza Strip, killing several Palestinians and an American peace activist in the process. The relatives of the victims and those who lost their homes filed a suit against Caterpillar, arguing that by providing the Israeli military with bulldozers, they were liable for, among other things, war crimes and extrajudicial killing.

The District Court dismissed the claim, most importantly because it considered that selling products to a foreign government does not make the seller liable for subsequent human rights violations. Also, the Court stated that it could not prohibit Caterpillar to sell bulldozers to Israel, as this would infringe upon the government’s executive branch’s exclusive right to decide on trade restraints regarding Israel.