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Hafsat Abiola filed a complaint against General Abdulsalami Abubakar claiming that he is responsible for the death of her parents, Chief MKO Abiola and Kudirat Abiola. In particular, she claimed that as Chief of Defence Staff under Sani Abacha’s military rule (November 1993 – June 1998), and as President of Nigeria (November 1998 - May 1999), General Abubakar was responsible for torturing her father and keeping him in inhumane conditions, as well as for denying him access to a lawyer. In addition, she claimed that the regime is responsible for the death of her mother, who was threatened and killed following a campaign for the release of her husband.

In 2001, General Abubakar was served with summons when he visited the United States.

On 28 September 2007, the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, imposed a sanction on the defendant for his failure to appear for deposition. The sanction was an order declaring that the allegations of the plaintiffs had to be taken as established.

The case relates to eight Guantanamo detainees who challenged the determination of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) that they are “enemy combatants”. The case comprises the petitions of Haji Bismullah on the one hand, and of Huzaifa Parhat and six other men on the other.

On 20 July 2007, the US Court of Appeals ruled that that, in order to perform a meaningful review of the CSRT determination, it must have access to the information that was available to the CSRT as well. The US Government requested a rehearing or, in the alternative, a rehearing en banc.

On 3 October 2007, the Court of Appeals denied the US Government’s request on both aspects raised by it. First, the Court of Appeals found that the scope of the record that will be reviewed must include all the Government Information. Second, the extent to which the Government may withhold information from the detainee’s counsel should not affect the burden vested upon the Government of producing the requested Government Information. 

During the armed conflict that took place on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serb forces including the Army of the Republika Srpska (RS), the police and paramilitary forces perpetrated attacks against the civilian population in the Rogatica municipality by detaining, murdering, raping and abusing persons of Muslim and Croat ethnicity. The Accused, Radisav Ljubinac, was a member of the RS living in Rogatica in 1995.

By a judgment of 25 April 2007, Section I of the War Crimes Chamber in the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina convicted the Accused of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment for his role in the forcible transfer of civilians and their maltreatment at the Rasadnik camp in Rogatica. By the present verdict, the Appellate Panel of the War Crimes Chamber confirmed the verdict of Section I and dismissed the appeals of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Defence. It amended the verdict only so far as to reflect Section I’s failure to dismiss a charge, which the Prosecutor had dropped during the trial. 

The Accused were members of the Civil Defense Forces of Sierra Leone, fighting the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) and AFRC (Armed Forces Revolutionary Council) rebels in an effort to restore the democratically elected President Kabbah who had been ousted following a coup. Their activities, however, did not always target enemy forces; large numbers of civilians, including young children and women were made the object of brutal attacks, often by machetes.

Fofana and Kondewa were convicted by Trial Chamber I for 4 counts of war crimes of murder, cruel treatment, pillage and collective punishment. Kondewa was additionally convicted for recruitment of child soldiers. The Trial Chamber, in determining sentencing, took into account the gravity of the offences and the role of the Accused. In particular, the Trial Chamber considered it a mitigating circumstance that the Accused had engaged in the conflict out of a sense of duty in order to protect civilians, and had pursued a legitimate and justifiable purpose of returning former President Kabbah to power. Consequently, Fofana was sentenced to 6 years in prison and Kondewa to 8 years.

Who can be held responsible in a Court of law for human rights violations? In this case, victims and relatives of victims of the South African apartheid regime sued several corporations for their involvement in South Africa in the period between 1948 and 1994. They were liable, the plaintiffs reasoned, because the police shot demonstrators “from cars driven by Daimler-Benz engines”, “the regime tracked the whereabouts of African individuals on IBM computers”, “the military kept its machines in working order with oil supplied by Shell”, and so forth. Whereas the District Court in first instance had granted the corporations’ motion to dismiss the case, the Court of Appeals ruled that the case could proceed. The District Court had ruled that aiding and abetting violations of customary international law could not provide a basis for jurisdiction. The majority of the panel disagreed, though for different reasons: one judge relied on international law to substantiate this, another solely relied on national law. A third judge dissented, arguing that this case should not be allowed to proceed, among other things because of fierce opposition from both South Africa and the US.