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On 11 September 1973, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte assumed power in Chile as a result of a military coup that overthrew the then government of President Allende. Pinochet was the Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army until 1974 when he assumed the title of President of the Republic. His presidency lasted until 1990 and his role as Commander in Chief until 1998. His regime was known for its systematic and widespread violations of human rights, with allegations of murder, torture and hostage taking of political opponents.

In 1998, during a visit to the United Kingdom for medical treatment, Pinochet was arrested by the English authorities with a view to extraditing him to Spain where a Spanish judge had issued an international arrest warrant. His extradition was, however, not to proceed smoothly as Pinochet applied to have the arrest warrant quashed on the grounds that as a former Head of State he enjoyed immunity from criminal proceedings.

By the present decision, the High Court of Justice quashed the arrest warrant on the grounds that Pinochet enjoyed immunity from criminal proceedings under the 1978 State Immunity Act. However, the Court delayed the effect of the quashing until such time as the matter had been decided on appeal to the House of Lords. 

On 8 May 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered obliging all forces under German control to immediately cease hostilities. Twenty one individuals, all German nationals, were tried and convicted by a United States military commission in China for violating the laws of war, namely by continuing to engage in, permitting or ordering military activity against the United States after the surrender of Germany. They were then transferred to a German prison and remained in the custody of the United States Army.

The twenty one individuals, represented by Eisentrager, petitioned the United States District Court for the District of Columbia arguing that their continued detention violated the Constitution of the United States and they demanded a writ of habeas corpus, that is the right to be brought before a Court. The District Court denied the writ arguing that the petitioners were located outside of its jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal of the District of Columbia reversed the decision. In the present decision, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decision of the Court of Appeal to hold that foreign enemy nationals, not resident in the United States, have no right to a writ of habeas corpus. 

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a claim against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing, on behalf of five individuals from Iraq, Yemen, Ethiopia, Italy and Egypt. The plaintiffs alleged that they had been victims of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme – covert operations whereby individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism were secretly detained, transferred all over the world by “black flights” and taken to “black sites” or secret prisons where they were tortured for years. The role of Jeppesen – a company specialised in the aviation sector, providing navigational information, crew and fleet management solutions, and other services in the sector – in this practice was, allegedly, that the company facilitated the CIA’s black flights, inter alia,by providing airports with false flight plans to conceal all information about the aircrafts.

In first instance, after the U.S. government intervened in the case on the side of Jeppesen, the claim was dismissed immediately as the California District Court found that the state secret doctrine prevented it from reviewing the case. This judgment was partly revoked in appeal when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that defendants had not properly proven that the state secret doctrine was applicable; the case was remanded for rehearing, though. Ultimately, in its 6-5 majority decision of 8 September 2010, the full bench of the Appeals Court ruled that in the current case the state secret doctrine indeed applied, concluding that ruling in the case would be impossible due to substantial information being “privileged” or non-disclosable. Therefore, the plaintiffs’ claim was dismissed.

Guus Kouwenhoven was convicted in first instance for his involvement in supplying arms to Liberia and acquitted of having committed war crimes during the Second Liberian Civil War (1999-2003).

Both the prosecutor and Kouwenhoven appealed against this verdict. In an interlocutory appeal, the Court of Appeals most importantly rejected the motion of the defense to bar the prosecutor from prosecuting this case. Based on the information before it, the Court did not find grave violations of Kouwenhoven's right to a fair trial. The Court did sustain the defense’s motion to have more witnesses heard by the investigative judge. The Court foresaw this to be a lengthy process, and therefore suspended Kouwenhoven’s detention.