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Frans van Anraat was a Dutch businessman who, from 1984 until 1988, purchased large quantities of the chemical thiodiglycol from the United States and Japan. This chemical was then sold, through a number of different companies located in different countries, to Saddam Hussein’s government of Iraq. After 1984, Van Anraat was the government’s sole supplier of the chemical. The chemical is a key component in the manufacture of mustard gas and was in fact used for this purpose by Hussein’s government who then proceeded to employ the gas in attacks against Iranian military and civilians in the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. The effect was devastating, thousands of individuals were killed and many thousands more were injured with long-term effects including blindness and cancer.

The Dutch Prosecutor brought a case against Van Anraat. The District Court of the Hague acquitted him of the charge of complicity to genocide (because his genocidal intent could not be proved), but he was convicted of complicity in war crimes and the court sentenced him to 15 years’ imprisonment.

The Court of Appeal of The Hague upheld the District Court’s acquittal on the charge of complicity to genocide and his conviction of complicity to war crimes. The Court increased Van Anraat’s sentence to 17 years’ imprisonment.

Until July 1994, Michel Bagaragaza was the managing director of OCIR-Tea, the controlling body for the tea industry in Rwanda. Bagaragaza is accused of conspiring with his employees in order to kill Tutsis in the Gisenyi Prefecture. In addition, he was a member of the local committee of the Republican Movement for Development and Democracy (MRND) for the Gisenyi Prefecture. Bagaragaza was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on charges of genocide, and in the alternative, war crimes. His case was referred to The Netherlands at the request of the Prosecutor of the ICTR.

However, a decision of the District Court of The Hague in a case against another Rwandan national, Joseph Mpambara, in which the Court held that the Dutch courts have no jurisdiction over genocide committed by non-Dutch nationals abroad prior to 2003, was released soon after Bagaragaza's surrender to The Netherlands. Fearing that the outcome would be the same and the case against him would not proceed in The Netherlands, the ICTR requested The Netherlands to surrender Bagaragaza back to the ICTR for prosecution. By a decision of 21 March 2008, the District Court of The Hague authorised the surrender. 

After the takeover of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995, several thousands of Bosniak men fled and attempted to reach Bosnian territory. Many of them were detained and over one thousand men were brought to a warehouse and executed. It is up to the Court to decide whether 10 men who allegedly were involved in the capturing, detaining and killing of these Bosniaks can be found guilty of genocide.

These men were certainly not the genocide masterminds, but members of a police force. The Court states that in a case of genocide, a distinction must be made between those who conceived and directed the acts of genocide (referred to as a joint criminal enterprise) and the common soldiers. Where the former group can be held accountable for all crimes that ensued, the latter group is only responsible for the acts they physically participated in. However, after the Court reviewed several witness statements, it considered Stevanovic’s presence during the transferring of prisoners and their execution unproven and his role in all this to be trivial. According to the Court, when Stevanovic became aware of what was expected of him, he was distinctly unhappy about and therefore he removed himself from the scene. As such, neither genocidal intent nor his participation in acts of genocide could be proven; the Court acquitted him from all charges.

This case marks the beginning in a series of proceedings before the British courts with regard to the (existence of a) duty to investigate alleged widespread torture and abuse of Iraqis by British troops during Iraq’s occupation, lasting from 2003 until 2008. The claimant in Mousa v. UK, Ali Zaki Mousa, represents about 100 Iraqis – with the possible addition of 100 more after intervention – who were allegedly tortured or otherwise ill-treated during their detention at British military bases in Iraq, often without being charged (many of them were allegedly released after a period of time without any information on the reasons for either their detention or release). The claimants asked the High Court of Justice to order the Secretary of State for Defence to start investigations into the alleged misconduct. The Court agreed with him, finding that the current investigating bodies were too much intertwined with the army itself and did not constitute independent bodies of judicial review, as required by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Therefore, the Secretary of State was ordered to initiate proper investigations.