war crime
Offence (such as murder of a civilian or a prisoner of war) that contravenes the internationally accepted laws governing the conduct of wars, particularly the Hague Convention of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949. A key principle of the law relating to such crimes is that obedience to the orders of a superior is no defence. In practice, prosecutions are generally brought by the victorious side.
Recent trials
In November 1995 the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić and his general Ratko Mladic were charged with
genocide and crimes against humanity at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
World War II crimes War crimes became a major issue in the aftermath of World War II. The United Nations War Crimes Commission was set up 1943 to investigate German atrocities against Allied nationals. Leading Nazis were defendants in the Nuremberg trials 1945–46. High-ranking Japanese officers were tried in Tokyo before the International Military Tribunal, and others by the legal section of the Allied supreme command. In subsequent years the hunt for Nazis who escaped justice has continued, led notably by Simon Wiesenthal (1909–2005), who tracked down Adolf Eichmann in 1960. Perhaps the last major Nazi war criminal to be brought to justice was Klaus Barbie, tried in France 1987 for crimes committed while he was commandant at Lyons. |
Later war crimes Subsequent wars have had their full measure of crimes, an example being the My Lai massacre (1968) during the Vietnam War, when US troops murdered 200 unarmed civilians. During the 1990s and as a result of intra-state warfare, countries such as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia saw horrific acts of cruelty meted out against civilians and soldiers alike. As with the fallout from World War II, many of the criminals responsible for the acts remained unaccounted for. |
Spies Spies in wartime are not war criminals; technically they are ‘unprivileged belligerents’, can be killed, and have no right to be treated as prisoners of war. |
