The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

1971 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Miller
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
World War ◽  
Judicial Proceedings

A quarter of a century has now elapsed since the end of World War II. During that time concerted efforts have been made to bring to justice those responsible for the appalling atrocities committed in the name of the Nazi forces. While many of the principal authors of war crimes have been punished, some of them are known to be still at large. Either by managing to escape detection or by fleeing to a country of haven, they have successfully avoided prosecution and punishment. In other cases 1 judicial proceedings have not yet been completed against persons suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

scholarly journals A Primer on Citizenship Revocation for WWII Collaboration: The 1998-1999 Federal Court Term

1969 ◽  
pp. 415
Author(s):  
Claire I. Farid
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
World War ◽  
Security Screening ◽  
The Government ◽  
Modern War

This article provides a review of recent jurisprudence in relation to revocation of citizenship proceedings against those alleged to have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. The author discusses proceedings involving citizenship obtained by deception by those involved in World War II, with a particular focus on five cases decided in late 1998 and 1999. The article addresses both procedural and substantive issues that have arisen in these proceedings. Although past procedural problems of characterization of the proceedings, the scope of required notices, and rights to appeal have generally been clarified in recent jurisprudence, some specific problems still remain to be resolved. The author points out that the substantive issues surrounding collaboration, actual post-WW Il security screening practices, the existence of a duty of candour, and the legal authority for security screening of immigration applicants still remain in a state of uncertainty as the current cases have provided conflicting results. Interpretation of old legislation and the determination of how such legislation was actually applied to security screening by immigration officials at the time of the immigrant's application are the main concerns in deciding these substantive issues. Matters are further complicated by the lack of evidence, both testimonial and documentary. The resolution, or lack thereof, of the procedural and substantive issues will have a bearing on proceedings initiated by the government in relation to modern war crimes cases.

The First Wave of International War Crimes Trials: Istanbul and Leipzig

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN KRAMER
Keyword(s):  
War Crimes ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Crimes Trials ◽  
International War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World ◽  
Foundation Stone

The Nuremberg tribunal following the Second World War is universally considered as the foundation stone of international law with regard to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It may come as a surprise, however, to learn that the first international attempts to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity came at the end of the First World War, with trials held at Allied prompting in Turkey and Germany.

scholarly journals “I Would Prefer to Be Famous”

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Karstedt
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
World War ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
The Impact

The reentry of sentenced perpetrators of atrocity crimes is part and parcel of the pursuit of international and transitional justice. As men and women sentenced for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the other tribunals return from prisons into society and communities questions arise as to the impact their reentry has on deeply divided postconflict societies, in particular on victim groups. Contemporary international tribunals and courts mostly do not have penal or correctional policies of their own, and the legacy of early release, commuting of sentences and amnesties that Nuremberg and other post-World War II tribunals have left, is a particularly problematic one. Germany’s historical experience provides an analytic blueprint for understanding in which ways contemporary perpetrators return into changed and still fragile societies. This comparative analysis between Nuremberg and the ICTY is based on two data sets including information on returning war criminals sentenced in both tribunals. The comparative analysis focuses on four themes: politics of reentry, admission of guilt and justification, memoirs, and political activism.

Betraying their Motherland: Soviet Military Tribunals of Izmenniki Rodiny in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, 1941–1953

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire P. Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
World War ◽  
International Military Tribunal ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Military Tribunal ◽  
Second World

The immediate aftermath of the Second World War saw a transnational effort to identify and prosecute those individuals who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in such fora as the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. However, parallel national processes were carried out across Europe to punish those citizens who, by a range of definitions, allegedly collaborated with enemy occupiers and committed treason. In the Soviet Union, suspected collaborators were tried as counterrevolutionaries in both the areas where crimes were committed and also those distant from regions of German or Romanian occupation. By examining tribunals in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in this article, I argue for the importance of identifying and prosecuting alleged collaborators to the Soviet postwar project – a project which was far from limited to areas in the western parts of the country and which remained intimately linked to prewar, Stalinist understandings of justice and revolution.

Genocide

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Byron
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Crime ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
Civilian Population

Genocide has been called the “crime of crimes” and the gravest violation of human rights it is possible to commit. It was developed as an international crime in reaction to the Nazi Holocaust and intended to provide for the prosecution of those who sought to destroy entire human groups. The word “genocide” was coined by a Polish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944) to provide a legal concept for this unimaginable atrocity. The word is a hybrid of the Greek word genos, meaning race, nation, or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. Although genocide is often spoken of in the same breath as war crimes and crimes against humanity, it is not the same thing. War crimes refer to violations of the law of armed conflict, while crimes against humanity, of which genocide is often seen as a more serious subset, require a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population. Unlike war crimes, the crime of genocide does not have to take place during an armed conflict (although it often does), and unlike crimes against humanity, it may also be perpetrated against soldiers or prisoners of war from the targeted group (if it happens to take place during an armed conflict). Additionally, crimes against humanity do not have to be perpetrated against a specific human group, as is the case with genocide, but simply against a civilian population. While the concept of genocide was developed after World War II, it is unfortunately true that the mass killing of human groups is much older than the legal expression; indeed, the first genocide of the 20th century is widely thought to have been the German genocide of the Herero and Nama in German South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) between 1904 and 1907. The Genocide Convention of 1948 (officially the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) declared that “genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they, the contracting parties, undertake to prevent and to punish.” Nevertheless, the real development of systematic international trials and punishment for the crime of genocide waited for the end of the 20th century: the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the inclusion of the crime of genocide in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

scholarly journals A Case From Australia's War Crimes Trials: Lieutenant-General Nishimura, 1950

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 337
Author(s):  
Lisa Lee
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
World War ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
War Crimes Trials ◽  
Admissible Evidence ◽  
The Impact ◽  
War Crimes Trial ◽  
Discretionary Powers

In the aftermath of World War II, Australia undertook domestic trials of suspected Japanese war criminals between 1945 and 1951. This article focuses on Australia’s war crimes trial of Lieutenant-General Nishimura as held at the Los Negros court in mid-June 1950, and the subsequent petitioning period and confirmation process. The Australian war crimes courts were military courts vested with broad discretionary powers that facilitated the expeditious trials of accused. The procedure of war crimes courts differed from that of field general courts-martial in two main areas: admissible evidence and sentencing range — and this article highlights concomitant problems arising during the trial and subsequent case on review. This article examines the prosecution of the case entirely on documentary evidence; the impact of low admissibility thresholds for evidence; issues regarding the voluntariness and reliability of witness evidence; and the option of capital punishment in the Nishimura trial.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred L. Borch
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Legal History ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
East Indies ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
Netherlands East Indies ◽  
War Crimes Trials

The post-World War II trials of war criminals in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) are not well known, and the chief goal of this book is to change that forever, if only because these prosecutions were unique in legal history.Between September 1946 and December 1949, Dutch colonial authorities convicted 1,038 Japanese (and Koreans and Formosans) and a handful of Europeans, Eurasians, Chinese, and Indonesians for war-related offenses. NEI authorities convened nearly 450 “temporary courts-martial” in twelve locations in the archipelago known today as Indonesia; only U.S. authorities conducting war crimes trials in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater held more trials....

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