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International justice: Infamous war crimes cases

A gallery of world leaders, military men recently convicted, on trial, in
prison, at large for crimes against humanity

CBC News · Posted: Jul 22, 2008 5:10 PM ET | Last Updated: August 23, 2014

The cases

Omar al-Bashir
Jean-Pierre Bemba
Moammar Gadhafi
Laurent Gbagbo
Goran Hadzic
Saddam Hussein
Jean Kambanda
Radovan Karadzic
Khmer Rouge leaders
Joseph Kony
Slobodan Milosevic
Ratko Mladic
Charles Taylor

The tribunals held at the end of the Second World War in Nuremberg
and Tokyo broke new ground for international justice. Nazi Germany
and Japan's leaders were prosecuted in trials that laid bare the war's
atrocities and crimes against humanity.

A permanent international court proved impossible to establish until

2002, when the International Criminal Court was created in The Hague
in the Netherlands.

"The jurisdiction of the court shall be limited to the most serious

crimes of concern to the international community as a whole," its
founding statute says.

The following are 13 recent cases of war crimes, crimes against

humanity and genocide allegations, some of which have been handled
by the International Criminal Court and others by different judicial
bodies.

Some suspects are still at large.

The trials of Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic resume Aug. 25, 2014.

At Large:
Joseph Kony is seen during a meeting with a delegation of 160 officials and
lawmakers from northern Uganda and representatives of non-governmental
organizations on July 31, 2006. (Associated Press)

Joseph Kony

Leader of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army

Status: In hiding

Kony and other leaders of the LRA, a guerrilla group that began a
violent campaign against the Ugandan government in 1986, have been
indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against
humanity and war crimes.

The rebels have been accused of, among other atrocities, cutting off
the tongues and lips of civilians and abducting thousands of children,
turning the girls into sex slaves and the boys into child soldiers.
Kony was indicted in The Hague in 2005. In October 2011, the U.S. sent
100 special forces soldiers to help Uganda track down Kony. He was in
the global spotlight in March 2012 when Jason Russell released a
scathing documentary entitled Kony 2012.

He has evaded capture, but reports say his health is failing.

Omar al-Bashir

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir speaks during a press conference in

Khartoum on Sept. 25, 2006. (Abd Raouf/Associated Press)

​President of Sudan
Status: Charges filed

The International Criminal Court has charged Omar al-Bashir with

genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, alleging he
orchestrated the violence that has devastated the country's Darfur
region and left hundreds of thousands dead.

Judges issued a warrant for al-Bashir's arrest in July 2010. The

Sudanese government has said it does not recognize the indictment
and al-Bashir remains in power.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo accuses al-Bashir of keeping 2.5

million refugees from specific ethnic groups in Darfur in camps "under
genocide conditions, like a gigantic Auschwitz."

Al-Bashir has yet to be arrested. The ICC is seeking six other suspects
for alleged crimes committed in Darfur. Prosecutors requested an
arrest warrant for Abduraheem Hussein, Sudan's defence minister and
former interior minister, on Dec. 2, 2011.

In Custody/On Trial:
Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo, in a room at the Golf Hotel in
Abidjan, being guarded by UN police, after his arrest April 11. (Reuters)

Laurent Gbagbo

Ivory Coast president from 2000 until a struggle for power following his
election defeat in 2010

Status: In custody at The Hague

Laurent Gbagbo was taken into custody by the ICC on Nov. 30,
2011, charged with murder, rape and other crimes allegedly committed
by his supporters as he clung to power after the previous year's
elections.

Gbagbo, a history professor, came to power in a flawed election in

2000. He failed to hold elections when his first five-year term expired in
2005, and rescheduled the vote a half-dozen times before it finally
went ahead in November 2010. Killings began as soon as the United
Nations declared Ouattara the winner, and for the next four months
morgues overflowed as the military under Gbagbo's control executed
opponents, gunned down protesters and shelled neighbourhoods.
Prosecutors say about 3,000 people died in violence by both sides after
Gbagbo refused to concede defeat.

"Mr. Gbagbo is brought to account for his individual responsibility in

the attacks against civilians committed by forces acting on his behalf,"
prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement.

He is the first former head of state arrested by the ICC since it was
established in 2002.

The first hearing in June 18, 2012, was postponed, and has still not
been held due to questions over Gbagbo's health and ability to stand
trial.

Background: A tale of 2 presidents: The story behind the

political drama in Ivory Coast
Goran Hadzic in a photo from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia case file on the fugitive. (Courtesy of the ICTY)

Goran Hadzic

Leader of autonomous regions carved out by Serbs in Croatia in the

early days of the Balkan wars of the 1990s

Status: Arrested on July 20, 2011

Hadzic was the last fugitive wanted by the International Criminal

Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) until his arrest in the
mountainous Fruska Gora region of northern Serbia. He was indicted
in 2004 and is accused of ordering, committing and abetting atrocities
against Croats and other non-Serbs living in the parts of Croatia that
Hadzic and his Serbian allies had proclaimed to be autonomous Serb
regions in 1991 and where they had set up a parallel government.
Hadzic was was captured in a village in northern Serbia in July 2011 and
extradited to The Hague. He pleaded not guilty on Aug. 24, 2011, at the
Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to charges of murdering hundreds of
Croats and expelling tens of thousands more in one of the first ethnic
cleansing campaigns of the Balkan conflicts.

His trial began on Oct. 16, 2012. Prosecutors hold him responsible for
atrocities early in the Balkan wars including the siege and systematic
shelling of the town of Vukovar and torture and murder of some 260
prisoners who were herded out of the town's hospital and executed at
a nearby pig farm.

In another incident listed in Hadzic's indictment, forces allegedly under

his command forced about 50 prisoners to march into a mine field,
then opened fire on them. Prosecutors say 21 of the prisoners were
killed by detonating mines or gunfire.
Ratko Mladic at a session of the Bosnian Serb parliamentary assembly in Pale,
Bosnia, in an undated photo from the 1990s. (Srdjan Ilic/Associated Press)

Ratko Mladic

Former general and leader of the Bosnian Serb forces during the
Balkan wars of the 1990s

Status: Arrested on May 26, 2011

Mladic was captured by Serbian authorities in the village of Lazarevo,

north of Belgrade, after evading arrest for 16 years. Media reported
that he was living in a house owned by a relative, was not in disguise
and did not resist arrest.

He was said to be living under the name Milorad Komadic and

was believed to have evaded arrest for so long thanks to the help of
members of the Serbian army and intelligence who remained loyal to
him.

He was indicted in 1995 by the ICTY on charges of genocide and crimes

against humanity related to the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica
massacre, in which 8,000 Muslim Bosnian men were slaughtered
by Mladic's forces.

Serbia had offered a $1.58-million reward for information leading to

Mladic's capture, and the European Union had made his arrest a key
condition of Serbia's application for EU membership.

Mladic is accused of commanding Bosnian Serb troops who waged a

campaign of murder and persecution to drive Muslims and Croats out
of territory they considered part of Serbia during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
His troops rained shells and snipers' bullets down on civilians in the 44-
month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. They also executed
thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, the site of Europe's
worst massacre since the Second World War.

Milosevic's trial has faced numerous delays related main to his ill
health and his lengthy political grandstanding while acting as his own
defence lawyer. On Dec. 2, 2011, prosecutors reduced the indictment
from 196 to 106 charges in order to speed up the trial. His trial got
underway in The Hague on May 16, 2012. He was due back in court
Aug. 25, 2014, as the trial continues.

Four senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge indicted by a UN-assisted tribunal. From
left to right: Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith. (Heng
Sinith/Chor Sokunthea, file/Associated Press)
Khmer Rouge leaders

Status: On trial in Phonm Penh

Four senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge were formally indicted in

Phnom Penh by a UN-assisted tribunal. They were accused of
involvement in atrocities committed while their ultra-communist
movement ruled Cambodia in the late 1970s. Their trial began in June
2011.

The Khmer Rouge regime — whose leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 — has
been blamed for up to two million deaths in Cambodia between 1975
and 1979 due to starvation, exhaustion, disease and execution.

Kaing Guek Eav, a former Khmer Rouge chief jailer also known as
Comrade Duch, was sentenced in July 2010 to 19 years in prison for
overseeing the torture and murder of 16,000 people.
Prosecutors appealed that sentence.

Former foreign minister Ieng Sary was arrested Nov. 12, 2007. Sary was
officially charged by the tribunal on Dec. 16, 2009, but died on March
14, 2013, before his trial concluded.

Sary's wife, Ieng Thirith, ex-minister for social affairs, was also arrested
but found incapable of standing trial due to ill health and dementia.

Khieu Samphan was president of Cambodia's state presidium from

1976 to 1979. He was arrested Nov. 12, 2007 and made his first
appearance at the genocide trial in April 2008. He received a life
sentence on Aug. 7, 2014.

Nuon Chea, right-hand man to the group's late leader, Pol Pot, was
sentenced to life in prison on Aug. 7, 2014.

Summarizing the verdict against Samphan and Chea, chief judge Nil
Nonn said the defendants were part of "a joint criminal enterprise" that
launched "a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian
population" after Khmer Rouge guerrillas seized Phnom Penh on April
17, 1975. The attack took many forms, Nil Nonn said, including
"murder, extermination, enforced disappearances, attacks against
human dignity and political persecution."

Both Samphan and Chea will be tried by the same tribunal again later
in 2014 on separate charges of genocide. Because of the advanced age
and poor health of the defendants, the case against them was divided
into separate trials in an effort to render justice before they die.
Jean-Pierre Bemba, left, is seen at the start of pre-trial hearings at the courtroom
of the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Jan. 12, 2009. (Associated
Press)

Jean-Pierre Bemba

Former vice-president of Democratic Republic of Congo

Status: Trial underway in The Hague

Jean-Pierre Bemba was detained in Brussels in May 2008 on an

International Criminal Court warrant for four charges of war crimes
and two charges of crimes against humanity. His trial
began in November 2010.

The former official is being held responsible for atrocities committed

by men under his command — including rape, murder and pillaging
— in the Central African Republic, which borders DRC, in 2002 and
2003.

Prosecutors said Bemba allowed 1,500 members of his personal

militia, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, to run amok in
Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003 after the country's then-
president, Ange-Feliz Patasse, asked for its help in an ultimately
unsuccessful fight against rebels led by Congo's former army chief of
staff, Francois Bozize.
Moreno Ocampo said small gangs of Bemba's troops systematically
invaded homes to terrorize civilians, aiming to prevent them joining the
rebellion. "They stole all possessions that could be carried off and
raped women, girls, elders regardless of their age. If the civilians
resisted the rape or pillaging, they were killed," he said.

Bemba has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial continues.

This undated photo released by Belgrade's Healthy Life magazine shows Radovan
Karadzic with glasses, long white hair and a beard. (Associated Press)

Radovan Karadzic

Former Bosnian Serb leader

Status: Trial underway at The Hague

Karadzic stands accused of 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and

crimes against humanity relating to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and
other atrocities against non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina
during the 1992-95 war.

Before his July 2008 arrest, Karadzic had eluded ICTY authorities for
almost 13 years, living under a false identity and disguising his looks by
growing long white hair and a beard.

His trial before the ICTY in The Hague began in fall 2009 but was
delayed until April 2010 after Karadzic decided to represent himself.
Karadzic boycotted the start of his trial in October 2009 saying he had
not been given enough time to prepare. The first witness did not testify
until April 2010.

In his appearance on Oct. 16, 2012, Karadzic cast himself as a "mild

man, a tolerant man" as he opened his defence, claiming he tried to
prevent fighting and then worked to reduce casualties in the bloody
1992-95 Bosnian war.

Karadzic, a former psychologist and poet, told judges he was a

"physician and literary man" who was a reluctant player in the violent
breakup of Yugoslavia. He said before the war many of his friends,
including his hairdresser, were Muslims. "Instead of being accused of
the events in our war, I should be rewarded for all the good things I
have done," he said through a court interpreter. "I did everything
humanly possible to avoid the war … I succeeded in reducing the
suffering of all civilians."
Prosecutors have painted a starkly different picture of Karadzic during
months of witness testimony, portraying him as a political leader who
masterminded Serb atrocities throughout the war, from campaigns of
persecution and murder of Muslims and Croats early in 1992 to the
conflict's bloody climax, the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men
and boys in the UN-protected Srebrenica enclave.

In June 2012, judges acquitted Karadzic of one count of genocide,

saying prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to establish
that a campaign of murder and persecution early in the Bosnian War
amounted to genocide. Prosecutors have appealed the
acquittal. Karadzic still faces 10 more charges, including one genocide
count relating to the Srebrenica massacre.

Karadzic's trial continues.

Convicted:
Jean Kambanda seized power in Rwanda during the 1994 massacres. (Associated
Press)

Jean Kambanda

Former Rwandan leader

Status: Serving life sentence in Mali

Kambanda seized power in Rwanda during the 1994 massacres in

which up to one million civilians were killed in a mass frenzy.

He was arrested July 18, 1997. He originally pleaded guilty to genocide

charges. Kambanda was sentenced to life in prison for genocide-
related crimes on Sept. 4, 1998.

He retracted his confession and filed an appeal three days after

receiving the sentence. That appeal was rejected Oct. 19, 2000.

Two days before Kambanda's conviction, Jean-Paul Akayesu, the mayor

of a small Rwandan town became the first person convicted of
genocide under the 1948 UN convention that defined the term.
Charles Taylor leaves after officially handing over the Liberian presidency to his
vice-president on Aug. 11, 2003. (Ben Curtis/Associated Press)

Charles Taylor

Former president of Liberia

Status: Convicted

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor was convicted April 26,

2012, by an international tribunal of aiding and abetting rebels who
committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in neighbouring
Sierra Leone's brutal 1991-2002 civil war. Judge Richard Lussick said the
Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague had unanimously found
Taylor criminally responsible for aiding and abetting rebel groups.
Taylor is the first African head of state convicted by an international
court.

Taylor was arrested in 2006 in Nigeria, where he had been living in

exile.

In his trial, which began in earnest in January 2008, he was prosecuted

for 11 crimes against humanity, including rape, murder, terror,
conscripting child soldiers, and other atrocities. Taylor denied the
charges and began his defence in July 2009, claiming in seven months
of testimony in his own defence that he was a statesman and
peacemaker in West Africa.

Taylor was ultimately convicted on all 11 charges in the indictment on

April 26, 2012, and given a 50-year prison sentence.

Taylor's attorney, Courtenay Griffiths, slammed the conviction as based

on "tainted and corrupt evidence." He claimed prosecutors paid for
some of the evidence.

Taylor filed an appeal, but on Sept. 26, 2013, an international war

crimes court upheld the conviction and 50-year sentence of the former
Liberian president for aiding rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone,
saying his financial, material and tactical support made possible
horrendous crimes against civilians in West Africa. In its ruling, the
appeals chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone didn't vary the
65-year-old Taylor's conviction on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes
against humanity including terrorism, murder, rape and using child
soldiers.
Background: Liberia's Charles Taylor and the cult of the child
soldiers

Deceased:

Former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic was accused of murder and

planning a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing. Milosevic died on March 11,
2006, while on trial.

Slobodan Milosevic

Former president of Serbia

Status: Died in 2006 in jail cell while on trial in The Hague

Dubbed the "Butcher of the Balkans," Milosevic was arrested April 1,

2001. He faced three indictments at the ICTY in connection with
atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s. Deposed as
president in 2000, he was arrested after a dramatic Belgrade standoff
and went on trial in 2002 in The Hague.

The prosecution had wrapped up its case, and the defence was
underway when Milosevic died in his jail cell of a heart attack on
March 11, 2006. Milosevic was buried March 18, 2006 in Serbia and
Montenegro, in a quiet ceremony at his family estate in the town where
he was born.

Saddam Hussein gestures during his trial in Baghdad on Jan. 29, 2006. (Darko
Bandic/Pool, Associated Press)
Saddam Hussein

Former Iraqi leader

Status: Executed in December 2006

Hussein was captured in December 2003 by U.S. soldiers, who found

the dishevelled former dictator hiding in a muddy pit at a farm near the
town of Tikrit.

After Hussein's capture, some international organizations called

for him to face an international tribunal.

However, his case went before an Iraqi tribunal, where Hussein faced
war crimes charges related to the Dujail massacre of 1982. Hussein
was convicted in early November 2006 of committing crimes against
humanity in the slaughter of 148 Shia Muslims in the northern city of
Dujail in 1982. The ruthless and flamboyant Hussein used his secret
police to crush any opposition through torture and executions. He
ordered the use of chemical weapons to crush a rebellion by minority
Kurds in the north of the country.

He was sentenced to death, and he requested that he be executed by

firing squad "as a military man" and not by hanging, which he said
would be a fate befitting "a common criminal."

The court denied his request, and his application for an appeal.
Hussein was hanged in a public execution on Dec. 29, 2006.
Moammar Gadhafi

Moammar Gadhafi died while in the custody of rebel troops in October 2011.
(FIDE/Associated Press)

Former Libyan leader

Status: Killed on Oct. 20, 2011

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Gadhafi, as well as his son Saif al-
Islam Gadhafi and Abdullah Senussi, then Libyan intelligence chief, in
June 2011, in connection with the killings and violence against
hundreds of civilians during the uprising to topple his government.
Gadhafi was killed Oct. 20 in an ambush near his hometown of Sirte,
according to Mahmoud Jibril, prime minister of the interim Libyan
government. Gadhafi died while in the custody of rebel troops.

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