List of war crimes

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This article lists and summarizes War Crimes committed since the Hague Conventions of 1907. In addition, those incidents which have been judged in a court of law to be Crimes Against Peace, and Crimes against Humanity that have been committed since these crimes were first defined, (in the London Charter, August 8, 1945,) are also included.<ref>This list is a work in progress and is not complete</ref>

Since many international crimes are not ultimately prosecuted, either for lack of political will, lack of effective procedures, or other practicalities, interests or hinderances, this list perforce contains cases where it is alleged that prima facie an international crime has occurred. In such cases the facts are given, and the reader must make up their own mind whether the case is valid or invalid, since no definitive court ruling will yet exist.

War crimes as a special legal category have been firmly established by the 1945 Nuremberg Major War Crimes Trials, in which German leaders were prosecuted for war crimes committed during World War II. For purpose of selectivity, only war crimes since the customary laws of war were clarified in the Hague Conventions of 1907 are included, because in the judgement at the Major War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg in 1945, it was stated that "by 1939 these rules laid down in the Hague Convention of 1907 were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war".<ref>Jugement: The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity</ref>

Military personnel were involved in incidents which were war crimes that were investigated at the time, and led to courts-martial. Other incidents are alleged by historians to have been crimes under the law of war in operation at the time, but that for a variety of reasons were not investigated at the time, or they were investigated and a decision was taken not to prosecute.

1 World War I
- 1.1 German perpetrated crimes
- 1.2 Turkish perpetrated crimes
2 1935-1936: Second Italo-Abyssinian War
3 1937-1945: Second Sino-Japanese War
4 1939-1945 World War II
- 4.1 Axis powers
- 4.2 Allied powers
5 1968-1973: Vietnam War
- 5.1 United States
- 5.2 North Vietnam
6 1971: Bangladesh War
7 1980-1988: Iran-Iraq War
8 Circa 1985-: Lord's Resistance Army v. Ugandan Government (kidnap, rape, and forced murder involving children)
9 ?: Serbia/Bosnia (Former Yugoslavia, aggravated by religious tension)
10 1990-2000: Liberia / Sierra Leone
11 1990: Invasion of Kuwait
12 1998-2006: Second Congo War
13 2003-2004: 2003 Invasion of Iraq, (USA and "Coalition of the Willing")
14 See also
15 Footnotes
16 External links

Armed conflict		perpetrator
Second Italo-Abyssinian War		Italy
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsibe	Notes
Italian use of mustard gas against enemy soldiers and civilians.	Contravention of the 1925 Geneva Protocol Template:Fact.	Top commanding officer Gen. Pietro Badoglio indicted but never tried in courtTemplate:Fact.	Invasion of Ethiopia and Somalia by Italy under Benito Mussolini.

Armed conflict		perpetrator
Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)		Japan
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsibe	Notes
Nanjing Massacre<ref>References in the article</ref>, China, 1937-38	Mass murder of civilian population, rape, looting	General Asaka Yasuhiko, commander, Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force, Imperial Japanese Army. General Iwane Matsui, Commanding general of Japanese forces in China, Imperial Japanese Army. Minister of War Hideki Tojo. Debate still is ongoing as to the culpability of Emperor Hirohito in the events.	After the Battle of Nanking, on 13 December, 1937, Japanese entered the city virtually resistance free. From then for a period of about 6 weeks after, until early February 1938, widespread war crimes were committed including mass rape, looting, arson, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war.

Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Ip massacre	Template:Fact	Template:Fact	Template:Unreferenced
Treznea massacre	Template:Fact	Template:Fact	Template:Unreferenced

Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
World War II	Crimes against peace		Were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East
Banka Island Massacre<ref>References in the article</ref>, Dutch East Indies, 1942	Template:Fact	Vivian Bullwinkel gave evidence of the massacre at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 1947<ref>Banka Island Massacre (1942)</ref>	The merchant ship Vyner Brooke was sunk by Japanes aircraft. The survivors who made it to Banka Island were all were shot or bayonetted. One nurse Vivian Bullwinkel survived the massacre.
Bataan Death March<ref>References in the article</ref>, Philippines, 1942<ref>References in the article</ref>	Template:Fact	General Masaharu Homma was convicted by an Allied commission of war crimes, including the atrocities of the death march out of Bataan, and the atrocities at Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan that followed. He was executed on April 3, 1946 outside Manila.	Approximately 75,000 Filipino and US soldiers, commanded by Major General Edward P. King, Jr. formally surrendered to the Japanese, under General Masaharu Homma, on April 9, 1942, which forced Japan to accept emaciated captives outnumbering them. Captives were forced to march, beginning the next day, about 100 kilometers north to Nueva Ecija to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp. Prisoners of war were beaten randomly and denied food and water for several days. Those who fell behind were executed through various means: shot, beheaded or bayoneted.
Parit Sulong massacre<ref>References in the article</ref>, Malaysia, 1942	Template:Fact	Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura, was convicted for this crime by an Australian Military Court and hanged on June 11, 1951.<ref>http://www.thisisfolkestone.co.uk/ms/info/massacresinthepacific.htm</ref>	Recently captured Australian and Indian POWs, who had been too badly wounded to escape through the jungle, were murdered by Japanese soldiers. Accounts differ on how they were killed. Two wounded Australians managed to escape the massacre and provide eyewitness accounts of the Japanese treatment of wounded prisoners of war, as did locals who witnessed the massacre. Official records indicate that 150 wounded men were killed.
Laha massacre<ref>References in the article</ref>,1942	Template:Fact	In 1946, the Laha massacre and other incidents which followed the fall of Ambon became the subject of the largest ever war crimes trial, when 93 Japanese personnel were tried by an Australian tribunal, at Ambon. Among other convictions, four men were executed as a result. An SNLF Captain, Kunito Hatakeyama, who was in direct command of the four massacres, was hanged; Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama, who was found to have ordered the killings, died before he could be tried.<ref>Fall of Ambon Massacred at Laha</ref>	After the battle Battle of Ambon, more than 300 Australian, Dutch (and probably US) prisoners of war were chosen at random and summarily executed, at or near Laha airfield in four separate massacres. "The Laha massacre was the largest of the atrocities committed against captured Allied troops in 1942."<ref> Dr Peter Stanley The defence of the 'Malay barrier': Rabaul and Ambon, January 1942 principal historian to Australian War Memorial</ref>.
Alexandra Hospital massacre, Battle of Singapore, 1942		General Tomoyuki Yamashita who commanded the Japanese army, had the officer responsible for the massacre executedTemplate:Fact.	At about 1pm on February 14, Japanese soldiers approached Alexandra Barracks Hospital. Although no resistance was offered, some of them shot or bayoneted staff members and patients. More staff and patients were murdered over the next two days<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>.
Sook Ching Massacre, 1942		In 1947, the British Colonial authorities in Singapore held a war crimes trial to bring the perpetrators to justice. Seven officers, were charged with carrying out the massacre. While Lieutenant General Saburo Kawamura, Lieutenant Colonel Masayuki Oishi received the death penalty, the other five received life sentences	The massacre was a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among ethnic Chinese Singaporeans by the Japanese military administration during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, after the British colony surrendered in the Battle of Singapore on 15 February 1942.
Manila Massacre		Tomoyuki Yamashita	Yamashita Standard
Unit 100
Unit 731		12 members of the Kantogun were found guilty for the manufacture and use of biological weapons. Including: General Yamada Otsuzo, former Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army and Major General Kawashima Kiyoshi, former Chief of Unit 731.	The Soviet Union tried some members of Unit 731 at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. However those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial as General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological weapons Template:Fact.
Unit 8604	Template:Fact	Template:Fact
Unit 9420	Template:Fact	Template:Fact
Unit Ei 1644<ref>References in the article</ref>	Template:Fact	Template:Fact	Unit 1644 conducted tests to determine human susceptibility to a variety of harmful stimuli ranging from infectious diseases to poison gas. It was the largest germ experimentation center in China. Unit 1644 regularly carried out human vivisections as well as infecting humans with cholera, typhus, and bubonic plague.
construction of Burma-Thai Railway, the "Death Railway"	Template:Fact	Template:Fact
Comfort Women	Template:Fact	Template:Fact	It is alleged that some women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels.
Sandakan Death Marches		Three Allied POWs survived to give evidence at war crimes trials in Tokyo and Rabaul. Hokijima was found guilty and hanged on April 6, 1946 Template:Fact	Template:Unreferenced
War Crimes in Manchukuo			Template:Unreferenced
War Crimes in the Pacific			Template:Unreferenced
War Crimes in Asia Mainland			Template:Unreferenced
Kaimingye germ weapon attack	Template:Fact	Template:Fact	These alleged attacks were a joint Unit 731 and Unit Ei 1644 endeavor.
Alleged Changteh Chemical Weapon Attack April and May, 1943	Template:Fact	Template:Fact	Alledged Chemical weapons supplied by Unit 516.

Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Iasi pogrom	Template:Fact	Template:Fact
Odessa massacre	Template:Fact	Template:Fact

Concurrent with World War II
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Katyń massacre	Template:Fact

Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping	Breach of London Naval Treaty(1930)	no prosecutions	During the post war Nuremberg Trials, in evidence presented at the trial of Karl Dönitz on his orders to the U-boat fleet to breach the London Rules, Admiral Chester Nimitz stated that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war.<ref name="NT"/>
Canicatti slaughter	Murder of civilians	no prosecutions	During the Allied invasion of Sicily, at least a dozen unarmed Italian civilians, including six children, were killed by U.S. military policemen. The incident was covered up fearing that it would lead to reprisals from the civilian population. See the artcile for citations
Biscari massacre	Murder of POWs	Sergeant Horace T. West: court-martialed and was found guilty, stripped of rank and sentenced to life in prison, though he was later released as a private. Captain John T. Compton was court-martialed for killing 40 POWs in his charge. He claimed to be following orders. The investigating officer and the Judge Advocate declared that Compton's actions were unlawful, but he was acquitted.	Following the capture of Biscari Airfield in Sicily on July 14, 1943, seventy-six German and Italian POWs were shot by American troops of the 180th Regimental Combat Team, 45th Division during the Allied invasion of Sicily. These killings occurred in two separate incidents between July and August 1943.
Dachau massacre	Murder of POWs	Template:Fact

Armed conflict		perpetrator
1971 Bangladesh War		Pakistan
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsibe	Notes
1971 Bangladesh atrocities		Alledegedly the Pakistan Government, and the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators, however there have been no war crime trials to extablish their guiltTemplate:Fact	During the Bangladesh War of 1971, widespread atrocities were committed against the Bengali population of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), at a level that within Bangladesh, ‘genocide’ is the term that is still used to describe the event in almost every major publication and newspaper<ref name="bangladeshobserver">Editorial The Jamaat Talks Backin The Bangladesh Observer December 30, 2005</ref><ref name="Dr.N.Rabbee">Dr. N. Rabbee Remembering a Martyr Star weekend Magazine, The December 16, 2005</ref>. Although and the word ‘genocide’ was and is still used frequently amongst observers and scholars of the events that transpired during the 1971 war, the allegations that a genocide took place during the during the Bangladesh War of 1971 were never investigated by an international tribunal set up under the auspices of the United Nations, so the alleged genocided is not recognised as a genocide under international law.
Civilian Casualities			The number of civilians that died in the liberation war of Bangladesh is not known in any reliable accuracy. There has been a great disparity in the casualty figures put forth by Pakistan on one hand (26,000, as reported in the Hamoodur Rahman Commission<ref>Hamoodur Rahman Commission, Chapter 2, Paragraph 33</ref>) and India and Bangladesh on the other hand (From 1972 to 1975 the first post-war prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, mentioned that 3 million died on a dozen occasions<ref>F. Hossain Genocide 1971 Correspondence with the Guiness Book of Records on the number of dead</ref>).
Atrocities on women and minorities			The minorities of Bangladesh, especially the Hindus, were specific targets of the Pakistan army <ref name="usconsulate_cable_march31">U.S. Consulate (Dacca) Cable, Sitrep: Army Terror Campaign Continues in Dacca; Evidence Military Faces Some Difficulties Elsewhere, March 31, 1971, Confidential, 3 pp</ref>. Numerous East Pakistani women were tortured, raped and killed during the war. The exact numbers are not known and are a subject of debate. Bangladeshi sources cite a figure of 200,000 women raped, giving birth to thousands of war-babies. Some other sources, for example Susan Brownmiller, refer to an even higher number of over 400,000. Pakistani sources claim the number is much lower, though having not completely denied rape incidents.<ref>Debasish Roy Chowdhury 'Indians are bastards anyway' in Asia Times June 23, 2005 "In Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller likens it to the Japanese rapes in Nanjing and German rapes in Russia during World War II. "... 200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped.""</ref> <ref name="susanbrownmiller">Brownmiller, Susan, "Against Our Will : Men, Women, and Rape" ISBN 0449908208, page 81</ref><ref>Hamoodur Rahman Commission, Chapter 2, Paragraphs 32,34</ref>
Killing of intellectuals			During the war, the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators carried out a systematic execution of the leading Bengali intellectuals. A number of university professors from Dhaka University were killed during the first few days of the war <ref name="SelectiveGenocide">Blood, Archer, Transcript of Selective Genocide Telex, Department of State, United States</ref><ref name="roy02homage">Ajoy Roy, "Homage to my martyr colleagues", 2002</ref>. However, the most extreme cases of targeted killing of intellectuals took place during the last few days of the war. On December 14, 1971, only two days before surrendering to the Indian military and the Mukhti Bahini forces, the Pakistani army – with the assistance of the Al Badr and Al Shams – systematicly executed well over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals and scholars.<ref>Shahiduzzaman No count of the nation’s intellectual loss The New Age, December 15, 2005</ref><ref>Killing of Intellectuals Asiatic Society of Bangladesh</ref>.

Armed conflict		perpetrator
Iran-Iraq War		Iraq
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsibe	Notes
Waging a war of aggression	Template:Fact	Iraqi Government	In 1980, Iraq invaded neighboring Iran, allegedly to capture Iraqi territory held by Iran.
Use of chemical weapons	Template:Fact		Iraq made extensive use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agents such as tabun. Iraqi chemical weapons were responsible for over 100,000 Iranian casualties (including 20,000 deaths)Template:Fact.
Attacks against parties not involved in the war	Template:Fact		Iraq attacked oil tankers from neutral nations in an attempt to disrupt enemy trade
Halabja poison gas attack	Dutch court has ruled that the incident involved War Crimes and Genocide.	To date no prosecutions of Iraqi nationals. Frans van Anraat war crime.	Iraq also used chemical weapons against their own Kurdish population causing casualties estimated between several hundred up to 5,000 deathsTemplate:Fact. On December 23 2005 a Dutch court ruled in a case brought against Frans van Anraat for supplying chemicals to Iraq, that "[it] thinks and considers legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets the requirement under the genocide conventions as an ethnic group. The court has no other conclusion that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq." and because he supplied the chemicals before 16 March 1988, the date of the Halabja attack, he is guilty of a war crime but not guilty of complicity in genocide.<ref>Dutch court says gassing of Iraqi Kurds was 'genocide' by Anne Penketh and Robert Verkaik in The Independent December 24 2005</ref><ref>Dutch man sentenced for role in gassing death of Kurds CBC December 23 2005</ref>

Armed conflict		perpetrator
Iran-Iraq War		Iran
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsibe	Notes
Attacks against parties not involved in the war	Template:Fact		Iran attacked oil tankers from neutral nations in an attempt to disrupt enemy trade.
Laid mines in international waters	Template:Fact		Mines damanged the US frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts

World War II
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Nemmersdorf, East Prussia	Alledged pillage, and rape and murder of civilians, in contravention of Hague Conventions of 1907 "IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land"<ref name="HagueIV">IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land in the Avalon Project at Yale Law School</ref> Articles: 28,43,46,47,50Template:Fact	No prosecutionsTemplate:Fact	Nemmersdorf (today Mayakovskoye in Kaliningrad) was one of the first German settlements to fall to the advancing Red Army on October 22, 1944. It was recaptured by the Germans soon afterwards and the German authorities reported that the Red Army killed civilians there. Nazi propaganda widely disseminated the description of the event with horrible details, supposedly to boost the determination of German soldiers to resist the general Soviet advance. Because the incident was investigated by the Nazis and reports were disseminated as Nazi propaganda, discerning the facts from the fiction of the incident is difficult.
occupation of East Prussia	Alleged war crimes in contravention of Hague Conventions of 1907 "IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land"<ref name="HagueIV"/>	Template:Fact	War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany occupied by the Red Army<ref> Excerpt, Chapter one The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945-2002 - William I. Hitchcock - 2003 - ISBN 0385497989 (No pages cited)</ref><ref>A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 - Alfred-Maurice de Zayas - 1994 - ISBN 0312121598 (No pages cited)</ref><ref>Barefoot in the Rubble - Elizabeth B. Walter - 1997 - ISBN 0965779300 (No pages cited)</ref>
Battle of Berlin	Mass rape<ref> Antony Beevor They raped every German female from eight to 80 in The Guardian May 1, 2002 </ref>
Evacuation of Karafuto and Kuriles	Template:Fact
Evacuation of Manchukuo	Template:Fact

Armed conflict		perpetrator
1990:Invasion of Kuwait		Iraq
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsibe	Notes
Invasion of Kuwait	"breach of international peace and security" (UN Security Council Resolution 660)	Iraqi Government
Looting, raping and killing of civilians in Kuwait	Template:Fact		country devastated, resources wantonly destroyed

Armed conflict		perpetrator
2003 Invasion of Iraq (ended with UN Security Council Resolution 1546)		United States and "Coalition of the Willing"
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsibe	Notes
2003 Invasion of Iraq	Waging a war of aggression	United States and "Coalition of the Willing"	The International Criminal Court and the 2003 invasion of Iraq "the International Criminal Court has a mandate to examine the conduct during the conflict, but not whether the decision to engage in armed conflict was legal. As the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, I [(Luis Moreno-Ocampo)] do not have the mandate to address the arguments on the legality of the use of force or the crime of aggression".<ref name="Letter_2006-02-09">Luis Moreno-Ocampo Letter:Public reply with his conclusions allagationsof war crimes during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 9 February 2006</ref> The the German Federal Administrative Court on 21 June 2005 found that the war and Germany's involvement in it meet with grave concerns in terms of the rules of public international law. However, the Court did not make it totally clear that, in its opinion, the war and the contributions to it by the German Federal Government were outright illegal.<ref>Nikolaus Schultz Case Note – Was the war on Iraq Illegal? – The Judgment of the German Federal Administrative Court of 21 June 2005 in the German Law Journal No. 1 (1 January 2006)</ref> Anti-war protesters in Britain have been given permission to present a case to the are at the centre of a landmark case at in front of the Law Lords that could test the legality of the Iraq war<ref>War protesters' plea to Law Lords BBC 20 February 2006</ref>.
Allegations of wilful killing or inhuman treatment of civilians	Article 8 of the Rome Statute. Geneva Conventions and the additional Protocol I	United States and "Coalition of the Willing"	The International Criminal Court and the 2003 invasion of Iraq As regards the allegations of wilful killing or inhuman treatment of civilians, Luis Moreno-Ocampo concluded that there was a reasonable basis to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court had been committed, namely wilful killing and inhuman treatment. He explained that the information available did support a reasonable basis for an estimated 4 to 12 victims of wilful killing and a limited number of victims of inhuman treatment, totaling in all less than 20 persons. But the crimes did not have sufficient gravity to come under Artile 8.1 and 53.1.a of of the Rome Statute<ref name="Letter_2006-02-09">Luis Moreno-Ocampo Letter:Public reply with his conclusions allagationsof war crimes during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 9 February 2006 Page 8</ref> Luis Moreno-Ocampo also noted that "the available information provided a reasonable basis with respect to a limited number of incidents of war crimes by nationals of States Parties, but not with respect to any particular incidents of indirect participation in war crimes." This means he did not find a reasonable basis to proceed against nationals of States Party to the Rome Statute on the basis of complicity in any war crimes carried out by non state parties (The United States), but it is not, as such, a finding that war crimes were carried out by non state parties. Luis Moreno-Ocampor did not express a conclusion on that matter since that was not within his competence.<ref name="Letter_2006-02-09">Luis Moreno-Ocampo Letter:Public reply with his conclusions allagationsof war crimes during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 9 February 2006 Page 3, footnote 10</ref>

List of war crimes

From Free net encyclopedia

Current revision

Contents

World War I

German perpetrated crimes

Turkish perpetrated crimes

1935-1936: Second Italo-Abyssinian War

1937-1945: Second Sino-Japanese War

1939-1945 World War II

Axis powers

Italian perpetrated crimes

German perpetrated crimes

Hungarian perpetrated crimes

Japanese perpetrated crimes

Romanian perpetrated crimes

Allied powers

Soviet Union perpetrated crimes

United Kingdom perpetrated crimes

United States perpetrated crimes

1943-1945: World War II (Yugoslavian partisans)

1968-1973: Vietnam War

United States

North Vietnam

1971: Bangladesh War

1980-1988: Iran-Iraq War

Circa 1985-: Lord's Resistance Army v. Ugandan Government (kidnap, rape, and forced murder involving children)

?: Serbia/Bosnia (Former Yugoslavia, aggravated by religious tension)

1990-2000: Liberia / Sierra Leone

1990: Invasion of Kuwait

1998-2006: Second Congo War

2003-2004: 2003 Invasion of Iraq, (USA and "Coalition of the Willing")

See also

Footnotes

External links

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