List of war crimes

This article lists and summarizes some of the war crimes committed since the Hague Convention of 1907. In addition, those incidents which have been judged in a court of justice to be Crimes Against Peace that have been committed since these crimes were first defined are also included.

Since many war crimes are not ultimately prosecuted (due to lack of political will, lack of effective procedures, or other practical and political reasons), historians and lawyers will often make a serious case that war crimes occurred, even if there was no formal investigations or prosecution of the alleged crimes or an investigation cleared the alleged perpetrators.

War crimes under international law were firmly established by international trials such as the 1945 Nuremberg Major War Crimes Trials and the Tokyo trial of 1946, in which German and Japanese 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 judgment 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".

1914-1918: World War I

World War I was the first major international conflict to take place following the codification of war crimes at the Hague Convention of 1907, including derived war crimes, such as the use of poisons as weapons, as well as crimes against humanity, and derivative crimes against humanity, such as torture, and genocide.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
World War I		All belligerents
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Invention and employment of poison gas	Use of poisons as weapons (All major belligerents used poisonous gasses against enemy personnel in combat.)	No prosecutions	Poison gas was introduced by Imperial Germany, and was subsequently used by all major belligerents in the war against enemy soldiers, in violation of the customary law of war, adhered to by all civilized nations and armed groups, thereby constituting the Use of poisons as weapons.
World War I		Ottoman Empire
Armenian Genocide	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of genocide (Extermination of Armenians in Anatolia)	The Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20 as well as the incomplete Malta Tribunals were trials of certain of the alleged perpetrators.	The Young Turk regime ordered the wholesale extermination of Armenians living within Anatolia. This was carried out by certain elements of their military forces, who either massacred Armenians outright, or deported them to Syria and then massacred them. Nearly one million Armenians perished. The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, does not accept the word genocide as an accurate description of the events surrounding this matter.

Aftermath of World War I

The political reorganization that followed from World War I led to several events that could possibly considered War crimes or crimes against humanity, with forced displacements of large groups of population mainly based on ethnic criteria.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes

1936-1939: Spanish Civil War

At least 50,000 people were executed during the Spanish Civil War. In his updated history of the Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor writes, "Franco's ensuing 'white terror' claimed 200,000 lives. The 'red terror' had already killed 38,000." Julius Ruiz concludes that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain." César Vidal puts the number of Republican victims at 110,965. In 2008 a Spanish judge, Socialist Baltasar Garzon, opened an investigation into the executions and disappearances of 114,266 people between 17 July 1936 and December 1951. Among the executions investigated was that of the poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca.

1937-1945: Second Sino-Japanese War

This section includes war crimes up to and through December 6, 1941 when the Second Sino-Japanese War became the Asian Theater of World War II, due to certain events of December 7, 1941. For war crimes after this date see the section called World War II: Japan perpetrated crimes.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Second Sino-Japanese War		Japan
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Attack on China in 1937	Crimes against peace (Waging unprovoked war against China (count 27 at the Tokyo Trials))	Sadao Araki, Kenji Doihara, Kingoro Hashimoto, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Koki Hirota, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Jiro Minami, Akira Muto, Takazumi Oka, Hiroshi Oshima, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Toshio Shiratori, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu
Nanking Massacre, China, 1937-38	Crimes against humanity; War crimes (Mass murder of civilian population & POWs, 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. Chief of staff of the Army Kotohito Kan'in, Minister of War Hajime Sugiyama. 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. Most estimates put deaths at between 150,000 and 300,000 with newly declassified US government documents estimating an additional 500,000 outside Nanking before its fall.
Hankow massacre,China, 1938	War crimes (Mass execution of POWs)	General Shunroku Hata, commander, China Expeditionary Army , Imperial Japanese Army.	War crimes were committed including the killing of civilians and prisoners of war.

1939-1945 World War II

Axis powers (listed by country)

The Axis Powers (particularly Germany and Japan) were perhaps some of the most systematic perpetrators of war crimes in modern history. Contributing factors included Nazi race theory, a desire for "living space" that justified the eradication of native populations, and militaristic indoctrination that encouraged the terrorization of conquered peoples and prisoners of war. The Holocaust, the German attack on the Soviet Union and occupation of much of Europe, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the Philippines and attack on China all contributed to well over half of the civilian deaths in World War II and the conflicts that led up to the war. Even before post-war revelations of atrocites, both nations were notorious for their brutal treatment of captured combatants.

Croatian perpetrated crimes

See also: Ustaša

Numerous concentration camps were built in Croatia, most notably Jasenovac (in Croatian: Logor Jasenovac in Serbian: Логор Јасеновац / Logor Jasenovac), the largest, where hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies (Roma), Jews and Croatian dissidents died. It was established by the Ustaša regime of the Independent State of Croatia in August 1941 and not dismantled until April 1945, shortly before the end of the war. Other concentration camps were in Gospić, Pag, Đakovo, Jastrebarsko and Lepoglava.

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (citing the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust), "Ustasa terrorists killed 500,000 Serbs, expelled 250,000 and forced 250,000 to convert to Roman Catholicism. They murdered thousands of Jews and Gypsies."

Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps and three smaller camps spread out over 240 square kilometers (93 square miles), in relatively close proximity to each other, on the bank of the Sava river. Most of the camp was at Jasenovac, about 100 km (62 miles) southeast of Zagreb. The complex also included large grounds at Donja Gradina directly across the Sava River, a camp for children in Sisak to the northwest, and a women's camp in Stara Gradiška to the southeast.

Ante Pavelić, leader of the Ustasha, fled to Argentina and Spain which gave him protection, and was never extradited to stand trial for his war crimes.

German perpetrated crimes

Further information: German war crimes and Consequences of German Nazism

According to the Nuremberg Trials, there were four major war crimes that were alleged against German military (and Waffen-SS and NSDAP) men and officers, each with individual events that made up the major charges.

1. Participation in a common plan of conspiracy for the accomplishment of crimes against peace

2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace

• Planning and executing a campaign of invasion of its European neighbors, as well as the conspiracy to violate the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain through the remilitarization of the Rhineland, and the annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia.

3. War Crimes These were limited to atrocities against combatants or conventional crimes committed by military units (see War crimes of the Wehrmacht), and include:

• Invasion of Poland, in the period of 1 September - 25 October 1939 German Wehrmacht during its military actions engaged in executions of Polish POWs, bombed hospitals, murdered civilians, shot refugees, executed wounded soldiers. The cautious estimates give a number of at least 16,000 murdered victims
• Pacification Operations in German occupied Poland, during the occupation of Poland by German Reich, Wehrmacht forces took part in several pacification actions in rural areas, that resulted in murder of at least 20,000 Polish villagers
• Le Paradis massacre, May 1940, British soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. Fritz Knoechlein tried, found guilty and hanged.
• Wormhoudt massacre, May 1940, British and French soldiers captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. No one found guilty of the crime.
• d'Ardenne Massacres, June 1944 Canadian soldiers captured by the SS and murdered by 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. SS General Kurt Meyer (Panzermeyer) sentenced to be shot 1946; sentence commuted; released 1954
• Malmedy massacre, December 1944, United States POWs captured by Kampfgruppe Peiper were murdered outside of Malmedy, Belgium.
• Gardelegen (war crime)
• Marzabotto massacre
• Sant'Anna di Stazzema
• Cefalonia Massacre
• Oradour-sur-Glane
• The annihilation of the Czech city of Lidice. As an act of vengeance for the murder of Reinhard Heydrich.
• Massacre of Kalavryta
• Distomo massacre
• The suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and subsequent leveling of the whole city
• The treatment of Soviet POWs throughout the war, who were not given the protections and guarantees of the Geneva Convention
• Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping
• Vinkt Massacre
• Heusden; town hall massacre (November 1944).

4. Crimes against Humanity These were crimes that were committed well away from the lines of battle and were unconnected in any way to military activity.

• The major crime was the Holocaust, including:
  • The construction and use of Vernichtungslagern, most prominently at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibór, and Chełmno
    • The employment of other camps across Europe, including Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen which served unofficially as death camps to a degree
  • Death marches of prisoners, particularly in the last months of the war when the aforementioned camps were being overrun by the Allies
  • The widespread use of slave labor and forced/unfree labor by the Nazi regime, including the use of concentration camp and extermination camp prisoners as slaves
  • The establishment of Jewish Ghettos in Eastern Europe
  • The use of SS Einsatzgruppen, mobile extermination squads
  • Babi Yar
  • Rumbula
  • Dnepropetrovsk
  • Ninth Fort
  • Simferopol
  • The massacre of 100,000 Jews and Poles at Paneriai
  • The suppression of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which erupted when the SS came to clear the ghetto and send all of the occupants to extermination camps
  • Izieu Massacre

Other crimes against humanity included:

• The Porajmos, the Nazi pogrom against the Romany peoples of Europe
• The Łapanka or "Catching Game," – Nazi roundups of Poles in the major cities for slave labor and other purposes
• Nikolaev Massacre
• Operation Tannenberg, the AB Action and the Massacre of Lwów professors, all Nazi actions in Poland meant to mass murder the Polish intelligentsia and other potential leaders of resistance.
• The Nazi T-4 Euthanasia Program, an aborted eugenics program meant to kill German children who were mentally or physically handicapped. 200,000 people were gassed to death due to this program.
• The Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs, resulted in some 3.3 million to 3.5 million deaths, about 60% of all Soviet POWs.

At least 10 million, and perhaps over 20 million innocent non-combatants were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime in the commission of crimes against humanity, of which the Holocaust lives on in particular infamy, since the largest number of deaths happened among Jewish citizens of states invaded or controlled by the Nazi regime. At least 5 to 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, although a complete count may never be known. Though much of Continental Europe suffered from the Nazi murders, Poland and Russia, in particular, were the states most devastated by these crimes, with many of their Jewish and a good number of their Christian citizens slaughtered by the Nazi aggressor. After the war, from 1945 to 1949, the Nazi regime was put on trial in two tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany by the victorious Allied powers. The first tribunal indicted 24 major Nazi war criminals, and resulted in 19 convictions (of which 12 led to death sentences) and 3 acquittals, 2 of the accused died before a verdict was rendered. The second tribunal indicted 185 members of the military, economic, and political leadership of Nazi Germany, of which 142 were convicted and 35 were acquitted. In subsequent decades, approximately 20 additional war criminals who escaped capture in the immediate aftermath of World War II were tried in West Germany and Israel. In Germany and many other European nations, the Nazi Party is outlawed.

Italian perpetrated crimes

Main article: Italian war crimes

• Invasion of Abyssinia: Waging a war of aggression for territorial aggrandizement, War crimes, Use of poisons as weapons, Crimes against humanity; in violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the customary law of nations, Italy invaded the Kingdom of Abyssinia in 1936 without cause cognizable by the law of nations, and waged a war of annihilation against Ethiopian resistance, using poisons against military forces and civilian persons alike, not giving quarter to POWs who had surrendered, and massacring civilians.
• Invasion of Albania: Waging a war of aggression for territorial aggrandizement; Italy invaded the Kingdom of Albania in 1939 without cause cognizable by the law of nations in a brief but bloody affair that saw King Zog deposed and an Italian proconsul installed in his place. Italy subsequently acted as the suzerain of Albania until its ultimate liberation later in World War II.
• No one has been brought to trial for war crimes, although in 1950 the former Italian defense minister was convicted for collaboration with Nazi Germany.

Japanese perpetrated crimes

Main article: Japanese war crimes

This section includes war crimes from 7 December 1941 when the United States was attacked by Japan so entering World War II. For war crimes before this date which took place during the Second Sino-Japanese War please see the section above called 1937-1945: Second Sino-Japanese War.

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
World War II	Crimes against peace (Overall waging and/or conspiracy to wage a war of aggression for territorial aggrandizement, as established by the Tokyo Trials)	General Doihara Kenji, Baron Hirota Koki, General Itagaki Seishiro, General Kimura Heitaro, General Matsui Iwane, General Muto Akira, General Hideki Tojo, General Araki Sadao, Colonel Hashimoto Kingoro, Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro, Hoshino Naoki, Kaya Okinori, Marquis Kido Kōichi, General Koiso Kuniaki, General Minami Jiro, Admiral Oka Takasumi, General Oshima Hiroshi, General Sato Kenryo, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, Shiratori Toshio, General Suzuki Teiichi, General Umezu Yoshijiro, Togo Shigenori, Shigemitsu Mamoru	Were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East
Attack on the United States in 1941	Crimes against Peace (Waging aggressive war against the United States (count 29 at the Tokyo Trials)))	Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu	Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet was ordered by his Militarist superiors to start the war with a bloody sneak attack on a U.S. Naval Base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.
War started with attacks on Hong Kong and Malaya	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth (count 31 at the Tokyo Trials))	Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada,Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu
	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the Netherlands (count 32 at the Tokyo Trials))	Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada,Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu
	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against France in Indochina (count 33 at the Tokyo Trials))	Mamoru Shigemitsu, Hideki Tojo
	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the USSR (counts 35 and 36 or both at the Tokyo Trials))	Kenji Doihara, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Seishiro Itagaki
Nanjing Massacre; Narcotics Trafficking; Bacteriological Warfare	War crimes ("ordered, authorized, and permitted" inhumane treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) and others (count 54 at the Tokyo Trials))	Kenji Doihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, Hideki Tojo
Nanjing Massacre; Narcotics Trafficking; Bacteriological Warfare	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of torture ("deliberately and recklessly disregarded their duty" to take adequate steps to prevent atrocities (count 55 at the Tokyo Trials))	Shunroku Hata, Koki Hirota, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Iwane Matsui, Akira Muto, Mamoru Shigemitsu
"Black Christmas", Hong Kong, December 25, 1941,	Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians; mass rape, looting)	no specific prosecutions, although the conviction and execution of Takashi Sakai included some activities in Hong Kong during the time frame	On the day of the British surrender of Hong Kong to the Japanese, Japanese soldiers also terrorised the local population by murdering many, raping an estimated 10,000 women, and looting.
Banka Island Massacre, Dutch East Indies, 1942	Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians)	no prosecutions	The merchant ship Vyner Brooke was sunk by Japanese aircraft. The survivors who made it to Banka Island were all shot or bayonetted, including 22 nurses ordered into the sea and machine-gunned. One nurse Vivian Bullwinkel survived the massacre and later testified at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 1947
Bataan Death March, Philippines, 1942	Crime of torture, war crimes (Torture and murder of POWs)	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. Deaths estimated at 650-1,500 U.S. and 2,000 to over 5,000 Filipino- ,
Operation Sankō (Three Alls Policy)	Crime of genocide, Crimes against humanity (Extermination of civilians)	General Yasuji Okamura	Authorized in December 1941 to implement a scorched earth policy in North China by Imperial General Headquarters. According to historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, "more than 2.7 million" civilians were killed in this operation that began in May 1942.
Parit Sulong massacre, Malaysia, 1942	War crimes (Murder of POWs)	Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura, was convicted for this crime by an Australian Military Court and hanged on June 11, 1951.	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, 1942	War crimes (Murder of POWs)	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. Commander 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.	After the battle Battle of Ambon, more than 300 Australian and Dutch 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.".
Alexandra Hospital massacre, Battle of Singapore, 1942	Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians)	no prosecutions	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. The remaining staff and patients were murdered over the next two days, 200 in all.
Sook Ching Massacre, 1942	Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians)	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 (estimated at 25,000-50,000) was a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore 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.
Changjiao massacre,China, 1943	Crimes against humanity, War crimes (Mass murder of civilian population & POWs, rape, looting)	General Shunroku Hata, commander, China Expeditionary Army , Imperial Japanese Army.	War crimes were committed including mass rape, looting, arson, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war.
Manila Massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians)	Tomoyuki Yamashita commander, Akira Muto chief of staff	As commander of the 14th Area Army in the Philippines, Gen. Yamashita failed to stop his troops from killing over 100,000 Filipino citizens of Manila while fighting with both native resistance forces and elements of the Sixth U.S. Army during the capture of the city in February, 1945. Yamashita pleaded inability to act and lack of knowledge of the massacre, due to his commanding other operations int the area. The defense failed, establishing the Yamashita Standard, which holds that a commander who makes no meaningful effort to uncover and stop atrocities is as culpable as if he had ordered them. His chief of staff Akira Muto was condemned by the Tokyo tribunal.
Wake Island Massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians)	98 US Civilians killed on Wake Island October 5, 1943 by order of Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara	Shigematsu Sakaibara executed June 18, 1947; subordinate, Lieutenant-Commander Tachibana sentenced to death-later commuted to Life
Unit 100	Crimes against humanity; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans)	no prosecutions
Unit 731	Crimes against humanity; War crimes; Crime of torture; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare testing, manufacturing, and use)	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.	During this biological and chemical weapons' program over 10,000 were experimented on without anesthetic and as many as 200,000 died throughout China. 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 the United States with their research on biological weapons.
Unit 8604	Crimes against humanity; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans)	no prosecutions
Unit 9420	Crimes against humanity; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans)	no prosecutions
Unit Ei 1644	War crimes, Crimes against humanity; Use of poisons as weapons; Crime of torture (Human vivisection & chemical and biological weapon testing on humans)	no prosecutions	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"	War crimes; Crimes against humanity (POWs and civilian labourers forced to support war effort; massive death toll.)	no prosecutions	The estimated total number of civilian labourers and POWs who died during construction is about 160,000.
Comfort Women	Crimes against humanity (Sexual enslavement of captured Allied women; mass rape.)	no prosecutions	Up to around 200,000 women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels.
Sandakan Death Marches.	Crimes against humanity, War crimes (Murder of civilian slave laborers and POWs)	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	Over 6,000 Indonesian civilian slave laborers and POWs died.
War Crimes in Manchukuo	Crimes against humanity; Crime of slaving (Slave labor)	Kōa-in	According to historian Zhifen Ju, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Imperial Japanese Army for slave labor in Manchukuo under the supervision of the Kōa-in.
Kaimingye germ weapon attack	Crimes against humanity; War crimes, Use of poisons as weapons (Use of biological weapons)	no prosecutions	These bubonic plague attacks killing hundreds were a joint Unit 731 and Unit Ei 1644 endeavor.
Alleged Changde Bacteriological Weapon Attack April and May, 1943	Crimes against humanity; War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (Use of chemical and biological weapons in massacre of civilians)	Prosecutions at the Khabarovsk War Crimes Trials	Chemical weapons supplied by Unit 516. Bubonic plague and poison gas were used against civilians in Chengde, followed by further massacres and burning of the city. Witold Urbanowicz, a Polish pilot fighting in China, estimated that nearly 300,000 civilians alone died in the battle.

Romanian perpetrated crimes

Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Iasi pogrom	Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide (murder of civilians, ethnic cleansing)	no prosecutions
Odessa massacre	Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide (murder of civilians, ethnic cleansing)	no prosecutions
Aita Seaca massacre	Crimes against humanity (first, Hungarians killed 40 to 100 Romanian soldiers; a few months later, Romanian retaliations left 11 Hungarians dead)	no procecutions

Allied powers (listed by country)

Main article Allied war crimes during World War II

Soviet Union perpetrated crimes

Main article: Soviet war crimes

Concurrent with World War II
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Katyń massacre	War crimes (Murder of Polish POWs)	Lavrenty Beria, Joseph Stalin	An NKVD-committed massacre of tens of thousands of Polish officers and intelligentsia throughout the spring of 1940. Originally believed to have been committed by the Nazis in 1941 (after the invasion of eastern Poland and the USSR), it was finally admitted by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that it had been a Soviet operation.
Invasion of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia	Crimes against humanity (Deportation and murder of civilian population)	Vladimir Dekanozov, Andrey Vyshinsky, Andrei Zhdanov, Ivan Serov, Joseph Stalin	An NKVD-committed deportation of hundreds of thousands of Baltic intelligentsia, land holders and their families in June 1941 and again in January 1949.
Nemmersdorf, East Prussia	War crimes, Crimes against humanity (Pillaging, and rape and murder of civilians, in contravention of Hague Conventions of 1907 "IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land" Articles: 28,43,46,47,50)	No prosecutions	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.
Invasion of East Prussia	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of genocide — spec. ethnic cleansing; in contravention of Hague Conventions of 1907 "IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land"		War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany occupied by the Red Army. Estimated number of civilian victims in the years 1944-46: at least 300.000 (but not all of them victims of war crimes, many died through starvation, the cold climate and diseases
Treuenbrietzen	Crimes against humanity (Murder of German civilians)		Following the capture of the German city of Treuenbrietzen after fierce fighting. Over a period of several days at the end of April and beginning of May roughly 1000 inhabitants of the city, most of them men, were executed by Soviet troops.
Battle of Berlin	Crimes against humanity (Mass rape)
Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II, Expulsion of Germans after World War II	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of genocide (ethnic cleansing/forced deportation of Germans from their homes in Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia; means used include mass murder, forced rape, other human rights violations)		War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany occupied by the Red Army. Estimated number of civilian victims in the years 1944-46: at least 300,000 (but not all of them victims of war crimes, many died through starvation, the cold climate and diseases

Massac re of Fantana Alba, Bukovina 1941

United Kingdom perpetrated crimes

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping	Breach of London Naval Treaty (1930)	no prosecutions; Allied representatives admitted responsibility at Nuremberg Trials; questionable whether war crime or a breach of a treaty.	It was the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials of Karl Dönitz that Britain had been in breach of the Treaty "in particular of an order of the British Admiralty announced on 8 May 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk at sight in the Skagerrak"

The bombing of the German city of Dresden is considered by many to have been a war crime due to the high number of civilian casualties.

United States perpetrated crimes

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping	Breach of London Naval Treaty (1930)	no prosecutions; Chester Nimitz admitted responsibility at Nuremberg Trials; questionable whether war crime or a breach of a treaty.	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.
Canicattì massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians)	no prosecutions	During the Allied invasion of Sicily, eight civilians, including an eleven year old girl, were killed, though the exact number of casualties is uncertain. The incident was covered up fearing that it would lead to reprisals from the civilian population.
Biscari massacre	War crimes (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	War crimes (Murder of POWs)	Investigated by U.S. forces, found lack of evidence to charge any individual, and a lack of evidence of any practice or policy; however, did find that SS guards were separated from Wehrmacht (regular German Army) prisoners before their deaths.	Some Death's Head SS guards of the Dachau concentration camp attempted to escape, and were shot.
Salina, Utah POW massacre	War crimes (Murder of POWs)	Private Clarence V. Bertucci determined to be insane and confined to a mental institution	Private Clarence V. Bertucci fired a machine gun from one of the guard towers into the tents that were being used to accommodate the German prisoners of war. Nine were killed and 20 were injured.
Rheinwiesenlager	War crimes (Deaths of POWs from starvation and exposure)	no prosecutions	The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were transit camps for millions of German POWs after World War II; there were at least thousands and potentially tens of thousands of deaths from starvation and exposure. Estimates range from just over 3,000 to as many as 71,000.
American Mutilation of Japanese War Dead	War crimes (Abuse of Remains)	Though there are no known prosecutions, the occasional mutilation of Japanese remains were recognized to have been conducted by U.S. forces, declared to be atrocities, and explicitly forbidden by order of the U.S. Judge Advocate General in 1943-1944.	Many dead Japanese were desecrated and/or mutilated, for example by urinating on them, shooting corpses, or taking Japanese body parts (such as skulls) as souvenirs or trophies. This is in violation of the law and custom of war, as well as the 1929 Third Geneva Convention, which provided that: "After every engagement, the belligerent who remains in possession of the field shall take measures to search for wounded and the dead and to protect them from robbery and ill treatment."”

The firebombing of Tokyo, as well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are considered by many to be war crimes because most of the victims were civilians.

Yugoslavian partisans perpetrated crimes

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Yugoslavia campaign		Yugoslavian partisans
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Foibe massacres	War crimes, crimes against humanity (murder of prisoners of war and civilians).	No prosecutions.	Following Italy's 1943 armistice with the Allied powers up to 1945, Yugoslavian resistance forces executed an estimated Italian troops and ethnic Italians living in Istria, Dalmatia and eastern Italy.
Bleiburg massacre	War crimes, crimes against humanity (murder of prisoners of war and civilians).	No prosecutions.	The victims were Croatian soldiers and civilians (as well as a number of Chetniks), executed without trial as an act of vengeance for the crimes committed by the pro-Axis Ustaše regime controlled territories during World War II. Estimates vary, from 30,000 to 55,000.
1944-1945 killings in Bačka	War crimes, crimes against humanity (murder of prisoners of war and civilians).	No prosecutions.	1944-1945 ethnic cleansing in Bačka of thousands of ethnic Hungarians. Estimates vary from 1,600 to 50,000.

1968-1973: Vietnam War

United States perpetrated crimes

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Vietnam War		United States
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
My Lai Massacre	War crimes, Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians)	Lt. William Calley convicted in 1971 of premeditated murder of 22 civilians for his role in the massacre and sentenced to life in prison. He served 3½ years under house arrest. Others were indicted but not convicted.	In March, 1968, a US army platoon led by Lt. William Calley killed (and in some cases beat, raped, tortured, or maimed) 347 to 504 unarmed civilians – primarily women, children, and old men – in the hamlets of My Lai and My Khe of Sơn Mỹ. The My Lai Massacre was allegedly an operation of the Phoenix Program. 26 US soldiers, including 14 officers, were charged with crimes related to the My Lai massacre and its coverup. Most of the charges were eventually dropped, and only Lt. Calley was convicted.
Operation Ranch Hand (Disputed)	Use of defoliant weapons that were (unintentionally) contaminated with poisonous pollutants.	No prosecution for war crimes. A class action law suit by Vietnamese victims at several U.S. courts was dismissed in 2005 and 2007. A further review by the whole panel of judges of the Court of Appeals confirmed this decision. In contrast, veterans of several nations have received in settlements compensations from the producers of the herbicides.	It is not doubted that the defoliants in question were used for their defoliant effects, and at the time of use, their long-term poisonous effects were not known to the U.S. military. There was no intention to poison whatsoever. However, their use did probably cause incredible human suffering to Vietnamese civilians, according to Vietnamese sources, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, 500,000 children born with birth defects, and a further two million people have suffered cancers or other illnesses..

• "Vietnam War Crimes Working Group Files" - Briefly declassified (1994) and subsequently reclassified (2002?) documentary evidence compiled by a Pentagon task force detailing endemic war crimes. Substantiating 320 incidents by Army investigators, including seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died (not including My Lai). Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted. One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war.

North Vietnamese perpetrated crimes

North Vietnam:

• North Vietnamese troops executed 2500(disputed) civilians while occupying the city of Hue in 1968; thus constituting Crimes against humanity. An additional 3500 people are suspected to have been executed, but never found. See: Massacre at Huế.

1971: Bangladesh War

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
1971 Bangladesh War		Pakistan
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
1971 Bangladesh atrocities	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of genocide (murder of civilians; genocide)	Allegedly the Pakistan Government, and the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators. A case was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on September 20, 2006 for crimes of Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.	During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, widespread atrocities were committed against the Bengali population of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). With 1-3 million people killed in nine months, ‘genocide’ is the term that is used to describe the event in almost every major publication and newspaper. Although 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 Bangladesh War of 1971 were never investigated by an international tribunal set up under the auspices of the United Nations, due to complications arising from the Cold War. A process is underway in 2009-2010 to begin trials of some local war collaborators.
Civilian Casualties	Crimes against humanity (murder of civilians)	no prosecutions	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 now discredited Hamoodur Rahman Commission) and India and Bangladesh on the other hand (From 1972 to 1975 the first post-war prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, estimated that 3 million died). This is the figure officially maintained by the Government of Bangladesh. Most scholarship on the topic estimate the number killed to be between 1 and 3 million. A further eight to ten million people fled the country to seek safety in India.
Atrocities on women and minorities	Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide; Crime of torture (torture, rape and murder of civilians)	no prosecutions	The minorities of Bangladesh, especially the Hindus, were specific targets of the Pakistan army. 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.
Killing of intellectuals	Crimes against humanity (murder of civilians)	no prosecutions	During the war, the Pakistan Army and its local supporters 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. 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 – systematically executed well over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals and scholars.

Cambodian civil war 1970-1994

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea, commonly known as the Cambodia Tribunal, is a joint court established by the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations to try senior members of the Khmer Rouge for crimes against humanity committed during the Cambodian Civil War. The Khmer Rouge killed many people due to their political affiliation, education, class origin, occupation, or ethnicity.

Civil war in Afghanistan 1978 - present

This war has ravaged the country for over 40 years now, with several foreign actors playing important roles during different periods. Since 2001 U.S. and NATO troops have been fighting in Afghanistan in the "War on Terrorism" that is also treated in the corresponding section below.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Civil war in Afghanistan		Al Qaeda, Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Executions and torture after fall of Mazar-i-Sharif on August 8, 1998	War crimes (Murder, cruel or degrading treatment and torture; Summary execution)	Taliban	Mass killing of the locals; 4,000 to 5,000 civilians were executed, and many more reported tortured.
Assassination of Iranian diplomats	Crimes against humanity (murder of civilians), offenses against the customary law of nations (outrages upon diplomatic plenipotentiaries and agents)	Taliban	8 Iranian diplomats were assassinated and an Iranian press correspondent was murdered by the Taliban.
Murder of Ahmed Shah Massoud	War crimes (Perfidious use of suicide bombers disguised as journalists (who are protected persons) in murder.)	Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda	Perfidiously used suicide bombers disguised as television journalists to murder Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, the leader of the only remaining military opponent of the Taliban, days before the September 11th Attacks, constituting a failure to bear arms openly, and misuse of the status of protected persons, to wit, journalists in war zones.
Civil war in Afghanistan		Northern Alliance
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Atrocities against Taliban prisoners of war	War crimes (Maltreatment leading to death of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan POWs (Taliban))	Northern Alliance partisans	Allegedly did place captured Taliban POWs in cargo containers, and did seal them, leading to deaths of those within due to suffocation and excessive heat, thereby constituting war crimes.

1980-1988: Iran – Iraq War

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Iran–Iraq War		Iraq
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Iran – Iraq War	Crimes against peace (Waging a war of aggression)	no prosecutions	In 1980, Iraq invaded neighboring Iran, allegedly to capture Iraqi territory held by Iran.
Use of chemical weapons	War crimes, Use of poisons as weapons (Violation of 1925 Geneva Protocol)	No prosecutions	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).
Attacks on neutral shipping	Crime against peace (Attacks against parties not involved in a war)	No prosecutions	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; also may involve the Use of poisons as weapons and Crimes against humanity.	Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, officially titled Secretary General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba'ath Party from March 1987 to April 1989, and advisor to Saddam Hussein, was convicted in June 2007 of war crimes and was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court, along with accomplices Sultan Hashem Ahmed and Hussein Rashid Mohammed. 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 deaths. 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.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Iran – Iraq War		Iran
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Attacks on neutral shipping	Crime against peace (Attacks against parties not involved in the war)	no prosecutions	Iran attacked oil tankers from neutral nations in an attempt to disrupt enemy trade.
Using child soldiers in suicide missions	War crimes (Using child soldiers)	no prosecutions	Iran allegedly used volunteers (among them children) in high risk operations for example in clearing mine fields within hours to allow the advancement of regular troops.
Laid mines in international waters		no prosecutions	Mines damaged the US frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts

Uganda 1985-present

• 20 years warfare
• The Times reports (November 26, 2005 p. 27):

Almost 20 years of fighting... has killed half a million people. Many of the dead are children... The LRA [a cannibalism cult] kidnaps children and forces them to join its ranks. And so, incredibly, children are not only the main victims of this war, but also its unwilling perpetrators... The girls told me they had been given to rebel commanders as "wives" and forced to bear them children. The boys said they had been forced to walk for days knowing they would be killed if they showed any weakness, and in some cases forced even to murder their family members... every night up to 10,000 children walk into the centre of Kitgum... because they are not safe in their own beds... more than 25,000 children have been kidnapped ...this year an average of 20 children have been abducted every week.

• The International Criminal Court has launched an investigation and has issued indictments against LRA leaders.

Yugoslav wars 1991-1999

Croatian War of Independence 1991-1995

Also see List of ICTY indictees for a variety of war criminals and crimes during this era.

Bosnian War 1992-1995

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Croatian War of Independence		Yugoslav People's Army, Army of Serbian Krajina and paramilitary units.
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Borovo Selo killings	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 12 and wounding of 20 policemen)	Serb paramilitary units commanded by Vojislav Šešelj. Šešelj is on trial at ICTY.	2 May 1991
Ovčara massacre	Crimes against humanity, War crimes (Over 264 civilians and wounded POWs executed after Battle of Vukovar)	Serb Territorial Defense and paramilitary units. Mile Mrkšić sentenced to 20 years, Veselin Šljivančanin sentenced to 5 years. Miroslav Radić acquitted.	18 November - 21 November 1991; bodies buried in a mass grave
Dalj killings	War crimes (Execution of 11 detainees)	Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS under Željko Ražnatović. Dalj was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	21 September 1991; bodies buried in a mass grave in the village of Celija
Dalj massacre	War crimes (Massacre of 28 detainees)	Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS under Željko Ražnatović. Dalj was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	4 October 1991
Lovas massacre	War crimes; Crimes against humanity (Massacre of 70-75 detainees, most of whom were civilians.)	Yugoslav People's Army, Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS and Dušan Silni paramilitary unit. Ljuban Devetak and 17 individuals are being tried by Croatian Courts. Lovas was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	10 October 1991
Široka Kula massacre	Crimes against humanity (Massacre of 40 civilians.)	JNA and Krajina Serb Territorial Defense.	Široka Kula near Gospić. On October 13, 1991.
Baćin massacre	Crimes against humanity (Massacre of approximately 110 civilians.)	Serb Territorial Defense forces and SAO Krajina militia. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted by ICTY. Baćin was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	On 21 October 1991.
Ethnic cleansing of Lipovaca, Vukovići and Saborsko	Crimes against humanity (Massacre of 10 civilians.)	Serb-led JNA and TO forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On November 7, 1991.
Borovo Selo killings
Saborsko massacre	Crimes against humanity (Massacre of 29 civilians.)	Serb-led JNA (special JNA unit from Niš) and rebel Serbs militia. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On November 12, 1991.
Škabrnja massacre	Crimes against humanity, War crimes (Massacre of 86 civilians and POWs.)	Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On November 18, 1991.
Siege of Dubrovnik	Crimes against humanity (Shelling of civilian targets that killed almost 90 civilians)	JNA and Montenegrin territorial forces. Several JNA commanders sentenced.	Shelling of UNESCO protected World Heritage site. October 1991.
Voćin massacre	Crimes against humanity (Massacre of 32 civilians.)	White Eagles paramilitary group under Vojislav Šešelj, indicted by ICTY. Voćin was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	13 December 1991.
Bruška massacre	Crimes against humanity (Massacre of civilians.)	Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On December 21, 1991.
Zagreb rocket attack	Crimes against humanity (Shelling of civilian targets in 1995 that killed 7 and wounded at least 175.)	RSK Serb forces. Leader Milan Martić bragged on Television about ordering the assault, the videotape being used against him at ICTY, convicted.	Rocket attack was started as revenge for Serb military defeat in Operation Flash.	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 20 civilians)	Croatian police forces. No prosecutions	2 May 1991; started the ethnic conflict in Baranya, Eastern Slavonia and Western Syrmia	Ethnic cleansing in Serb Krajina	Crime of genocide (Expulsion of almost 78,000 non-Serbs (mostly Croats))	JNA and Serb paramilitaries. Many people, including leaders Milan Babić and Milan Martić, convicted at ICTY and Croatian courts.	June-December 1991

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Bosnian War		Serb forces, Army of Republika Srpska, Paramilitary units from Serbia, local Serb police and civilians.
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Srebrenica Massacre	Crime of genocide, Crimes against humanity (Murder of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys)	Army of Republika Srpska. President Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić charged.	Following the fall of the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica the men were separated from the women and executed over a period of several days in July 1995.
Prijedor massacre	Crime of genocide, Crimes against humanity (5,200 killed and missing)	Army of Republika Srpska. Milomir Stakić convicted.	Numerous war crimes committed during the Bosnian war by the Serb political and military leadership mostly on Bosniak civilians in the Prijedor region of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Višegrad massacre	Crime of genocide, Crimes against humanity (Murder of over 3,000 civilians)	Serbian police and military forces. Seven officers convicted.	Acts of ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Bosniak civilians that occurred in the town of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by Serb police and military forces at the start of the Bosnian War during the spring of 1992.
Foča massacres	Crime of genocide, Crimes against humanity (Murder of over 2,704 civilians)	Army of Republika Srpska. Eight officers and soldiers convicted.	A series of killings committed by Serb military, police and paramilitary forces on Bosniak civilians in the Foča region of Bosnia-Herzegovina (including the towns of Gacko and Kalinovik) from April 7, 1992 to January, 1994. In numerous verdicts, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that these killings constituted crimes against humanity and acts of genocide.
Markale massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 105 civilians and wounding 234)	Army of Republika Srpska. Stanislav Galić convicted	The victims were civilians who were shopping in an open air market in Sarajevo when Serb forces shelled the market. Two separate incidents. February 1994; 68 killed and 144 wounded and August 1995; 37 killed and 90 wounded.
Siege of Sarajevo	Crimes against humanity, (10,000 civilians killed)	Army of Republika Srpska. Stanislav Galić and Dragomir Milošević, were sentenced to life imprisonment and to 33 years imprisonment, respectively.	The longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. Republika Srpska and the Yugoslav People's Army besieged Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996.
Tuzla massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 72 and wounding of more than 200 individuals)	Army of Republika Srpska. ARS Officer Novak Đukić on trial.	On May 25, 1995 the Serb army shelled the city of Tuzla and killed 72 people with a single shell.
Korićani Cliffs massacre	Crimes against humanity, War crimes (Murder of over 200 men)	Serbian reserve police. Darko Mrđa was convicted.	Mass murder of more than 200 Bosniak men on 21 August 1992 at the Korićani Cliffs (Korićanske Stijene) location on Mount Vlašić, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Ahatovići massacre	Crimes against humanity, Crime of torture (64 men and boys tortured, 56 killed)	Army of the Republika Srpska. No prosecutions.	Rounded up in an attack on a village, they were tortured. Claiming they were going to be exchanged, Serb forces put them on a bus, which they attacked with machine guns and grenades on June 14, 1992. 8 survived by hiding under bodies of the dead.
Paklenik Massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of around 50 men)	Army of the Republika Srpska. Four indicted.	the massacre of at least 50 Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb Army in the Rogatica Municipality on 15 June 1992.
Bosanska Jagodina massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of over 17)	Army of the Republika Srpska. No prosecutions.	The execution of 17 Bosniak civilians from Višegrad on 26 May 1992, all of which were men.
Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Bosnian War		Croat forces, HVO.
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	-
Ahmići massacre	Crimes against humanity according to ICTY, (Murder of 116 civilians)	Croatian Defence Council, Tihomir Blaškić convicted.	On April 16, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council attacked the village of Ahmići and killed 116 Bosniaks.
Stupni Do massacre	Crimes against humanity according to ICTY; (Murder of 37 civilians)	Croatian Defence Council, Ivica Rajić convicted.	On October 23, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council attacked the village of Stupni do and killed 37 Bosniaks
Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing	Crimes against humanity according to ICTY. (2,000 civilians killed and missing)	Croatian Defence Council. Nine politicians and officers convicted, among them Dario Kordić.	Numerous war crimes committed by the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia's political and military leadership on Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) civilians in the Lašva Valley region of Bosnia-Herzegovina, from April, 1993 to February, 1994.
Armed conflict		perpetrator
Bosnian War		Bosniak forces, Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	-
Massacre in Grabovica	War crimes (13 civilians murdered)	Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nihad Vlahovljak, Sead Karagićm and Haris Rajkić convicted.	13 Croatian inhabitants of Grabovica village by members of the 9th Brigade and unidentified members of the Bosnian Army on the 8th or the 9th of September 1993.

1990-2000: Liberia / Sierra Leone

From The Times March 28, 2006 p. 43:

"Charles Taylor, the former Liberian President who is one of Africas most wanted men, has gone into hiding in Nigeria to avoid extradition to a UN war crimes tribunal... The UN war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone holds Mr Taylor responsible for about 250,000 deaths. Throughout the 1990s, his armies and supporters, made up of child soldiers orphaned by the conflict wreaked havoc through a swath of West Africa. In Sierra Leone he supported the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F) whose rebel fighters were notorious for hacking off the limbs of civilians.

• Current action - Indicted on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the UN, which has issued an international warrant for his arrest. As of April 2006 located, extradited, and facing trial in Sierra Leone but then transferred to The Netherlands as requested by the Liberian government.

1990: Invasion of Kuwait

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Kosovo War		Serbian army, police and paramilitary forces
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Račak massacre	War crimes; Crimes against humanity; (Murder of 40 - 45 Albanian civilians)	Serbian Police. Zoran Stojanović, a 32-year-old police officer, was convicted by a joint UN-Kosovo Albanian panel of judges.	40 to 45 Kosovo Albanians were killed in the village of Račak in central Kosovo. The government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia asserted that the casualties were all members of the Kosovo Liberation Army who had been killed in a clash with state security forces.
Izbica massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 120 Albanian civilians)	Serb forces, no prosecutions.	120 Albanian civilians killed by Serbian forces in the village of Izbica, in the Drenica region of central Kosovo on 28 March 1999.
Suva Reka massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 48 Albanian civilians)	Serbian police. Four former policemen were convicted and received prison sentences ranging from 13 to 20 years.	The massacre took place in Suva Reka, in central Kosovo on 26 March, 1999. The victims were locked inside a pizzeria into which two hand grenades were thrown. Before taking the bodies out of the pizzeria, the police allegedly shot anyone still showing signs of life.
Cuska massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 41 Albanian civilians)	Serbian army, police, paramilitary and Serb volunteers from Bosnia, no prosecutions.	Serbian forces summarily executed 41 Albanians in Cuska on 14 May, 1999, in western Kosovo. The Serbian forces took three groups of men into three different houses, where the villagers were shoot with automatic weapons and set on fire.
Massacre at Velika Kruša	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 26 Albanian civilians)	Serbian special forces, no prosecutions.	The Massacre at Velika Kruša near Orahovac, Kosovo, took place during the Kosovo War on the afternoon of 25 March 1999 the day after the NATO air campaign began.
Podujevo massacre	Crimes against humanity (Murder of 19 Albanian civilians)	Serbian paramilitary. Four convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.	19 Kosovo Albanian civilians, all women and children, were executed by Serbian paramilitary forces in March, 1999 in Podujevo, in eastern Kosovo.
Kosovo War		KLA
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
1990:Invasion of Kuwait		Iraq
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Invasion of Kuwait	Crimes against peace (waging a war of aggression for territorial aggrandizement; "breach of international peace and security" (UN Security Council Resolution 660))	no prosecutions	Did conspire to levy and did levy a war of aggression against Kuwait, a sovereign state, took it by force of arms, did occupy it, and did annex it, by right of conquest, a right utterly alien, hostile, and repugnant to all extant international law, being a grave breach of the Charter of the United Nations, and the customary international law, adhered to by all civilized nations and armed groups, thus constituting Crimes against peace.
Invasion of Kuwait	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of torture, Criminal environmental modification (Destruction of resources; murder, persecution, and torture of civilians and soldiers; willful environmental devastation and modification)	no prosecutions	Country devastated, resources intentionally and wantonly destroyed for no militarily necessitous purpose, murder of civilians, torture of residents and citizens of Kuwait, attempted criminal environmental modification on a global scale through intentional oil spills and soot from intentional oil well fires.

1998-2006: Second Congo War

See also: Cases before the International Criminal Court#Democratic Republic of Congo

• Civil war 1998-2002, est. 5 million deaths; war "sucked in" Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, as well as 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers, its "largest and most costly" peace mission and "the bloodiest conflict since the end of the Second World War."
• Fighting involves Mai-Mai militia and Congolese government soldiers. The Government originally armed the Mai-Mai as civil defence against external invaders, who then turned to banditry.
• 100,000 refugees living in remote disease ridden areas to avoid both sides
• Estimated 1000 deaths a day according to Oxfam:

"The army attacks the local population as it passes through, often raping and pillaging like the militias. Those who resist are branded Mai-mai supporters and face detention or death. The Mai-mai accuse the villagers of collaborating with the army, they return to the villages at night and extract revenge. Sometimes they march the villagers into the bush to work as human mules."

• In 2003, Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of Mbuti Pygmies, told the UN's Indigenous People's Forum that during the Congo Civil War, his people were hunted down and eaten as though they were game animals. Both sides of the war regarded them as "subhuman". Makelo asked the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide.

2001-present: September 11th, and the "War on Terrorism"

Part of this section overlaps with the section Afghan Civil War listed above.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
September 11th Attacks		Al Qaeda
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
September 11th Attacks	Crimes against peace (waging a war of aggression against the United States)	Al Qaeda, as an entity, and personal responsibility of the principals thereof, including, but not limited to, "Shaikh" Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; Yamashita standard/Medina standard command responsibility of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as an entity, including personal command responsibility of "Mullah" Omar of the Taliban/Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan; potentially other indicted or unindicted co-conspirators.	Allegedly ordered, incited, counseled, controlled, directed, and/or waged a common plan and conspiracy to levy a war of aggression upon the United States, being a grave breach of the customary international law, adhered to by all civilized nations and armed groups, thereby constituting crimes against peace.
September 11th Attacks/Attack on the World Trade Center	Crimes against humanity (Willful attacks directed upon civilian targets, to include the World Trade Center; the taking of hostages on board a civil transport aircraft, and their murder)	See previous entry; in addition, the actual perpetrators/attemptors of the attack include Zacharias Moussasoui, Mohammed Atta, et al.	Although carried out by a non-government agency, and actually non-state terrorism, by some are alleged to be war crimes. Perpetrator allegedly ordered, incited, counseled, controlled, directed, participated, and/or waged a common plan and conspiracy to commit and engage in unlawful attacks directed towards and with the express purpose of the destruction of civilian targets and devised so as to kill as many civilian persons as possible, did use a civil transport aircraft transporting non-combatants as a weapon, did take the civilians on board as hostages, and did willfully kill those same hostages, being a grave breach of the customary international law, adhered to by all civilized nations and armed groups, thereby constituting crimes against humanity.
September 11th Attacks/Attack on the Pentagon, Attempted attack upon the U.S. Capitol Building	War crimes, crimes against humanity (Perfidious attacks against C4ISTAR targets of the U.S. military and government & the taking of civilian hostages and their murder.)	See previous entry.	Although carried out by a non-government agency, and actually non-state terrorism, by some are alleged to be war crimes. Perpetrator allegedly ordered, incited, counseled, controlled, directed, participated, and/or waged a common plan and conspiracy to wage perfidious warfare against military and command and control targets of United States, being a grave breach of the customary law of war, adhered to by all civilized nations and armed groups, thereby constituting war crimes. These war crimes did consist, but were not limited to, the following acts of perfidy: Failure to bear arms openly, The use of civilian transport aircraft as a weapon, constituting violation of a flag of truce, and of occupying a protected place while engaged in combat, and the use of a protected place as a weapon, The use of civilians on board civilian transport aircraft as human shields; Also: Allegedly ordered, incited, counseled, controlled, directed, participated, and/or waged a common plan and conspiracy to willfully take civilian hostages, and did murder them, being a grave breach of the customary international law, adhered to by all civilized nations and armed groups, thereby constituting crimes against humanity.
Armed conflict		Perpetrator
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)		United States
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Mistreatment of partisans as "unlawful enemy combatants"	War crimes (Deemed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) POWs who obeyed law of war as "unlawful enemy combatants" and denied treatment due under 3rd Geneva due to fighting for unrecognized state)	Alleged perpetrators are suspected to include John Yoo, David Addington, perhaps other political figures; potential command responsibility of certain forces in the field.	During the initial, 2001-02 period of combat operations, allegedly deemed or conspired to deem Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) partisans who obeyed the law of war, including wearing a fixed distinguishing mark visible at a distance, bore arms openly, had a command structure, and obeyed the law and custom of war, as "unlawful enemy combatants", not subject to the rights of prisoners of war, thereby constituting a violation of 3rd Geneva, and thus, war crimes.
Interrogation and detention atrocities against IEA (Taliban) POWs, al-Qaeda enemy combatants, and al-Qaeda terrorists	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of torture (Detention of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) POWs in inhumane conditions contrary to 3rd Geneva; detention of al-Qaeda enemy combatants and al-Qaeda terrorists, including several innocent non-combatants with mistaken identities, in outrageous and depraved conditions, contrary to 4th Geneva, Common Article 3; torture of persons captured in Afghan theater of war or elsewhere, including POWs, enemy combatants, and terrorists.)	Perpetrators, conspirators, and/or other responsible parties: Alleged direct responsibility for ordering, counseling, advising, planning, establishing sham legal rationales, and/or inciting atrocities: John Yoo, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, Douglas Feith, Alberto Gonzalez, and, allegedly, at the apex, David Addington; Alleged direct responsibility for aiding and abetting atrocities: SERE staff and attached psychologists/psychiatrists; Alleged direct responsibility for actual commission of atrocities: Various U.S. lawful and unlawful combatants, including, but not limited to, SOCOM operators (lawful) and CIA paramilitaries (unlawful), potential involvement of regular military personnel; Alleged Yamashita standard (willful blindness to action of own forces under direct command) command responsibility for atrocities: Donald Rumsfeld, various Polish military and intelligence entities (on whose territory atrocities were committed), SOCOM command staff, CIA supervisory staff; Alleged Medina standard (knowledge of, but no action against) command responsibility for atrocities: potentially the high Constitutional officers of the United States, such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, depending on how much they knew, and when they knew it.	Alleged participation in or development of a common plan or conspiracy to detain prisoners of war in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conditions at various locations, including the Salt Pit at Bagram Air Base, a Polish "black site", and Guantanamo Bay; this conduct being unlawful under, alien to, and in direct breach of the Third Geneva Convention; alleged participation in or development of a common plan or conspiracy to detain protected persons in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conditions at various locations, including the Salt Pit at Bagram Air Base, a Polish "black site", and Guantanamo Bay; this conduct being unlawful under, alien to, and in direct breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Common Article 3. Alleged participation in or development of a common plan or conspiracy to aid, abet, incite, counsel, plan, accessorize, enable, suborn, levy, control, direct, instigate, and/or commit the Crime of torture, as well as other atrocities, against prisoners of war and/or protected persons (to include "unlawful" combatants and terrorists), or did act as accessories after the fact, thereby constituting War crimes, Crimes against humanity, and the Crime of torture.

2003–present: Iraq War

• Crime against peace (waging a war of aggression against Iraq by the United States)
• Crimes against humanity: murders of civilians by the Fedayeen Saddam irregulars organized by Uday al Hussein and Iraqi government forces during the initial invasion;
• Crimes against humanity, War crimes, possibly Crime of torture: cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners (perhaps including torture) by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib detention facility; some soldiers prosecuted, but persons with command responsibility not charged;
• Crimes against humanity: numerous suicide bombings directed at civilians by armed groups including al Qaeda of Iraq.
  • Use of poisons as weapons: deliberate use of chemical weapons, including chlorine gas, in suicide bombings by al Qaeda of Iraq and others;
  • Crimes against humanity: deliberate use of children and female non-combatants as suicide bombers by al Qaeda of Iraq and others;
  • Crimes against humanity: deliberate attacks using suicide bombers upon protected places, such as mosques, religious sites, hospitals, schools, and other clearly civilian targets by al Qaeda of Iraq and others;
  • Offenses against the law of nations: outrages upon diplomatic plenipotentiaries and agents: suicide bombing of the United Nations headquarters of Iraq in 2003, leading to the death of numerous UN workers, who, being agents of international organizations, are protected persons;
• War crimes: perfidious emplacement of minefields and booby-traps: the laying of minefields and placement of booby-traps in minefields not clearly marked and mapped by irregular forces, including al Qaeda of Iraq;
• Damage to or destruction of a good portion of Fallujah, including civilian buildings and various cultural and religious properties by U.S. troops; Fallujah was occupied by insurgents, who commingled themselves with the civilian population; U.S. forces first surrounded the city and ordered civilians to evacuate the city several days prior to the commencement of military operations. Some have alleged that the military operations in Fallujah constituted crimes against humanity for the destruction of civilian buildings, regardless of whether they were being used for purposes of warfare.
  • War crimes, crimes against humanity: use of internationally protected places marked with the Red Cross and/or Crescent and inalienable objects and locations of cultural or religious heritage as bunkers, bomb shelters, and firing positions by insurgents within Fallujah;
  • War crimes: Perfidy: Failure to bear arms openly, failure to wear a fixed distinguishing mark visible at a distance, and failure to obey the law and custom of land warfare by insurgent forces;
  • War crimes, crimes against humanity: use of civilians as human shields, by commingling themselves with civilian persons, insurgents used the civilian population of Fallujah as human shields.
• Crime of genocide: ethnic cleansing (forcible removals or murders of civilian members of ethnic groups by armed marauders, including al Qaeda of Iraq; various organizations with some members captured and/or prosecuted).
• Alleged war crimes, alleged crimes against humanity: Haditha killings by U.S. troops, for which a trial is in progress;
• War crimes, crimes against humanity: Mahmudiyah killings involving the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl and the murder of her family by U.S. troops.
• Crimes against humanity: Mukaradeeb killings also known as the Wedding Party massacre, by U.S. troops.
• Crimes against humanity: 2006 al-Askari Mosque bombing by Al-Queda.

2003-present: Darfur conflict, War in Chad (2005–present)

Main article: International response to the Darfur conflict § Declarations of genocide

• The entire conflict is allegedly a genocide perpetrated by the involved combatants in Darfur.

Sudanese authorities claim a death toll of roughly 19,500 civilians while many non-governmental organizations, such as the Coalition for International Justice, claim over 400,000 people have been killed.

In September 2004, the World Health Organization estimated there had been 50,000 deaths in Darfur since the beginning of the conflict, an 18-month period, mostly due to starvation. An updated estimate the following month put the number of deaths for the 6-month period from March to October 2004 due to starvation and disease at 70,000; These figures were criticized, because they only considered short periods and did not include deaths from violence. A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died, and others have estimated even more.

Sri Lanka 2009

Main articles: Sri Lankan Civil War, Eelam War IV, and Sri Lankan IDP camps

The United Nations, the US State Department and others believe that the actions of both the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers during the final months of the civil war may amount to war crimes. In May 2009 an attempt by Western countries to get the 11th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate war crimes in Sri Lanka was thwarted after the Sri Lankan government received support from China, Russia, India, Pakistan and other Asian and Muslim countries with questionable human rights records. In October 2009 Stephen Rapp, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues, called for a war crimes investigation. His department submitted a detailed report to Congress about the incidents that happened during the conflict in Sri Lanka. On 25 October 2009 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an independent, international investigation of possible war crimes committed during the last few months of the war in Sri Lanka. The alleged war crimes committed include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by the Sri Lankan military; enforced disappearances by the Sri Lankan military and paramilitary groups backed by them; acute shortages of food, medicine, and clean water for civilians trapped in the war zone; and child recruitment by the Tamil Tigers.

In October 2008 the Sri Lankan military launched an offensive to recapture territory controlled by the Tamil Tigers in northern Sri Lanka. After successive defeats the Tamil Tigers were forced to retreat east. The civilian population living in the area also fled east. By January 2009 the Tamil Tigers and the civilians were trapped in a small piece of land on the north-east coast in Mullaitivu District. As the Sri Lankan military advanced further into Tamil Tiger controlled areas, international concern grew for the fate of the 350,000 civilians trapped. On 21 January 2009 the Sri Lankan military declared a Template:Km2 to mi2 Safe Zone but the fighting between the military and the Tamil Tigers continued. Over the next four months a brutal siege of the Safe Zone occurred as the Sri Lankan military blitzed by land and air the last remnants of Tamil Tigers trapped in the Safe Zone. Satellite images of the Safe Zone publishes by the UN, foreign governments and scientific organisations showed heavy damage that could have only been caused by bombardment.

The UN, based on credible witness evidence from aid agencies as well civilians evacuated from the Safe Zone by sea, estimated that 6,500 civilians were killed and another 14,000 injured between mid-January 2009, when the Safe Zone was first declared, and mid-April 2009. There are no official casualty figures after this period but a report in The Times claims that that civilian deaths increased to an average of 1,000 per day after mid-April 2009. The UN has refused to confirm the Times' allegations. Estimates of the death toll for the final four months of the civil war (mid-January to mid-May) range from 15,000 to 20,000. A US State Department report has suggested that the actual casualty figures were probably much higher than the UN's estimates and that significant numbers of casualties weren't recorded.

All civilians who managed to escape the fighting in the Safe Zone and the civilians who were still in the Safe Zone after the end of combat, totalling nearly 300,000, were taken by the Sri Lankan military to southern Vavuniya District and housed in camps. The IDPs weren’t allowed to leave the camps. The reasons given by the Sri Lankan government/military for not allowing the civilians to return to their homes were the existence of land mines and the need to identify Tamil Tigers whom they allege are hiding amongst the civilians.

Again video footage released by Channel 4 UK TV, spark waves on the prob case again in August 2009. The government rejected the claims and claimed the video to be false using a technical analysis, where many they claimed technical discripancies have been found such as dubbings, format conversions etc.

The original video was found by Wiki Wickramarathna and an in-depth analysis was done by him which gave more details than the original analysis. Wiki claimed that there was no Sinhala language spoken but all there were in Tamil language. However, the government forces also include Tamil speaking soldiers. Wiki uploaded the Channel 4 original video on his Sri Lanka Almanac Portal as well as to U Tube and cleared the bad name of the country.

The original video was distributed by German-based Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) on 25 August 2009. Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), an organization dedicated to initiate war crimes investigation against Sri Lanka, sponsored a forensic analysis of the video by an unidentified US company. The notarized report of the preliminary findings claimed that the video was not altered and genuine.

The Sri Lankan government's claim was shattered as UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings Philip Alston said three independent experts had confirmed the video was authentic, renewing calls for a war crime inquiry. The BBC reported ,

He said the video had been examined by three US-based independent investigators.

He named them as Peter Diaczuk, an expert in firearms evidence, Daniel Spitz, a prominent forensic pathologist, and Jeff Spivack, an expert in forensic video analysis.

At the same time he noted that there were "a small number of characteristics of the video which the experts were unable to explain".

"Each of these characteristics can, however, be explained in a manner entirely consistent with the conclusion that the videotape appears to be authentic," he added.

The UN official also called on the Sri Lankan government to hold an independent inquiry into possible war crimes committed by both sides of the conflict.

2008-2009: Gaza War

Main article: United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

The UN fact finding mission published a 575 page report on September 15, 2009 stating it had found that war crimes were committed by both sides involved in the Gaza War.

The report condemns Israel's actions during the conflict for “the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations". It came "to the conclusion, on the basis of the facts we found, that there was strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law, both humanitarian law and human rights law, were committed by Israel during the military operations in Gaza”. Israel has also come under fire for the use of white phosphorous - a chemical weapon which is deemed illegal to use against military or civilian targets by international law - and depleted uranium during the conflict. The use of such weapons has been allegedly linked to a rise in birth defects among the Gazan population.

The UN report also condemned the use of indiscriminate rocket attacks by Palestinian militants which targeted known civilian areas within Israel, stating that “[t]here’s no question that the firing of rockets and mortars [by armed groups from Gaza] was deliberate and calculated to cause loss of life and injury to civilians and damage to civilian structures. The mission found that these actions also amount to serious war crimes and also possibly crimes against humanity”.

See also

• Ahnenerbe-SS
• Allied war crimes
• Cases before the International Criminal Court
• Command responsibility
• Crimes against humanity
• Crimes against peace
• Death's Head-SS
• Democide
• Einsatzgruppen
• Genocide
• Genocides in history
• German war crimes
• Laws of war
• List of massacres
• List of war criminals
• Mass murder
• Nazi war crimes
• Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project (RULAC)
• Soviet war crimes
• Torture
• Waffen-SS
• War crimes
• War crimes committed by the United States
• War crimes of the Wehrmacht
• World War II crimes in Poland

External links

• 1944-1945 Killing of Allied POWs in Europe