Tuesday, March 01, 2016

The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce By Ashley Gilbertson

Noah Pierce’s headstone gives his date of death as July 26, 2007, though his family feels certain he died the night before, when, at age twenty-three, he took a handgun and shot himself in the head. No one is sure what pushed him to it. He said in his suicide note it was impotence—a common side effect of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It was “the snowflake that toppled the iceberg,” he wrote. But it could have been the memory of the Iraqi child he crushed under his Bradley. “It must have been a dog,” he told his commanders. It could have been the unarmed man he shot point-blank in the forehead during a house-to-house raid, or the friend he tried madly to gather into a plastic bag after he had been blown to bits by a roadside bomb, or—as the fragments of Noah’s poetry might lead you to believe—it could have been the doctor he killed at a checkpoint.
Noah Pierce
A self-portrait of Noah Pierce in Iraq
Noah Pierce grew up in Sparta, Minnesota, a town of fewer than one thousand on the outskirts of the Quad Cities—Mountain Iron, Virginia, Eveleth, and Gilbert—on the Mesabi Iron Range. Discovered on the heels of the Civil War, the range’s ore deposit is the largest in the United States. These were the mines that made the Second Industrial Revolution. Range steel became the tracks of railroads, the wires of suspension bridges, the girders of skyscrapers. It became the weapons and artillery of the World Wars. WELCOME TO MOUNTAIN IRON, THE TACONITE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD reads a sign greeting visitors along the highway. There are so many open pit mines that the cities seem perched on tiny outcrops, overlooking gaping holes ready to engulf them. Around the clock, deep metallic groans come out of the ground, and freight trains barrel through, horns screeching. Blasting takes place so close to people’s houses, residents open their front doors so the pressure doesn’t blow out their windows. Locals are proud of their hardworking, hard-drinking heritage. There are more than twenty bars on Eveleth’s half-mile-long main street. On a typical night last May, when I was there, loudspeakers affixed to lampposts blared John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” and Harleys thundered through town. One bar closed early, when a drunk got thrown through the front window.
Right from the start, Noah had seemed ill-equipped for life on the range. He was a quiet, sensitive kid. He kept a tight circle of friends and passed time with them building tree forts and playing army in the woods. Noah’s biological father, Dale Pierce, a deep-sea diver who worked on oil rigs, separated from Noah’s mother shortly after she became pregnant, but Tom Softich, Noah’s stepfather, treated the thin-skinned boy as his own. When Noah turned six, Tommy began taking him hunting, and by thirteen Noah had his own high-powered rifle. For practice, they went rabbit shooting together at a small clearing a mile from their house. It became such a regular place to find Noah that his family and friends began referring to the clearing simply as “the spot.”
When Noah went missing in July 2007, after a harrowing year adjusting to home following two tours in Iraq, police ordered a countywide search. His friend Ryan Nelson thought he might know where to look. When he pulled up to the spot, he immediately recognized Noah’s truck. Inside, Ryan found his friend slumped over the bench seat, his head blown apart, the gun in his right hand. Half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Special Blend lay on the passenger seat, and beer cans were strewn about. On the dash lay his photo IDs; he had stabbed each photo through the face. And on the floorboard was the scrawled, rambling suicide note. It was his final attempt to explain the horrors he had seen—and committed.
Noah Pierce was not the only veteran wrestling with depression and PTSD. This April, Ira R. Katz, Deputy Chief Patient Care Services Officer for Mental Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, became embroiled in scandal when a memo surfaced in which he instructed members of his staff to suppress the results of an internal VA investigation into the number of veterans attempting suicide. Based on their surveys and tabulations from the NCHS’s National Death Index and the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System, Katz estimated that between 550 and 650 veterans are committing suicide each month. It is possible that the number of suicide deaths among veterans in 2008 alone will double the combined combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. It pains Noah’s family and friends that the Pentagon will never add him—nor the thousands like him—to the official tally of 4,000-plus war dead.
Likewise, PTSD and traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are excluded from the count of 50,000 severe combat wounds—even though PTSD and TBI often have far greater long-term health effects than bullet wounds or even lost limbs. A recent study by the RAND Corporation found that one in five (approximately 300,000) Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from depression or stress disorders and another 320,000 suffer from TBIs that place them at a higher risk for depression and stress disorders.
Noah’s mother, Cheryl, believes her son’s death could have been avoided had he received counseling. Statistically, veterans outside the VA system are four times more likely to attempt suicide than those within the system. Now Cheryl’s mission is to have a clause inserted into every standard military contract that would require veterans to visit a therapist every two weeks of the first year after a combat deployment. “Soldiers are taught to follow orders,” she told me. “It needs to be mandatory. Noah was an excellent soldier, and if it was mandatory, he would have gone faithfully to every appointment. But it wasn’t.”
Cheryl Softich is a slight, chain-smoking woman of fifty, whose disarmingly direct approach to conversation could easily be mistaken as brusque by an outsider. She sank into the oversize leather couch in her living room, recounting her twelve-hour labor, two days before Christmas 1983. She remembered the blinding pain of each contraction and smiled when she recalled the doctor asking permission for a group of twenty medical students to observe. “As long as you get this baby out of me, I don’t care who watches,” she said. But then Cheryl’s smile faded. “As soon as they put him in my arms, this feeling washed over me, and I knew instantly that I was going to outlive this child. Did not know how or why, but I was going to outlive this child.”
Cheryl Softich
Cheryl Softich
The feeling returned the day, not long after 9/11, that Noah came home with enlistment papers. He was a few months shy of eighteen and needed a parental signature. “He kind of put me between a rock and a hard place,” Cheryl said. “Either sign these papers and show you support me and my decision, or I’m signing them in a couple of months without your support. Well, no child of mine is going off to war thinking I don’t support him. Did I try to talk him out of it? Hell, yes. Did I finally give up trying to talk him out of it? Yes, because it was what he was going to do, so I accepted it, and I was proud of him for his decision.”
Not everybody was as understanding. “When he joined the army, my heart sank,” said Sally Galbraith, a family friend who was virtually a second mother to Cheryl’s children. “I thought, ‘Noah, you’re too sensitive, you’re too caring; how are you ever going to get through this?’”
In June 2002, Noah went to boot camp in Fort Stewart, Georgia, and began regularly writing letters home. He expressed surprise at seeing fellow soldiers break down in tears, homesick and scared, but admitted to feeling a little that way himself. “During practice we had to yell stupid stuff,” Noah wrote in August. “The Drill sergeant would ask, ‘What makes the green grass grow?’ We would yell, ‘blood, blood, blood makes the green grass grow.’”
The Iraq invasion began in March 2003. Noah’s unit—First Platoon, Bravo Battery, First Battalion, Third Air Defense Artillery—was assigned to the front line. He rolled northward in a Bradley Linebacker, a heavily armored infantry track vehicle equipped with surface-to-air Stinger missiles, but Saddam’s army had virtually no helicopters or jets, so Noah’s platoon was changed to infantry and tasked with kicking in doors and searching houses. By early April, American troops had reached Baghdad, and the airwaves were filled with images of Saddam’s statue toppling in Firdos Square and the troops being hailed as conquering heroes.
Noah was outraged. “War is horrible,” he scrawled in enormous letters across the back of the envelope of his first letter home from Iraq. “It fucking sucks here,” he wrote. “It sounds like you guys in the states are for the war. All the soldiers I know including me think it is a bunch of bullshit. We came in and invaded this country and murdered a lot of innocent people. So tell me how we are heros.”
Barely a month into the invasion, Noah already felt beset by the moral ambiguity of house-to-house raids. “I wish I would have been a driver during the war,” he wrote from Baghdad. “They didn’t have to see near as much shit as I had to go through. Plus you never had to shoot people in the drivers hatch. Even the gunner has it better. All they ever shot were vehicles, so they didn’t have to see the affects. Unlike when you shoot someone in the head at point blank range. Did they show that shit on T.V.?” The violation of bursting into someone’s home and the consequences of any errors haunted him. “What would you do if you were forced to clear buildings where they know there are enemy soldiers (keep in mind you’re not infantry and haven’t been trained for it) and you enter a room and you run into a soldier less than 6 inches from the end of your barrel? Plus, he’s on his knees with his hands on his head but you are scared out of your mind. Would you pull the trigger? Say you just shoot out of instinct like hunting, like when you suddenly flush a grouse (dad should know what I mean). Then, after, you realize what you did. Is that considered murder?”
The questions read as oblique confession, and Noah admitted that there were “some things I can’t even get myself to write about.” For some of those things, he had taken photographs—though he was uncertain what he would ever do with the images, whom he could show them to. “I will probably destroy the camera,” he wrote.
His unit was positioned near the airport, close to some of Saddam’s palaces. Noah was impressed by their scale; he liked the palm trees, and he enjoyed the sweet tea. But his unit’s turf was the Abu Ghraib neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad—home to the infamous prison and the last main road before Fallujah, the cradle of the insurgency. One night, Noah’s platoon went out on a mission to guard buildings against looters. While he was in the turret of his Bradley, a van drove toward him and someone started shooting. “I just grabbed my M16 and put it on 3 round burst and led the tracers into the drivers window,” Noah wrote in a letter a few days later. “Right away the van stopped. I just finished the magazine. I watched it for a minute and someone ran around from the passenger side and dragged (I assume the body) into the back seat. I didn’t shoot anymore and just let them leave. The gunner and track commander were asleep in the truck and didn’t wake up so I never mentioned it to anybody. I can’t wait until I get out of here and I hope I never have to do something like this again.”
The letter ended: “It’s definitely been an experience I’ll never forget, hopefully I will be able to forget most of it someday, but I doubt it.”
“Everything good Noah got from Tommy. From me he inherited an overly sensitive heart,” Cheryl said one afternoon, her voice quavering as she spoke. She wanted me to understand that, no matter the terrible things her son may have done, he was a good person. It was his sensitivity—her sensitivity—that burrowed under his skin, that would come to make him edgy and aggressive. By summer 2003, he was suffering constant nightmares and couldn’t sleep. “They are pretty much like the shit I went through,” he wrote his mother, “only my dreams are always weird, so they are kind of fucked up.” To blow off steam, he admitted, he and other members of his platoon had taken to abusing suspects. “Whatever they’d do for stress relief,” Cheryl explained, “hit a prisoner—because you’re so frustrated that you haul him off and slug him—well, Noah did those things along with the rest of them. The difference is, he suffered from it. He felt guilty afterwards.”
But with each passing day in the desert, Noah’s guilt was turning to anger, confusion, and, finally, despair. “I’m so pissed off right now,” he wrote in July. “Beatin’ a sandnigger unconscious would help but we will get in serious trouble if it happens again.” But soon the letters his parents received were stuffed with Iraqi dinars, stolen from civilians his unit had beaten and robbed.
“Well staying here has had one good impact on me,” Noah wrote. “I no longer regret what I did during the war. I have so much hatred in me I could go murder more sandniggers and I would just smile. That goes for almost everyone here. We had sympathy for them after the war but now we have absolutely nothing but hatred for them. We should have killed more during the war. I let all kinds of ‘innocent’ people go when I should have just mowed them down.”
By August, as their deployment drew to a close, Noah’s platoon was under a magnifying glass, so he and some of his friends found a new way to vent—stoning chickens. Close to Noah’s camp, two hens were kept in a hole deep enough that they couldn’t escape. Soldiers regularly pelted the hens with rocks until they were near death. One day, a sergeant caught them. “It was funny as hell,” Noah wrote. “He stood there watching in total disbelief for a good five minutes. Then he asked if we needed to talk to a chaplain. We told him we already talked to a psychiatrist and a chaplain and that it doesn’t help. He continued to watch like we were crazy then told us to quit.” Then, as a casual coda—almost an afterthought—Noah added: “Oh yeah, one of my friends that I do this with accidentally killed a 3 year old kid. He was shooting a SAW (fully automatic machine gun) at a car and a stray bullet caught this kid in the head. Oh well one less motherfucker that won’t grow up and continue this shit. Luckily he is not in any trouble. They are keeping it quiet though. Well fuck this place and I am going to vent some stress on the chickens and hopefully hoadjis later. I love you guys. Love, Noah.”
In September 2003, Noah’s fifteen months were up, and he was sent back to Fort Stewart. He took a two-week leave to go home. Cheryl was enormously proud of her son and told him often. “He’d get mad because he didn’t think there was anything to be proud of.”
“It’s kind of like the devil followed him home and wouldn’t let him be,” Tom Softich told me.
He was standing in ankle-deep water by Lake Vermilion, not far from the Canadian border, where he used to come with Noah to a tiny shack they’d built for hunting and fishing. “He was starting to say Satan had more power than God, right before he shot himself, but I told him that’s not true, it’s only if you let him. Noah was starting to think Satan was in control of everything, and I guess he is, if you let him.”
“I don’t have the answer,” Tommy said, his voice growing softer. “I know I feel that we failed him somehow. Who knows if you could have made a difference or not. I mean Cheryl feels that way more than anybody, being his mother. She probably tried her hardest to get help for him … But you know, everybody comes away feeling like a failure somehow, that you couldn’t, or didn’t, do anything about it.
“I tried to get his mind into other places. I’d do things with him that he liked to do. He didn’t talk about the war a whole lot. He’d talk to me about some of the equipment and stuff, and I’d just talk about hunting and fishing and stuff. Trying to get his mind away from it.”
For the first time in our days together, Tommy’s emotions got the better of him. He rasped an apology before starting to sob.
In February 2005, Noah returned to Iraq. He was assigned to a new unit—Bravo Troop, Fifth Battalion, Seventh Cavalry Regiment—and sent to Balad, a city of 100,000, forty miles north of Baghdad. Insurgent activity was at record levels, and immediately the unit began making contact with their elusive enemy. On one of their first patrols, Noah’s platoon found two IEDs. They disarmed them, arrested a man they suspected was responsible, and used the captured bombs to blow up the suspect’s house.
The carnage on all sides far surpassed anything Noah had seen six months earlier.
Tom Softich
Tom Softich
On February 27, Noah sent an anguished e‑mail home. “Well I had a really bad day mom,” it began. “First I totaled a hoadjies car, but I did that on purpose. but then we had to go back out for a second mission and i ran over a little boy on accident. I was the last vehicle and i ran him over on the left side so my crew didn’t see it. i told them later i must have hit a dog. the kid was between 8-10 years old only. hopefully the family doesn’t try and do anything because the army might think it was weird i total a car and kill a kid in a matter of a couple of hours. i feel really bad but i thought he would get out of my way.”
Noah wrote in his journal about the fear he had of roadside bombs, about friends who’d shot Iraqis and been put on suicide watch (“makes a person not even want to shoot back at a person”), and about his growing sense of isolation. “We have a lot of down time without much to do, so I do a lot of thinking. I have been realizing something. I have never had a true friend.” He kept a small graduation photograph of his sister, Sarah, with him, and would look at it during dark moments. He told her later it kept him alive. At just twenty-one years, Noah felt he could trust almost no one. “Lately I have been thinking I don’t even want to come back alive,” Noah wrote on March 15. “Granted I would never kill myself, but I hate life. If I died here, I would be young and it would be an honorable way to go. Let’s face it, I have no future when I get back.”
Violence in Balad increased, and the unit started losing men. The constant mortar fire coming into their camp killed a soldier, and roadside bombs were exploding virtually every time they crossed the wire. Twice, Noah was riding in the gun turret when they were hit; twice he escaped apparently unharmed. He said privately, however, that he was certain he had some traumatic brain injury—although later, back home, he would skip appointments to test for it, afraid of what they might confirm. “He didn’t want people looking at him like there was something wrong with him,” Cheryl told me. His journal entries and e‑mails home became darker as he struggled with the guilt and anger: “I hate all Iraqis except for the women (most), and the Iraqi national guard. The kids too.”
Noah felt alone, and other soldiers were struggling, too. At the end of April, he had to clear out of his living quarters when a medic became suicidal. “If this shit keeps up I will snap,” he wrote in his journal. “If I do, I’m just going to start killing mother-fuckers. Either Iraqis or soldiers, whatever sets me off. I doubt I will, but this is gonna be a stressful 8 months.”
His next entry is two weeks later: “So far, this has been the worst month of my life. With all this work I have been ready to snap. I don’t know how much I can take. A car pissed me off last night. The fucker kept flashing me and when he pulled off the road I almost ran him over. I changed my mind though, I could have gotten away with killing that mother-fucker though. My transmission was going out and I could have blamed it on that. I am just waiting for a good opportunity though. I am just waiting for the chance where I know people will die. I am not going to swerve at them, but I am not going to avoid it like I have been. The only reason I have avoided it so far is there have been women or kids in the cars coming at me.”
The entry closes, “I am a bad person.”
Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who has worked with combat vets for twenty years and authored two books about PTSD—or psychological and moral injury, as he insists it should be known—told me by phone from his Newton, Massachusetts, office, “It’s titanic pain that these men live with. They don’t feel that they can get that across, in part because they feel they deserve it, and in part because they don’t feel people will understand it.”
“Despair, this word that’s so hard to get our arms around,” he said. “It’s despair that rips people apart [who] feel they’ve become irredeemable.”
I told Dr. Shay about Noah’s experiences in Iraq, in particular the killing, the loss of comrades, the nightmares. He sounded saddened on the phone, but unsurprised. “The flip side of this fellow’s despair was the murderous rages he experienced on his second tour,” he said. “In combat, soldiers become each other’s mothers. The rage, need for revenge, and self-sacrificial commitment toward protecting each other when comrades are killed [are] akin to when a mother’s offspring are put in danger or killed.”
Dr. Shay explained the nightmares and sleeplessness were one of the major issues. “The lack of sleep contributed directly to a loss of control of his own anger, a loss of control of things he felt morally responsible for.”
By July 2005, Cheryl now believes, Noah had become desperate to kill. We were sitting in the kitchen, smoking. Cheryl stood up and went to her bedroom. She rifled through boxes of what looked like documents under the bed. The walls were covered in photographs of her son. An empty bottle of Jagermeister still sat on the desk (“Noah loved Jagbombs,” she told me). His polished Army boots stood at the ready. At last, she found his journal and handed it to me. “On July 4th I went to kill a man that came too close to my truck,” he wrote. Consumed by paranoia and a lust for revenge, Noah assumed the driver had to be a car bomber—and if he wasn’t, he deserved a bullet anyway. “Well, my dumb ass forgot to chamber a round, I got lucky because it was just a stupid driver, and he got lucky from my mistake. I’m pretty pissed about it, I had him dead in my sights. I got to shoot at some other people that day, but missed I guess. We didn’t actually stop to check.”
That month, after writing about another IED attack and his decision to become an alcoholic back home—“If you don’t give a shit about anything, nothing can bother you”—Noah stopped keeping his journal. He wrote letters only occasionally. He seemed to be disappearing into silence and suspicion. Near the end of his deployment, Noah was assigned guard duty at a checkpoint. A man in a car failed to slow down, and Noah killed him. Upon inspection, the murdered man was discovered to be a doctor. “That was the last person that Noah killed,” Cheryl told me, as if unburdening herself of this final secret, but still she defended him. “It was on orders from his commander,” she said, “and Noah shot the man. A nice clean shot.”
Noah took a picture of the grisly scene with his cell phone, made it his wallpaper, uncertain whether it was a trophy or evidence against him. “We saw it,” Cheryl recalled, “and said, ‘You have it in your head, you don’t need to see it every time you open your phone.’ So Tommy threatened he was going to smash the phone or something, and Noah got rid of it. He left his wallet lying around and I went through it one day and I found a note, and the note was written to this doctor. He was apologizing over and over, ‘I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?’ [That] type of thing. I took that note and threw it on the stove and burned it. I figured it was something he didn’t need.”
After his honorable discharge on June 26, 2006, Noah moved back into his basement bedroom, which, in Noah’s absence, Tom had converted into a display room for his antler collection. “He said he didn’t mind,” Tom told me. Noah had always loved the antlers.
For the first week, he seemed happy to be among family and friends, though many said that the light in his eyes had gone. “After that first week,” Cheryl said, “I can honestly say he was nothing but a messed up, confused little boy—man, child, all wrapped into one. Didn’t know—” She paused, gathering herself. “Didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t drive a car really, because driving he was constantly worried about car bombs. You’re not the same after. You’re not the same. He didn’t laugh anymore, he didn’t smile anymore, and if he did, it was phony and it never went to the eyes. He had absolutely no time, no tolerance, no patience for . . .” Cheryl’s voice trailed off.
“Anything,” Sarah finished for her. She lay on the couch, eyes closed, nursing a hangover. From her shoulder, a tattooed portrait of Noah stared out at the room, the dates of his birth and death printed below the neckline of his T-shirt.
Solely to ensure his benefits, Noah attended the army’s mandatory thirty-, sixty-, and ninety-day counseling program—mocked by returning soldiers who fake their way through sessions to keep their records clean. “The veterans lie to the therapists, because they don’t want to appear weak,” Cheryl said. “It’s a stigma. It’s not like if Noah had of come home with his arm blown off. They would have fixed it with an artificial arm, and he would have gone through therapy to learn how to use it and therapy to accept the loss of the arm. And nobody would have looked down on him for that. They would have patted him on the back and told him how proud they were. But once people hear he has PTSD, then he’s a person with leprosy. He’s got a disease and he’s looked down upon and frowned on, and not trustworthy. It’s just not right.”
Noah visited the Veterans Affairs clinic in nearby Hibbing and talked about his nightmares. A therapist prescribed a bottle of Ambien and told him to come back in a couple of months. The sleeping pills didn’t help, and he started drinking more heavily—to sleep at first, then to numb the pain, too. He quit his job as a janitor at Minntac, the US Steel plant where Tommy worked, after some men ridiculed him for having PTSD. Noah pissed into a mop bucket, soaked a cloth in it, and wiped down their lunch table before leaving. He tried attending group counseling to cope with the anger, but found himself in a room of Vietnam vets and had difficulty relating.
Bedroom
Noah’s basement bedroom
“There’s a lot of Vietnam veterans who’ve been suffering a lot of the same stuff for thirty years now,” said Tom, “and he knew some of them, saw the suffering they’re going through, and I think he said, ‘I ain’t gonna deal with this for thirty years.’”
A few months after he returned, Noah became violent. One day, he was sitting with his mother in the living room, chatting, when Sarah walked in. Noah leapt to his feet and threw Sarah across the room. “He would snap and go into another world, his Iraq world,” Cheryl said.
Sarah was sitting in the same living room, listening to her mother talk, her arms crossed and her legs drawn close to her chest. She gazed out a large window overlooking the front yard and some kids playing on the street, as she and Noah had done ten years ago. She hadn’t said much until now.
“I’m feisty and I got right back in his face,” Sarah said. “I wasn’t thinking. All I’m thinking is, ‘Oh my God, my brother just threw me, he’s never done that.’” Their mother split them up, but not before Sarah watched her brother realize what had happened. “It took him a couple of minutes to click that ‘Oh my God, wait a minute, this is my sister.’”
Sarah Softich
Sarah Softich
“I don’t like to tell people that he hit me,” Sarah said, looking back out the window, “because I don’t want people to think that that’s my brother; that was not him. It was him when he got back from Iraq.” She remembered the story Noah told her, how one day he watched his best friend in Iraq blown up by a roadside bomb, how he went around with a plastic bag picking up body parts to send home. “When he left the room, I cried after that. I just cried,” Sarah told me. “I couldn’t even imagine. I wouldn’t even want to.” But even if Sarah felt she understood the source of Noah’s rage, she never understood what set it off.
At the end of November 2006, Noah was sitting on the couch with Sarah, channel surfing, when he attacked her, began to throttle her. “It was just from out of nowhere, I don’t know if it was something on the tv that triggered him,” Sarah said. “I seriously couldn’t breathe because he was choking my life out of me. I mean, I could not breathe, my face was turning blue, and he was beating me with the phone. We had a house phone, a cordless phone, and it was next to me for some reason, and he started hitting me with it. You could see the evil in his eye, you could see it. It was very scary, just straight evil came over his face. It was horrible. When he finally realized what he was doing, that’s when I got up and ran.”
The spot
“The spot”
“I knew at that point,” Sarah said, “when I saw the look in Noah’s eyes after he realized he was choking his sister. At that point, I gave him maybe a year. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know where. My grandmother knew, my mother knew, Noah knew.”
Days later, Sarah came home early from work and found Noah packing his things. He was moving in with his friend Tyler Nuberg, who had a spare room. “I think he was worried he was going to hurt one of us,” Cheryl said. “We were sitting together one day, and out of the blue, matter-of-fact, he said, ‘I could kill every one of you in the house, not give it a second thought, and go to sleep.’”
Noah started working at Tyler’s family business, a kayak factory, and every evening he would sit in his chair next to a mini-fridge full of Michelob Golden Draft Light and listen to music. Almost every night he played a song by the band Smile Empty Soul called “This Is War.” It describes kicking in doors and blowing people’s heads off “for my country.” The song is a favorite among many returning veterans. Noah requested in his suicide note that it be played at his funeral.
At some point, no one is sure when, Noah began to write poems. He’d scribble them down as they came to him—like his dreams—in a notebook or on scraps of paper that were lying around. One month before he died, Noah wrote “Two tours in Iraq” in black marker on a fishing map:
Two tours in Iraq,
was it right?,
was it wrong?,
I don’t know,
My Anger,
destined me to hell,
now I drink,
now I drink & cry,
re-live my life when asleep,
so many dead,
so many killed,
Now I question god,
Is it dis-believe,
or is it fear,
I don’t know,
Don’t want to die,
Don’t want to live,
but should be dead,
I’m already in hell,
Two tours in Iraq.
Cheryl was dropping by Noah’s place virtually every day now, and each time she left his house in tears. He was becoming angrier and would berate her in slurring, drunken tirades. “Noah drank to forget,” Cheryl told me, “and he drank because he hated himself. I think he was trying to drink himself to death, because he wasn’t going to commit suicide. He was going to drink until his liver gave out.” Noah was drinking himself to sleep every night, but the alcohol no longer stopped the nightmares as it once had. His dog, Dazzle, a large black Labrador, licked tears from his face when he awoke in the middle of the night, and then cuddled with him until he could sleep again.
Cheryl’s grief is worsened by the fact she, ironically, can’t dream of Noah. “I want to see my son one more time, just one more time, just one more,” she said, rocking back and forth on the small sofa in the sitting room. She had been crying for the past hour, and now she was at a place beyond tears. Her hands clutched at her neck and face. The pain wasn’t coming from her flesh; it was as though her own skin were adding to her suffering. “I realized I could always see him in a dream.” She struggled to continue. “But for some reason God won’t let me have it. I don’t know if it’s because He knows I’m not emotionally ready for it, or if I will just never dream about my son, ever again. But, every night I ask God, ‘Please, let this be the night Noah is in my dreams, and I remember him.’ Every morning I wake up, and it wasn’t the night.”
“So I go to work and put a fake smile on my face, and everybody tells me how strong I am and how well I’m doing, and how proud they are of me and how they couldn’t be as strong and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like Noah, it’s all an act.”
In the middle of July 2007, Sarah and Noah had planned to meet for dinner. They were both looking forward to it, but when the afternoon rolled around, Noah was having problems and was already drinking. He sent a text to Cheryl. “Hey mom,” it read, “this aint cool. i’m itching with the need to kill. no, i’m twitching with it.”
Spiral Notebook
A page from Noah’s notebook
Before Cheryl could write back, Sarah called her, crying. She said she couldn’t go out with Noah when he was that way, and Cheryl pleaded with her. “I wasn’t thinking about the times he attacked her,” Cheryl said. “All I knew at that point was my son needed her, and she wasn’t there for him. And, I understand why she chose not to be there, but I was so mad at her, so mad. I was so scared that whole night that Noah was going to kill himself. I pissed Tommy off because I couldn’t sleep. I kept tossing and turning and crying because I just knew Noah was dead, I just knew it. Just knew it.”
Cheryl texted Noah in the morning asking if she could come over, not expecting an answer. He wrote back, “yeah. bring me a pack of cigarettes.” Cheryl arrived at the house, hugged Noah, and began crying. “He swore he wouldn’t kill himself,” Cheryl said. “That gave me a sense of peace. I knew he had problems, but I knew he wasn’t going to kill himself—so there was hope. And that was the time he lied to me.”
On Monday, July 25, 2007, it was already hot when Noah left for the kayak factory. He was in a good mood, and there was nothing strange about his behavior, except that for lunch he had only a beer, Tyler remembered later. Noah left work early, and at about five o’clock, his mother, planning to drop off mail and see her son, drove by his house and the factory looking for his truck. When she couldn’t find it, Cheryl assumed he was at the recruiter’s office. He had been talking about signing up again, but this time, he’d told Sarah, he planned on dying in Iraq.
“It was a quarter to five or so,” Cheryl told me, “and so I pick up the telephone, ‘Hey it’s me, wanna know if you want to have dinner with me, see me, talk to me, but I guess not,’ and I hung up the phone, didn’t tell him I loved him or nothing, just hung up the phone.” Twenty-five minutes later her phone buzzed with a text message from Noah. “I opened it up and it says, ‘i love you guys so much and i’m so sorry.’ I text him back, ‘you are my heart Noah,’ and then I went to call him, and before I could call him Sarah called me. She wanted to know if I’d just got a text message from Noah, and I said, ‘Yes,’ and she started screaming.”
Photo on a cameraphone
Noah’s final self-portrait
Noah was at “the spot”—where he’d practiced his marksmanship at thirteen with Tom and cut school to fish with his friends. He’d parked his old, brick-red Sonoma pickup in the clearing, between a small patch of birch trees and a discarded, upturned boat seat. With his knife he carved FREEDOM ISN’T FREE in the pickup’s dashboard. He took his photo IDs from his wallet and stabbed his face out of each one. He punched the rearview mirror, smashing the glass. It seemed that Noah couldn’t look at himself. But then he took a picture of himself with his cell phone. It would be the last photograph of Noah alive. And it is a portrait of despair: his shirt is off and he looks as though he’s been crying. Between five and six that evening, he sent a message to both Ryan Nelson and Tyler: “bam life’s a bitch i’m out.”
Noah scrawled a suicide note on the back of an NRA pistol-safety certificate, and then started drinking. “Time’s finally up,” he wrote, “I am not a good person, I have done bad things. I have taken lives, now it’s time to take mine.”
Noah put his .38 Special to his right temple, wedged one of his army dog tags between the muzzle and his skin, and pulled the trigger.
On a bright afternoon in May, Tyler took me there. We drove down an old bumpy track, miles from the nearest paved road. He had a Glock 9 mm pistol stuffed down his pants, and the only time he stopped chain-smoking Marlboro Reds was to light a joint. “This is Big Swamp Road, our old stomping grounds,” he said, slowing for a deer that bounded across the road and disappeared into the pine forest. “We’d go into the woods here, cut down trees, even though we weren’t allowed, and strip the pine boughs for Christmas wreaths. We’d fill the truck, like three feet above the roof, and make forty or fifty bucks.”
It’s remote and depressingly desolate. Like most dead-end roads on the Iron Range, locals use it as a dump, and it overlooks a green pit lake at the end of Enterprise Trail—a dirt road near the railroad, colored a rusty shade of red by the ore. But over the years, it took on a special meaning to Noah and his friends. “It was the place we’d go to get away from it all,” Tyler said. They went there to hang out—cutting school, fishing over the cliff, pounding beers, or passing a joint.
Today, Tyler was hoping to run into Ryan, but there was no one there. Still, Tyler had a sense that someone was going to arrive at any moment, or was already there, watching from the silvery thickets of birch trees. “You always have a feeling there’s something watching you when you’re out in the woods,” Tyler said, parking next to a small white cross for Noah. Tyler reached up and carefully took a feather that had been threaded into the cab’s vinyl roof. “It’s from a partridge,” he said. “Actually it’s ruffed grouse, but everyone calls them partridges.” He put the feather next to an American flag on the cross.
Tyler stared at the memorial for a while, smoking. I was beginning to feel uneasy. “The army does good with brainwashing, teaching them to kill, make killers, but then the guys do what they’ve been trained to do, and they come back and the army doesn’t deal with the aftermath,” he said. “And so, I guess this is the aftermath.”
Man attaching a flag to a cross
Tyler Nuberg at “the spot”
A few weeks before Memorial Day, fresh sod finally was laid over the loose dirt covering Noah at the Cavalry Cemetery in Virginia, a small graveyard that crested a gentle hill, opposite the hospital. His mother and sister, who split their time between here and the spot, had finished decorating veterans’ graves with flags. They sat cross-legged on Noah’s plot, quietly talking. In the first months after Noah’s death, Cheryl had gotten interest from Representatives Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and Jim Oberstar (D-Minnesota) and Senators Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) in her proposal to mandate counseling for returning veterans. But now months had passed since she had received word from any of them. (None answered requests for interviews.) Sarah ran a fingernail through the etched letters on the headstone: I-r-a-q, she spelled aloud. “It doesn’t need to say anything else,” Cheryl said.
“Have you had the urge to dig?” Sarah asked her mother. “I started one day. God, I’m so glad that the grass is down now. I just wanted to check he was still down there.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Cheryl said, “that I’m so glad the grass is there, otherwise I’d be digging. Just to get to him, just to see him one more time.”

WCP Yvonne Fletcher (R.I.P.)

Yvonne Fletcher, a 25-year-old woman police constable with the Metropolitan Police Service, was shot and killed outside the Libyan People's Bureau in St James's Square in London on 17 April 1984. WPC Fletcher's killer has never been found.
On 19 November 2015, Commander Richard Walton, head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, announced that a Libyan man had been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder WPC Yvonne Fletcher three decades ago. The Libyan aged in his 50s was detained in south-east England and is now in custody. He is also suspected of money laundering offences. Two other Libyan nationals - a woman in her 40s and a man in his 30s - were also arrested on Thursday on suspicion of money laundering. The Met is offering a reward of up to £50,000 for information about the killing, as part of a global social media appeal to identify others involved. Commander Walton said:
"The day Yvonne was shot remains one of the saddest and darkest days in the history of British policing. We have never lost our resolve to solve this case and to bring to justice those who conspired to commit this act of murder."[1]

Contents

Official Narrative

WPC Yvonne Fletcher's death resulted in an 11-day police siege of the Embassy, from where the fatal shot was fired. The shooting resulted in the expulsion of the Embassy staff and the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya.[2] Fletcher's murder became a major factor in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to allow US President Ronald Reagan to launch the USAF bombing raid on Libya in 1986 from American bases in Britain.[3]

Noisy protests

The Libyan People's Bureau, 5 St James's Square, London
On the day of her death, WPC Fletcher was one of a detachment of thirty officers sent to the Libyan Embassy, known as the People's Bureau and located at 5 St James's in London, to monitor a demonstration by Libyan dissidents opposed to the rule of Muammar Gaddafi. This particular demonstration was organised by the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), and was in protest at the execution of two students who had criticised Gaddafi in Tripoli.
Gaddafi loyalists at the People's Bureau had warned the police that they intended to mount a counter-demonstration. About 75 protestors arrived by coach from the North of England for the demonstration, and the police kept them and the loyalists apart by the use of crowd control barriers. Loud music was played from the bureau in an apparent attempt to drown out the shouts of the protestors.[4]

Shooting

The officers with WPC Fletcher at the time included her fiancé PC John Murray,[5] who described what happened:
"Yvonne was the only female officer on duty outside the Embassy and let's not forget she was just over 5 foot tall. We were facing the crowd, our backs towards the Embassy when at about 10:30 hours there was a loud bang. I thought someone had thrown a firework, then I looked to my right and saw Yvonne fall to the ground, after a few seconds I ran over to her, we were only feet apart, she was writhing around in pain, but I did not know what had happened, other officers joined me and I glanced at the crowd as I cradled Yvonne's head, I saw several of the demonstrators on the ground covered in bloodand they were all screaming, then they all scattered.
"Suddenly all went quiet, the Square seemed to be deserted, Yvonne was lying in the road, I was cradling her head and other officers were around us. It was then I realised she had been shot.
"An ambulance arrived and Yvonne was placed in the rear. I went with her, also in the ambulance were several of the most seriously wounded demonstrators. During the journey, Yvonne said to me her tummy was hurting. I used the medic scissors to cut her skirt open, it seemed to relieve the pressure. I said to Yvonne I didn't know what had happened, but don't worry I promise we will get whoever did this, she seemed to smile, I knew she understood.
"At the hospital she was seen immediately and I was placed in another room. I was later told by the doctor that she was being taken for surgery but she should be OK. About 1 hour later I was told she had died."[6]
WPC Fletcher’s hat and four other police officers' helmets were left lying in the Square during the ensuing siege on the Embassy, and images of them were repeatedly shown on British and international television in the days that followed.

Siege

Following the shooting, the Embassy was surrounded by armed police for eleven days, in the longest police siege in London's history. Meanwhile, Gaddafi expressed 'disgust' that his diplomats were not being permitted diplomatic immunity, and Libyan soldiers surrounded Britain's Embassy in Tripoli in response.[7]
The UK Government eventually resolved the incident by allowing the Embassy staff to depart the Bureau and then expelling them from the country. Britain then broke off diplomatic relations with Libya.

Subsequent events

At a press conference on 5 April 1999, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook was asked (in relation to the Lockerbie breakthrough): "How quickly do you anticipate relations between the UK and Libya to get back to normal?"
Robin Cook replied:
The United Nations sanctions will now be suspended, and after 90 days will be lifted depending on Kofi Annan's support; that will resolve the international sanctions on Libya.
The United Kingdom does of course also have issues of its own bilateral concerns with Libya, notably the case of the murder of WPC Fletcher. We have said that we would wish to address those issues, and we hope to achieve cooperation with Libya in resolving those issues - hopefully with some good reasonable speed now that we have resolved the Lockerbie case.[8]
In July 1999, the Libyan government publicly accepted 'general responsibility' for the murder and agreed to pay compensation to Fletcher's family. This, together with Libya's eventual efforts in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing, opened the way for the normalisation of relations between the two countries.
On 24 February 2004, the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 reported that the new Libyan prime minister, Shukri Ghanem, had claimed that his country was not responsible for her murder (nor for the Lockerbie bombing). Ghanem said that Libya had made the admission and paid compensation in order to bring 'peace' and an end to international sanctions.[9]

Controversy

The Official Narrative official view that WPC Fletcher was fired upon and killed by someone in the Libyan Embassy has been disputed by a number of experts, including army ballistics officer Lt-Col George Styles and Home Office pathologist, Hugh Thomas. Prime Minister Tony Blair was questioned on this subject by MP Tam Dalyell in Parliament on 24 June 1997. The Guardian of 23 July 1997 reported a parliamentary speech by Dalyell concerned mainly with the Lockerbie bombing, but also referring to Fletcher's murder:
"With the agreement of Queenie Fletcher, her mother, I raised with the Home Office the three remarkable programmes that were made by Fulcrum, and their producer, Richard Bellfield, called Murder In St. James's.[10][11] Television speculation is one thing, but this was rather more than that, because on film was George Styles, the senior ballistics officer in the British Army, who said that, as a ballistics expert, he believed that the WPC could not have been killed from the second floor of the Libyan embassy, as was suggested.

"Also on film was my friend, Hugh Thomas, who talked about the angles at which bullets could enter bodies, and the position of those bodies. Hugh Thomas was, for years, the consultant surgeon of the Royal Victoria hospital in Belfast, and I suspect he knows more about bullets entering bodies than anybody else in Britain. Above that was Professor Bernard Knight, who, on and off, has been the Home Office pathologist for 25 years. When Bernard Knight gives evidence on film that the official explanation could not be, it is time for an investigation."[12]
Participants who appeared in Channel 4's Dispatches documentary entitled "Murder In St James's" highlighted such issues as the velocity of the bullet and the angle at which it entered Fletcher's body. Lt-Col Styles stated that a high velocity bullet from a Sterling submachine gun would have passed straight through her body at an angle of 15°, and Hugh Thomas rebutted evidence given by Ian West, the pathologist at the inquest, that the 60° angle of entry of the bullet could be explained by Fletcher's turning to the right or left. The film went on to allege that the anti-Gaddafi organisation Al Burkan, which was allegedly funded by the Reagan White House, had obtained a gun from the Hein terrorist group in West Berlin, and used it to kill Fletcher with a single shot from the sixth floor penthouse at 3 St James's Square - the building adjacent to the Embassy. According to the film, the head of Al Burkan, Ragab Zatout, planned to overthrow Gaddafi and seize control of Libya's oil wealth after the severing of diplomatic relations, but his coup attempt on 8 May 1984 was thwarted by the Libyan army. [13]

Murder investigation

Once diplomatic relations had been restored in 1999, officers from the Metropolitan Police went to Libya on a number of occasions to pursue their investigations into her murder.
In June 2007, detectives from Scotland Yard were able to interview the chief Libyan suspect for the first time, following normalisation of political ties with that country.[14] Detectives spent seven weeks in Libya interviewing both witnesses and suspects. Fletcher's mother, Queenie, described these developments as "promising".
In February 2009, Queenie Fletcher suggested that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who at the time was appealing against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing, should be moved to a prison in Libya, on condition that the Libyan government co-operates with Scotland Yard detectives investigating her daughter’s murder. Mrs Fletcher said:
"I know he is ill and I think he should be returned to a prison in Libya so his family can visit him. The appeal could still go ahead in Scotland, but he could stay in prison in Libya. It’s got to be a fair exchange, so Yvonne’s case can be closed. I’d like the police here to be given permission to interview whoever they’ve got to interview in Libya and see whoever they need to for someone to be brought to trial." [15]
In October 2009 the Daily Telegraph revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service had been told by an independent prosecutor that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute two Libyans. A report from April 2007 concluded that the two men, who are now senior members of the Libyan regime played an "instrumental role" in the killing.[16]
In September 2011, Yvonne's former fiancé John Murray travelled to Libya to find out whether the change of regime there had brought the prospect of justice for WPC Fletcher any closer. Accompanied by BBC reporter Allan Little, Murray went in search of Matouk Mohamed Matouk, who from documents recently recovered from government offices, had been named as a suspect. They spoke to the National Transitional Council's vice-Chairman Abdel Gogha who told them:
"Matouk is wanted for crimes against the Libyan people. This includes the murder of Yvonne Fletcher because it was committed from the Libyan Embassy. It is also a crime against Libyans. He will be prosecuted for this in Libya."[17]

Call for Public Inquiry

On 17 April 2014, marking the 30th anniversary of WPC Yvonne Fletcher's murder, the following petition for a Public Inquiry was announced on Facebook:
This month it will mark the 30th anniversary the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher shot while standing opposite the Libyan embassy in St James's Sq. Diminutive in height, but large on bravery and character, Yvonne Fletcher was only accepted at 5’ 2” in the Met Police because of sheer, irrepressible enthusiasm and commitment. Are our memories so careless and short for someone who paid the ultimate price as a public servant? WPC Fletcher’s memory deserves the proper dignity and respect of a more thorough enquiry into her death. The controversy surrounding discrepancies of evidence and ballistics in particular suggest we have not served her memory well. The case should never have been closed without finding out beyond all shadow of doubt, who was responsible. We must call now for the case to be reopened and a Public Inquiry established. Please sign and share this petition.[18]
 

Related Documents

TitleImageTypePublication dateAuthor(s)Description
Terminal VelocityFletcher-placque.jpgarticle1997David GuyattPresents evidence that the shots which killed PC Yvonne Fletcher were not fired from the first floor of the Libyan embassy and that other aspects of the official narrative are anomalous. It refers to the work of Joe Vialls.
Yvonne Fletcher - Death in St James
webpage15 January 1996Joe Vialls
Yvonne Fletcher - Death in St James-2
webpage15 January 1996Joe Vialls


References



  • "PC Yvonne Fletcher shooting: Libyan man arrested in UK"

  • "Fletcher friend's 27-year quest for justice"

  • "Statement by Margaret Thatcher on US bombing of Libya"

  • ISBN 978-0886876784 "Bloody business: an anecdotal history of Scotland Yard" - page=255

  • "Fiancé is witness". BBC News.

  • "Do Not Forget Yvonne Fletcher"

  • "Gaddafi's 'disgust'"

  • "Robin Cook: 'If the two men are innocent they have nothing to fear from Scottish justice'"

  • "PM Ghanem says Libya not responsible" - BBC Radio 4, 24 February 2004

  • "Murder In St James's" 2-part documentary

  • "Murder in St James's" Fulcrum TV trailer

  • "Forensic evidence disputes that Fletcher was killed from second floor of Libyan embassy"

  • "Libya: Exiled Opposition"

  • "Yvonne Fletcher: the net closes in" - The Guardian 24 June 2007

  • "Mum of shot WPC calls for Megrahi swap" - The Sunday Times 1 February 2009

  • "Yvonne Fletcher: Tories demand Government answers over Libyan killers" - The Daily Telegraph 16 October 2009

  • "Fletcher friend's 27-year quest for justice"


  • Facts about "Yvonne Fletcher"
    Born on1959 +
    ConstitutesMurder + and Deep event +
    DescriptionYvonne Fletcher was shot dead while on duty during a protest outside the Libyan embassy on 17 April 1984, cue for the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the UK and Libya. +
    Died on17 April 1984 +
    Display docTypeWikiSpooks Page +
    Display imageFile:Yvonne Fletcher 1.jpg +
    Display lifespan1959 - 17 April 1984 +
    Has fullPageNameYvonne Fletcher +
    Has fullPageNameeYvonne_Fletcher +
    Has imageFile:Yvonne Fletcher 1.jpg +
    Has image2File:Yvonne Fletcher 1.jpg +
    Has objectClassPerson +
    Has objectClass2Person +
    Has revisionSize17,226 +
    Has revisionUserPatrick Haseldine +
    Has wikipediaPagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Fletcher +
    Has wikipediaPage2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Fletcher +
    Victim ofMurder +

    List of war crimes

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    This article lists and summarizes the war crimes committed since the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the crimes against humanity and crimes against peace that have been committed since these crimes were first defined in the Rome Statute.[a]
    Since many war crimes are not ultimately prosecuted (due to lack of political will, lack of effective procedures, or other practical and political reasons[1]), 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 Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo Trials, in which Austrian, German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted for war crimes committed during World War II.

    Contents

    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. Before, the Second Boer War took place after the Hague Convention of 1899. The Second Boer War (1899 until 1902) is known for the first concentration camps (1900 until 1902) for civilians in the 20th century.
    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    World War I German Empire (Imperial Germany)
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Rape of Belgium War crimes No prosecutions In defiance of the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, the German occupiers engaged in mass atrocities against the civilian population of Belgium and looting and destruction of civilian property, in order to flush out the Belgian guerrilla fighters, or francs-tireurs, in the first two months of the war, after the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914.[2] In addition, since Belgium was officially neutral after hostilities in Europe broke out and Germany invaded the country without explicit warning, this act was in breach of the treaty of 1839 and the 1907 Hague Convention on Opening of Hostilities.[3]
    World War I All major belligerents
    Employment of poison gas Use of poisons as weapons No prosecutions Poison gas was introduced by Imperial Germany, and was subsequently used by all major belligerents in the war, in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare[4][5]
    World War I Ottoman Empire
    Armenian Genocide[6][7][8][9][10][11] War crimes, crimes against humanity, crime of genocide (Extermination of Armenians in Western Armenia) 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 Western Armenia. 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. Over 1.5 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.[12]
    World War I United Kingdom
    Baralong Incidents War crimes (murder of shipwreck survivors) No prosecutions On 19 August 1915, a German submarine, U-27, while preparing to sink the British freighter Nicosian, which was loaded with war supplies, after the crew had board the lifeboats, was sunk by the British Q-ship HMS Baralong. Afterwards, Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert ordered his Baralong crew to kill the survivors of the German submarine while still at sea, including those who were summarily executed after boarding the Nicosian. The massacre was reported to a newspaper by American citizens who were also on board the Nicosian.[13] Another attack occurred on 24 September a month later when Baralong destroyed U-41, which was in the process of sinking the cargo ship Urbino. According to U41's commander Karl Goetz, the British vessel was flying the American flag even after opening fire on the submarine, and the lifeboat carrying the German survivors was rammed and sunk by the British Q-ship.[14]

    Aftermath of World War I

    1935–1937: Second Italo-Abyssinian War

    1936–1939: Spanish Civil War

    At least 50,000 people were executed during the Spanish Civil War.[16][17] 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."[18] 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."[19] César Vidal puts the number of Republican victims at 110,965.[20] 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.[21][22]

    1937–1945: Second Sino-Japanese War

    This section includes war crimes up to and through December 5, 1941 when the Second Sino-Japanese War became the Asian Theater of World War II, due to the attack on Pearl Harbor on 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[23] in contravention of the Nine-Power Treaty, Tanggu Truce, and Kellogg–Briand Pact)) Sadao Araki, Kenji Doihara, Kingoro Hashimoto, Shunroku Hata, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Kōki Hirota, Naoki Hoshino, Seishirō Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Kōichi Kido, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Jirō Minami, Akira Mutō, Takazumi Oka, Hiroshi Ōshima, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetarō Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Toshio Shiratori, Shigenori Tōgō, Hideki Tōjō, Yoshijirō Umezu A minor clash between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 6–9 July 1937 escalated into a full-scale war after Japan used the incident as a pretext to launch an all-out invasion of China to conquer as much territory as possible.
    Nanking Massacre,[23] China, 1937–38 Crimes against humanity; War crimes General Asaka Yasuhiko, commander, Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force, Imperial Japanese Army. General Iwane Matsui, Commanding general of Japanese forces in China, Imperial Japanese Army. Lieutenant General Hisao Tani, commanding officer of the Japanese 10th Army, Imperial Japanese Army. Chief of staff of the Army Kotohito Kan'in, Minister of War Hajime Sugiyama. It is debated how culpable Emperor Hirohito was. After the Battle of Nanking, on 13 December 1937, the Japanese entered and occupied 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 dead.
    Battle of Wuhan, China, 1938 Use of chemical weapons on the battlefield No prosecutions During the Battle of Wuhan, the IJA launched 9,667 red gas artillery shells and 32,162 red gas grenades against Chinese forces over 375 times in total from August to October 1938.[24] The use of poison gas by the IJA was in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration (IV, 2) which prohibited the launching of projectiles containing asphyxiating or poisonous gas[25] and Article 23 (a) of the 1907 Hague Convention IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare.[26] Japan was a signatory to these both agreements.[27][28]
    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.[29]

    1939–1945: World War II

    Axis powers

    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 atrocities, both militaries were notorious for their brutal treatment of captured combatants.

    Crimes perpetrated by Germany

    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
    3. War Crimes Atrocities against enemy combatants or conventional crimes committed by military units (see War crimes of the Wehrmacht), and include:
    4. Crimes against Humanity Crimes committed well away from the lines of battle and unconnected in any way to military activity, distinct from war crimes
    • The major crime was the Holocaust, including:
      • The construction and use of Vernichtungslagern (extermination camps) to commit genocide, most prominently at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Chełmno
        • The employment of other concentration camps across Europe, including Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen, which held Soviet POWs and political prisoners in inhuman conditions, and transported Jews and Roma to extermination camps
      • 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, often with the intent of extermination through labor
      • The establishment of Jewish Ghettos in Eastern Europe intended to isolate Jewish communities for deportation and subsequent extermination
      • The use of SS Einsatzgruppen, mobile extermination squads, to exterminate Jews and anti-nazi "partisans"
        • Babi Yar a series of massacres in Kiev, the most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor, Major-General Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. It was carried out by Sonderkommando 4a soldiers, along with the aid of the SD and SS Police Battalions backed by the local police.
        • Rumbula a collective term for incidents on two non-consecutive days (November 30 and December 8, 1941) in which about 25,000 Jews were killed in or on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during the Holocaust
        • Ninth Fort By the order of SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger and SS-Rottenführer Helmut Rauca, the Sonderkommando under the leadership of SS-Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann, and 8 to 10 men from Einsatzkommando 3, in collaboration with Lithuanian partisans, murdered 2,007 Jewish men, 2,920 women, and 4,273 children in a single day at the Ninth Fort, Kaunas, Lithuania.
        • Simferopol Germans perpetrated one of the largest war-time massacres in Simferopol, killing in total over 22,000 locals—mostly Jews, Russians, Krymchaks, and Gypsies.[32] On one occasion, starting December 9, 1941, the Einsatzgruppen D under Otto Ohlendorf's command killed an estimated 14,300 Simferopol residents, most of them being Jews.[33]
        • 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 Jewish ghetto and send all of the occupants to extermination camps
      • Izieu Massacre Izieu was the site of a Jewish orphanage during the Second World War. On 6 April 1944, three vehicles pulled up in front of the orphanage. The Gestapo, under the direction of the 'Butcher of Lyon' Klaus Barbie, entered the orphanage and forcibly removed the forty-four children and their seven supervisors, throwing the crying and terrified children on to the trucks. Following the raid on their home in Izieu, the children were shipped directly to the "collection center" in Drancy, then put on the first available train towards the concentration camps in the East.
    Other crimes against humanity included:
    • The Porajmos, the mass killings of the Romany peoples of Europe by the Nazis
    • The Łapanka or "Catching Game", – Nazi roundups of Poles in the major cities for slave labor
    • Nikolaev Massacre, which resulted in the deaths of 35,782 Soviet citizens, most of whom were Jews.
    • 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.
    • Both "encouraging" and "compelling" abortion, prosecuted as a crime against the child in the womb. The crime consisted of three parts: (a) providing abortion services, (b) withdrawing the protection of German law from the unborn child, (c) refusing to enforce existing Polish law prohibiting abortion.[34][35]
    • 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 murdered due to this program.
    At least 10 million, and perhaps over 20 million perished directly and indirectly due to the commission of crimes against humanity and war crimes by the Nazi regime, of which the Holocaust lives on in particular infamy, for its particularly cruel nature and scope, and the industrialized nature of the genocide of Jewish citizens of states invaded or controlled by the Nazi regime. At least 5.9 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, or 66 to 78% of Europe's Jewish population, although a complete count may never be known. Though much of Continental Europe suffered under the Nazi occupation, Poland, in particular, was the state most devastated by these crimes, with 90% of its Jews as well as many ethnic Poles slaughtered by the Nazis. 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, at least one of which by killing himself with cyanide.[36] 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 and denial of the Holocaust is outlawed.

    Crimes perpetrated by Hungary

    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Novi Sad massacre[37][38] Crimes against humanity After the war, most of the preparators were convicted by the People's Tribunal. The leaders of the massacre, Ferenc Feketehalmy-Czeydner, József Grassy and Márton Zöldy were sentenced to death and later extradited to Yugoslavia, together with Ferenc Szombathelyi, Lajos Gaál, Miklós Nagy, Ferenc Bajor, Ernő Bajsay-Bauer and Pál Perepatics. After a trial at Novi Sad, all of them were sentenced to death and executed. 4,211 civilians (2,842 Serbs, 1,250 Jews, 64 Roma, 31 Rusyns, 13 Russians and 11 ethnic Hungarians) rounded up and killed by Hungarian troops in reprisal for resistance activities.
    Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre[39][40] Crimes against humanity; Crime of Genocide After the war, the preparator of the massacre, Friedrich Jeckeln was sentenced to death and executed in the Soviet Union. 14000-16000 Jews were deported by Hungarian troops to Kamianets-Podilskyi to be executed by SS troops. Part of the first large-scale mass murder in pursuit of the "Final Solution".
    Sarmasu massacre[41][42] Crimes against humanity The People's Tribunal at Cluj sentenced to death 7 Hungarian officer in absentia, two local Hungarian were sentenced to imprisonment. Torture and killing of 126 Jews by Hungarian troops in the village of Sarmasu.
    Treznea massacre [43] Crimes against humanity The People's Tribunal at Cluj sentenced to death Ferenc Bay in absentia, 3 local Hungarian were sentenced to imprisonment, 2 person were acquitted. 93 to 236 Romanian and Jewish civilians (depending on sources) executed as reprisal for alleged attacks from locals on the Hungarian troops.
    Ip massacre [43] Crimes against humanity A Hungarian officer was sentenced to death by the People's Tribunal at Cluj in absentia, 13 local Hungarian was sentenced to imprisonment, 2 person were acquitted. 150 Romanian civilians executed by Hungarian rogue troops and paramilitary formations as reprisal for the death of two Hungarian soldiers in an explosion.
    Hegyeshalom death march [44][45] Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide After the war most of the responsibles were sentenced by the Hungarian people's tribunals, including the whole Szálasi-government About 10,000 Budapest Jews died as a result of exhaustion and executions while marching toward Hegyeshalom at the Austrian border.

    Crimes perpetrated by Italy

    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.
    • Invasion of Yugoslavia: Aerial bombardment of civilian population; Concentration camps (Rab, Gonars)
    • 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.

    Crimes perpetrated by Japan

    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[citation needed] 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 Seishirō Itagaki, General Kimura Heitaro, General Matsui Iwane, General Muto Akira, General Hideki Tōjō, 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 Yoshijirō Umezu, Togo Shigenori, Shigemitsu Mamoru The persons responsible were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
    Attack on the United States in 1941[23] Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the United States (count 29 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Naoki Hoshino, Seishirō Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Kōichi Kido, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Mutō, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetarō Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Tōgō, Hideki Tōjō, Yoshijirō Umezu[23] 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 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The attack was in violation of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which prohibited war of aggression, and the 1907 Hague Convention (III), which prohibited the initiation of hostilities without explicit warning, since the U.S. was officially neutral and was attacked without a declaration of war or an ultimatum at that time.[46] In addition, Japan violated the Four-Power Treaty by attacking and invading the U.S. territories of Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines which began simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor.
    Attack on the British Commonwealth in 1941[23] Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth (count 31 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Naoki Hoshino, Seishirō Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Kōichi Kido, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Mutō, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetarō Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Tōgō, Hideki Tōjō, Yoshijirō Umezu[23] Simultaneously with the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (Honolulu time), Japan invaded the British colonies of Malaya and bombed Singapore and Hong Kong, without a declaration of war or an ultimatum, which was in violation of the 1907 Hague Convention (III) and the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact since Britain was officially neutral with Japan at the time.[47][48]

    Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the Netherlands (count 32 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Naoki Hoshino, Seishirō Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Kōichi Kido, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Mutō, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetarō Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Tōgō, Hideki Tōjō, Yoshijirō Umezu[23]

    Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against France in Indochina (count 33 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] Mamoru Shigemitsu, Hideki Tōjō[23]

    Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the USSR (counts 35 and 36 or both at the Tokyo Trials)[23] Kenji Doihara, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Seishirō Itagaki[23]
    Nanjing Massacre; Narcotics Trafficking; Bacteriological Warfare [23] War crimes ("ordered, authorized, and permitted" inhumane treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) and others (count 54 at the Tokyo Trials)[23] Kenji Doihara, Seishirō Itagaki, Heitarō Kimura, Akira Mutō, Hideki Tōjō[23]
    Nanjing Massacre; Narcotics Trafficking; Bacteriological Warfare [23] 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)[23] Shunroku Hata, Kōki Hirota, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Iwane Matsui, Akira Mutō, Mamoru Shigemitsu[23]
    "Black Christmas", Hong Kong, December 25, 1941,[49] 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 War crimes 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[50]
    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-,[51][52]
    Enemy Airmen's Act War crimes (Murder of POWs) General Shunroku Hata Promulgated on August 13, 1942 to try and execute captured Allied airmen taking part in bombing operations against targets in Japanese-held territory. The Act contributed to the murder of hundreds of Allied airmen throughout the Pacific War.
    Operation Sankō (Three Alls Policy) Crimes against humanity 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.[53]
    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.[54] 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.[55] 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.".[56]
    Palawan Massacre, 1944 War crimes (Murder of POWs) In 1948, in Lt. Gen. Seiichi Terada was accused of failing to take command of the soldiers in the Puerto Princesa camp. Master Sgt. Toru Ogawa and Superior Private Tomisaburo Sawa were the only few soldiers who were charged for the actual involvement since most of the soldiers garrisoned in the camp had either died or went missing in the days following the victory of the Philippines campaign. In 1958, all charges were dropped and sentences were reduced. Following the US invasion of Luzon in 1944, the Japanese high command ordered that all POWs remaining in the island are to be exterminated at all cost. As a result, on December 14, 1944, units from the Japanese Fourteenth Area Army stationed in the Puerto Princesa POW camp in Palawan rounded up 150 remaining POWs still garrisoned in the camp, herded them into air raid shelters, before dousing the shelters with gasoline and setting it on fire. Of the handful of POWs that were able to escape the flames were hunted before being gunned down, bayonetted, or burned alive. Only 11 POWs survived the ordeal and were able to escape to allied lines to report the incident.[57]
    Alexandra Hospital massacre, Battle of Singapore, 1942 War crimes 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.[58]
    Sook Ching Massacre, 1942 Crimes against humanity (mass 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)[59] 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.[60][61][62]
    Manila Massacre Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians) Tomoyuki Yamashita commander, Akira Mutō chief of staff As commander of the 14th Area Army of Japan in the Philippines, Gen. Yamashita failed to stop his troops from killing over 100,000 Filipino citizens of Manila[63] 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 in 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 Mutō was condemned by the Tokyo tribunal.
    Wake Island Massacre War crimes 98 US Civilians killed on Wake Island October 7, 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[citation needed] War crimes; 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.[64]
    Unit 8604[citation needed] War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans) no prosecutions
    Unit 9420[citation needed] War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans) no prosecutions
    Unit Ei 1644[citation needed] War crimes; 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"[citation needed] War crimes; Crimes against humanity (Crime of Slaving) no prosecutions The estimated total number of civilian labourers and POWs who died during construction is about 160,000.
    Comfort Women Crimes against humanity; (Crime of Slaving; mass rape) no prosecutions Up to around 200,000 women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels.[65]
    Sandakan Death Marches Crimes against humanity (Crime of Slaving), 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) 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.[66]
    Kaimingye germ weapon attack[citation needed] 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 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.[67] Witold Urbanowicz, a Polish pilot fighting in China, estimated that nearly 300,000 civilians alone died in the battle.

    Crimes perpetrated by Romania

    Incident type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Iași pogrom[68] Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide 57 people were tried and sentenced in the People's Tribunals Iaşi trial [69] including General Emanoil Leoveanu, General Gheorghe Barozzi, General Stamatiu, former Iași Prefect Colonel Coculescu, former Iași Mayor Colonel Captaru, and Gavrilovici Constantin (former driver at the Iași bus depot). resulted in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews
    Odessa massacre[70] Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide 28 people were tried and sentenced in the People's Tribunals Odessa trial [69] including General Nicolae Macici The mass murder of Jewish and Romani population of Odessa and surrounding towns in Transnistria (now in Ukraine) during the autumn of 1941 and winter of 1942 while under Romanian control.Depending on the accepted terms of reference and scope, the Odessa massacre refers either to the events of October 22–24, 1941 in which some 25,000 to 34,000 Jews were shot or burned, or to the murder of well over 100,000 Ukrainian Jews in the town and the areas between the Dniester and Bug rivers, during the Romanian and German occupation. In the same days, Germans and Romanians killed about 15,000 Romani people.
    Aita Seaca massacre[71] War crime Gavril Olteanu Retaliation by Romanian paramilitaries for the locals killing of 20 Romanian soldiers on September 4, 1944. Eleven ethnic Hungarian civilians executed on September 26, 1944.

    Crimes perpetrated by the Chetniks

    Chetnik ideology revolved around the notion of a Greater Serbia within the borders of Yugoslavia, to be created out of all territories in which Serbs were found, even if the numbers were small. A directive dated 20 December 1941, addressed to newly appointed commanders in Montenegro, Major Đorđije Lašić and Captain Pavle Đurišić, outlined, among other things, the cleansing of all non-Serb elements in order to create a Greater Serbia:[72]
    1. The struggle for the liberty of our whole nation under the scepter of His Majesty King Peter II;
    2. the creation of a Great Yugoslavia and within it of a Great Serbia which is to be ethnically pure and is to include Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srijem, the Banat, and Bačka;
    3. the struggle for the inclusion into Yugoslavia of all still unliberated Slovene territories under the Italians and Germans (Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and Carinthia) as well as Bulgaria, and northern Albania with Skadar;
    4. the cleansing of the state territory of all national minorities and a-national elements;
    5. the creation of contiguous frontiers between Serbia and Montenegro, as well as between Serbia and Slovenia by cleansing the Muslim population from Sandžak and the Muslim and Croat populations from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
      — Directive of 20 December 1941[72]

    Chetniks in Šumadija kill a Partisan through heart extraction
    The Chetniks systemically massacred Muslims in villages that they captured.[73] In late autumn of 1941 the Italians handed over the towns of Višegrad, Goražde, Foča and the surrounding areas, in south-east Bosnia to the Chetniks to run as a puppet administration and NDH forces were compelled by the Italians to withdraw from there.[74] After the Chetniks gained control of Goražde on 29 November 1941, they began a massacre of Home Guard prisoners and NDH officials that became a systematic massacre of the local Muslim civilian population.[74] Several hundred Muslims were murdered and their bodies were left hanging in the town or thrown into the Drina river.[74] On 5 December 1941, the Chetniks received the town of Foča from the Italians and proceeded to massacre around five hundred Muslims.[74] Additional massacres against the Muslims in the area of Foča took place in August 1942.[75] In total, over two thousand people were killed in Foča.[75] In early January, the Chetniks entered Srebrenica and killed around a thousand Muslim civilians in the town and in nearby villages.[76] Around the same time the Chetniks made their way to Višegrad where deaths were reportedly in the thousands.[77] Massacres continued in the following months in the region.[77] In the village of Žepa alone about three hundred were killed in late 1941.[77] In early January, Chetniks massacred fifty-four Muslims in Čelebić and burned down the village.[77] On 3 March, the Chetniks burned forty-two Muslim villagers to death in Drakan.[76]
    In early January 1943 and again in early February, Montenegrin Chetnik units were ordered to carry out "cleansing actions" against Muslims, first in the Bijelo Polje county in Sandžak and then in February in the Čajniče county and part of Foča county in southeastern Bosnia, and in part of the Pljevlja county in Sandžak.[78] Pavle Đurišić, the officer in charge of these operations, reported to Mihailović, Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command, that on 10 January 1943: "thirty-three Muslim villages had been burned down, and 400 Muslim fighters (members of the Muslim self-protection militia supported by the Italians) and about 1,000 women and children had been killed, as against 14 Chetnik dead and 26 wounded".[78] In another report sent by Đurišić dated 13 February 1943, he reported that: "Chetniks killed about 1,200 Muslim fighters and about 8,000 old people, women, and children; Chetnik losses in the action were 22 killed and 32 wounded".[78] He added that "during the operation the total destruction of the Muslim inhabitants was carried out regardless of sex and age".[79] The total number of deaths caused by the anti-Muslim operations between January and February 1943 is estimated at 10,000.[78] The casualty rate would have been higher had a great number of Muslims not already fled the area, most to Sarajevo, when the February action began.[78] According to a statement from the Chetnik Supreme Command from February 24, 1943, these were countermeasures taken against Muslim aggressive activities; however, all circumstances show that these massacres were committed in accordance with implementing the directive of December 20, 1941.[75]
    Actions against the Croats were of a smaller scale but similar in action.[80] One of the worst Chetnik outbursts against the Croat population of Dalmatia took place in early October 1942 in the village of Gata near Split, in which an estimated one hundred people were killed and many homes were burnt in a reprisal taken against the people of Gata and nearby villages for the destruction of some roads in the area and carried out on the Italians account.[75] In that same October, formations under the command of Petar Baćović and Dobroslav Jevđević, who were participating in the Italian Operation Alfa in the area of Prozor, massacred over five hundred Croats and Muslims and burnt numerous villages.[75] Baćović noted that "Our Chetniks killed all men 15 years of age or older. ... Seventeen villages were burned to the ground."[81] Mario Roatta, commander of the Italian Second Army, objected to these "massive slaughters" of noncombatant civilians and threatened to halt Italian aid to the Chetniks if they did not end.[81]

    Crimes perpetrated by the Ustashas

    Numerous concentration camps were built in Independent State of 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."[82]
    Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps and three smaller camps spread out over 240 square kilometers (93 sq mi), 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 mi) 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.

    Allied powers

    Crimes perpetrated by the Soviet Union

    Main article: Soviet war crimes
    Concurrent with World War II
    Incident type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Katyń massacre War crimes (Murder of Polish intelligentsia) Lavrenty Beria, Joseph Stalin[83][84][85] 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 War crimes 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 massacre, East Prussia War crimes 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
    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)[86][87][88]
    Treuenbrietzen War crimes
    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.[89]
    Battle of Berlin War crimes (Mass rape)[90]

    Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II, Expulsion of Germans after World War I I War crimes, Crimes against humanity (mass expulsion) [citation needed] War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany occupied by the Red Army (Eastern and Central Germany), in addition to ethnic-German populations of German controlled, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. 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[86][87][88]

    Crimes perpetrated by the United Kingdom

    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."[91]
    HMS Torbay incident War crimes (Murder of shipwreck survivors) no prosecutions In July 1941, the submarine HMS Torbay (under the command of Anthony Miers) was based in the Mediterranean where it sank several German ships. On two occasions, once off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, and the other off the coast of Crete, the crew attacked and killed dozens of shipwrecked German sailors and troops. None of the shipwrecked survivors posed a major threat to Torbay's crew. Miers made no attempt to hide his actions, and reported them in his official logs. He received a strongly worded reprimand from his superiors following the first incident. Meir's actions violated the Hague Convention of 1907, which banned the killing of shipwreck survivors under any circumstances.[92][93]

    Crimes perpetrated by the United States

    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.[91]
    Canicattì massacre[citation needed] War crimes (Murder of civilians) no prosecutions During the Allied invasion of Sicily, eight civilians were killed, though the exact number of casualties is uncertain.[94]
    Biscari massacre[citation needed] 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 liberation reprisals[citation needed] 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 allegedly attempted to escape, and were shot.
    Salina, Utah POW massacre[citation needed] 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[95] 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[96][97][98] 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 taking 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 Geneva Convention on the Sick and Wounded which was paraphrased as saying "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." in a 1944 memorandum for the U.S. Assistant Chief of the Staff.[99][100]

    Crimes perpetrated by the Yugoslav Partisans

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    World War II in Yugoslavia Yugoslavian partisans
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Bleiburg tragedy War crimes No prosecutions. The victims were Yugoslav collaborationist troops (ethnic Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes), executed without trial as an act of vengeance for the genocide committed by the pro-Axis collaborationist regimes (in particular the Ustaše) installed by the Nazis during the World War II occupation of Yugoslavia. Estimates vary significantly, questioned by a number of historians.
    Foibe massacres War crimes No prosecutions. Following Italy's 1943 armistice with the Allied powers up to 1945, Yugoslav resistance forces executed an unknown number of ethnic Italians accused of collaboration.[101]
    1944–1945 killings in Bačka War crimes No prosecutions. 1944–1945 killings of ethnic Hungarians in Bačka.

    1948 Arab–Israeli War

    Several massacres were committed during this war which could be described as war crimes. Nearly 15,000 people, mostly combatants and militants, were killed during the war, including 6,000 Jews and about 8,000 Arabs.

    1945–1949: Indonesian War of Independence

    • South Sulawesi Campaign, about 4.500 civilians killed by Pro-Indonesian and Indonesian forces and Pro -Dutch and Dutch Colonial forces (KNIL)
    • Rawagede massacre, about 431 civilians killed by Dutch forces
    • Bersiap massacre, about 25.000 Indo-European civilians and Dutch and loyalists killed by Indonesian nationalist forces
    • Indonesian National Revolution About 100-150.000 Chinese, Communists, Europeans (French, German, British, Americans), pro Dutch etc. By Indonesian nationalist forces and Indonesian youth.

    1948-1960: Malayan Emergency

    • War crimes: Batang Kali massacre, about 24 unarmed villagers were killed by British troops. The British government claimed that these villagers were insurgents attempting to escape but this was later known to be entirely false as they were actually unarmed, nor actually supporting the insurgents nor attempting to escape after being detained by British troops. No British soldier was prosecuted for the murder at Batang Kali.[102][103][104][105]
    • War crimes: includes beating, torturing, and killing by British troops and communist insurgents of non-combatants.[106]
    • War crimes: As part of the Briggs' Plan devised by British General Sir Harold Briggs, 500,000 people (roughly ten percent of Malaya's population) were eventually removed from the land, had tens of thousands of their homes destroyed, and interned in guarded camps called "New Villages". The intent of this measure was to inflict collective punishments on villages where people were deemed to be aiding the insurgents and to isolate villagers from contact with insurgents. While considered necessary, some of the cases involving the widespread destruction went beyond justification of military necessity. This practice was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and customary international law which stated that the destruction of property must not happen unless rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.[106][107][108]

    1950–1953: Korean War

    United States perpetrated crimes

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Korean War United States
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    No Gun Ri massacre War crimes United States In July 1950, during the early weeks of the Korean War, an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed by the 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, and a U.S. air attack at a railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri, 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul, South Korea. Commanders feared enemy infiltrators among such refugee columns. Estimates of the dead have ranged from dozens to 500. In 2005, a South Korean government committee certified the names of 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded and added that many other victims' names were not reported; the U.S. Army cites the number of casualties as "unknown".[109]

    North Korean and Chinese perpetrated crimes

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Korean War North Korea and China
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Seoul National University Hospital Massacre War crimes North Korea The Seoul National University Hospital Massacre (Korean: 서울대학교 부속병원 학살 사건 Hanja: 서울國立大學校附属病院虐殺事件) was a massacre committed by the North Korean Army on June 18, 1950, of 700 to 900 doctors, nurses, inpatient civilians and wounded soldiers at the Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul district of South Korea.[110][111][112] During the First Battle of Seoul, the North Korean Army wiped out one platoon which guarded Seoul National University Hospital on June 28, 1950.[110][111] They massacred medical personnel, inpatients and wounded soldiers.[110][111] The North Korean Army shot or buried the people alive.[110][111] The victims amounted to 900.[110][111] According to South Korean Ministry of National Defense, the victims included 100 South Korean wounded soldiers.[111]
    Chaplain–Medic massacre War crimes (Murder of wounded military personnel and a chaplain) North Korea On July 16, 1950, 30 unarmed, critically wounded U.S. Army soldiers and an unarmed chaplain were killed by members of the North Korean People's Army during the Battle of Taejon.
    Bloody Gulch massacre War crimes (Murder of prisoners of war) North Korea On August 12, 1950, 75 captured U.S. Army prisoners of war were executed by members of the North Korean People's Army on a mountain above the village of Tunam, South Korea, during one of the smaller engagements of the Battle of Pusan Perimeter.
    Hill 303 massacre War crimes (Murder of prisoners of war) North Korea On August 17, 1950, following a UN airstrike on Hill 131 which was already occupied by the North Korean Army from the Americans, a North Korean officer said that the American soldiers were closing in on them and they could not continue to hold the captured American prisoners. The officer ordered the men shot, and the North Koreans then fired into the kneeling Americans as they rested in the gully, killing 41.
    • R. J. Rummel estimated that the North Korean Army executed at least 500,000 civilians during the Korean War with many dying in North Korea's drive to conscript South Koreans to their war effort. Throughout the conflict, North Korean and Chinese forces routinely mistreated U.S. and UN prisoners of war. Mass starvation and diseases swept through the Chinese-run POW camps during the winter of 1950–51. About 43 percent of all U.S. POWs died during this period. In violation of the Geneva Conventions which explicitly stated that captor states must repatriate prisoners of war to their homeland as quickly as possible, North Korea detained South Korean POWs for decades after the ceasefire. Over 88,000 South Korean soldiers were missing and the Communists' themselves had claimed they had captured 70,000 South Koreans.[113][114]:141

    South Korean perpetrated crimes

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Korean War South Korea
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Bodo League massacre War crimes, Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians) South Korea The Bodo League massacre (Hangul보도연맹 사건; hanja保導聯盟事件) was a massacre and war crime against communists and suspected sympathizers that occurred in the summer of 1950 during the Korean War. Estimates of the death toll vary. According to Prof. Kim Dong-Choon, Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least 100,000 people were executed on suspicion of supporting communism;[115] others estimate 200,000 deaths.[116] The massacre was wrongly blamed on the communists for decades.[117]
    Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre War crimes South Korea The Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre (Korean: 고양 금정굴 민간인 학살[118][119] Hanja: 高陽衿井窟民間人虐殺[118][119] Goyang Geunjeong Cave civilian massacre[118][119]) was a massacre conducted by the police officers of Goyang Police Station of the South Korean Police under the commanding of head of Goyang police station between 9 October 1950 and 31 October 1950 of 150 or over 153 unarmed citizens in Goyang, Gyeonggi-do district of South Korea.[118][119][120] After the victory of the Second Battle of Seoul, South Korean police arrested and killed people and their families who they suspected had been sympathizers during North Korean rule.[119] During the massacre, South Korean Police conducted Namyangju Massacre in Namyangju near Goyang.[121]
    Sancheong-Hamyang massacre War Crimes South Korea The Sancheong-Hamyang massacre (Hangul산청・함양 양민 학살 사건; hanja山清・咸陽良民虐殺事件) was a massacre conducted by a unit of the South Korean Army 11th Division during the Korean War. On February 7, 1951, 705 unarmed citizens in Sancheong and Hamyang, South Gyeongsang district of South Korea were killed. The victims were civilians and 85% of them were women, children, and elderly people.
    Ganghwa massacre War crimes South Korea The Ganghwa (Geochang) massacre (Hangul거창 양민 학살 사건; hanja居昌良民虐殺事件) was a massacre conducted by the third battalion of the 9th regiment of the 11th Division of the South Korean Army between February 9, 1951, and February 11, 1951, on 719 unarmed citizens in Geochang, South Gyeongsang district of South Korea. The victims included 385 children.

    1952–1960: Mau Mau uprising

    • In attempt to suppress the insurgency in Kenya, British colonial authorities suspended civil liberties within the country. In response to the rebellion, many Kikuyu were relocated. Between 320,000-450,000 of them were moved into concentration camps. Most of the remainder - more than a million - were held in "enclosed villages". Although some were Mau Mau guerillas, many were victims of collective punishment that colonial authorities imposed on large areas of the country. Thousands suffered beatings and sexual assaults during "screenings" intended to extract information about the Mau Mau threat. Later, prisoners suffered even worse mistreatment in an attempt to force them to renounce their allegiance to the insurgency and to obey commands. Significant numbers were murdered; official accounts describe some prisoners being roasted alive. Prisoners were questioned with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight, and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes". British soldiers used a "metal castrating instrument" to cut off testicles and fingers. "By the time I cut his balls off," one settler boasted, "he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him." According to David Anderson, the British hanged over 1,090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria during the Algerian War. It was found out that over half of them executed were not rebels at all. Thousands more were killed by British soldiers, who claimed they had "failed to halt" when challenged.[122][123][124]
    • The Chuka Massacre, which happened in Chuka, Kenya, was perpetrated by members of the King's African Rifles B Company in June 1953 with 20 unarmed people killed during the Mau Mau uprising. Members of the 5th KAR B Company entered the Chuka area on June 13, 1953, to flush out rebels suspected of hiding in the nearby forests. Over the next few days, the regiment had captured and executed 20 people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters for unknown reasons. It is found out that most of the people executed were actually belonged to the Kikuyu Home Guard - a loyalist militia recruited by the British to fight an increasingly powerful and audacious guerrilla enemy. In an atmosphere of atrocity and reprisal, the matter was swept under the carpet and nobody ever stood trial for the massacre.
    • The Hola massacre was an incident during the conflict in Kenya against British colonial rule at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya. By January 1959 the camp had a population of 506 detainees of whom 127 were held in a secluded "closed camp". This more remote camp near Garissa, eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees. They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action – as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards.[125] 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries.[126] The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability.[127]
    • The Lari massacre in the settlement of Lari occurred on the night of 25–26 March 1953, in which Mau Mau militants herded Kikuyu men, women and children into huts and set fire to them killing anyone who attempted escape. Official estimates place the death toll from the Lari massacre at 74 dead.[128]
    • Mau Mau militants also tortured, mutilated and murdered Kikuyu on many occasions.[129] Mau Mau racked up 1,819 murders of their fellow Africans, though again this number excludes the many additional hundreds who 'disappeared', whose bodies were never found.[130]

    1954–1962: Algerian War

    • War crimes;Crimes against humanity (systematic ethnic cleansing): French sources estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN during the Algerian War. Citizens of European ethnicity (known as Pieds-Noirs) and Algerian Jews[131] were also subjected to ethnic cleansing, resulting in a mass exodus.[132] The number of Pied-Noirs who fled Algeria totaled more than one million between 1962 and 1964. Famous examples of FLN massacres include the Oran massacre of 1962 and the Philippeville massacre.
    • Crimes against humanity: Pro-French Muslims allegedly killed in Algeria by FLN in post-war reprisals: 30-150,000 [133]
    • War crimes: Killed in France by FLN related terrorism: 4,300[133]

    1954–1975: 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 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.
    • "Vietnam War Crimes Working Group"[134] - 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.

    South Korean perpetrated crimes

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Vietnam War South Korea
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Tây Vinh Massacre War crimes South Korea This was a series of massacres conducted by the ROK Capital Division of the South Korean Army between February 12, 1966 and March 17, 1966 of 1,200 unarmed citizens in Bình An village, today Tây Vinh village, Tây Sơn District of Bình Định Province in South Vietnam.[135][136]
    Gò Dài massacre War crimes South Korea This was a massacre conducted by the ROK Capital Division of the South Korean Army on 26 February 1966 of civilians in Gò Dài hamlet, in Bình An commune, Tây Sơn District (today Tây Vinh District) of Bình Định Province in South Vietnam.[137][138]
    Diên Niên - Phước Bình massacre War crimes South Korea This was a massacre conducted by South Korean forces on October 9 and October 10, 1966, of 280 civilians in Tịnh Sơn village, Sơn Tịnh District, Quảng Ngãi Province in South Vietnam.[139][140]
    Diên Niên - Phước Bình massacre War crimes South Korea This was a massacre conducted by the South Korean forces between December 3 and December 6, 1966, of 430 unarmed citizens in Binh Hoa village, Quảng Ngãi Province in South Vietnam.[141][142]
    Hà My massacre War crimes South Korea This was a massacre conducted by the South Korean Marines on 25 February 1968 of civilians in Hà My village, Quảng Nam Province in South Vietnam.[143]

    North Vietnamese and Vietcong perpetrated crimes

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Vietnam War North Vietnam and Vietcong
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Massacre at Huế War crimes; Crime of Torture North Vietnam and Viet Cong During the months and years that followed the Battle of Huế, which began on January 31, 1968, and lasted a total of 28 days, dozens of mass graves were discovered in and around Huế. North Vietnamese troops executed between 2,800 to 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war.[144] Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes apparently buried alive.[145][146][147]
    Đắk Sơn massacre War crimes Viet Cong On December 5, 1967, two battalions of Viet Cong systematically killed 252 civilians in a "vengeance" attack on the hamlet of Đắk Sơn, home to over 2,000 Montagnards, known for their fierce opposition to the Viet Cong. The Vietcong believed that the hamlet had at one point given aid to refugees fleeing Viet Cong forces.[148]
    • VC terror squads, in the years 1967 to 1972, assassinated at least 36,000 people and abducted almost 58,000 people.[149] Statistics for 1968-72 suggest that "about 80 percent of the terrorist victims were ordinary civilians and only about 20 percent were government officials, policemen, members of the self-defence forces or pacification cadres."[150] NVA/VC forces murdered between 106,000 and 227,000 civilians between 1954 and 1975 in South Vietnam.[151] Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final North Vietnamese Spring Offensive were killed or abducted on the road to Tuy Hòa in 1975.[152] See: VC/NVA use of terror

    Late 1960s-1998: The Troubles

    • War crimes: Various unarmed male civilians (some of whom were named during a 2013 television programme) were shot, two of them (Patrick McVeigh, Daniel Rooney) fatally, in 1972, allegedly by the Military Reaction Force (MRF), an undercover military unit tasked with targeting Irish Republican Army paramilitaries during the last installment of the Troubles. Two brothers, whose names and casualty status were not mentioned in an article regarding the same matter in The Irish Times, ran a fruit stall in west Belfast, and were shot after being mistaken for IRA paramilitaries.[153]
    • War crimes: The British Army had employed widespread torture and waterboarding on prisoners in Northern Ireland during interrogations in the 1970s. Liam Holden was wrongfully arrested by British forces for the murder of a British soldier and became the last person in the United Kingdom to be sentenced to hang after being convicted in 1973, largely on the basis of an unsigned confession produced by torture.[154] His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he spent 17 years behind bars. On 21 June 2012, in the light of CCRC investigations which confirmed that the methods used to extract confessions were unlawful,[155] Holden had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in Belfast, at the age of 58.[156][157] Former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) interrogators during the Troubles admitted that beatings, the sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and the other tortures were systematic, and were, at times, sanctioned at a very high level within the force.[158]
    • War crimes: The British Army and the RUC also operated under a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland, under which suspects were alleged to have been deliberately killed without any attempt to arrest them. In four separate cases considered by the European court of human rights - involving the deaths of ten IRA men, a Sinn Féin member and a civilian - seven judges ruled unanimously that Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteeing a right to life had been violated by Britain.[159]

    1971 Bangladesh Liberation War

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    1971 Bangladesh War Pakistan
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    1971 Bangladesh genocide 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.[160] 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.[161][162] 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 War crimes 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[163]) 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[164]). 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.[165] A further eight to ten million people fled the country to seek safety in India.[166]
    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.[167] 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.[168][169][170]
    Killing of intellectuals War crimes 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.[171][172] 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.[173][174]

    Bihari and pro Pakistanis massacre in Bangladesh

    It is estimated that Bangladesh guerilla army killed about 1,000 to 150,000 bharis or pro Pakistani razakars.

    1970–1975: Cambodian civil war

    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.[175][176]

    Indonesian Invasion of East Timor

    During the 1975 invasion and the subsequent occupation, Indonesian forces murdered tens of thousands of civilians.

    1975–1990: Lebanese Civil War

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Lebanese Civil War Various
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Black Saturday War crime (200 to 600 killed) Kataeb Party On December 6, 1975, Black Saturday was a series of massacres and armed clashes in Beirut, that occurred in the first stages of the Lebanese Civil War.
    Karantina massacre War crime (Estimated 1,000 to 1,500 killed) Kataeb Party, Guardians of the Cedars, Tigers Militia Took place early in the Lebanese Civil War on January 18, 1976. Karantina was overrun by the Lebanese Christian militias, resulting in the deaths of approximately 1,000-1,500 people.
    Tel al-Zaatar massacre War Crime (Estimated 1,000 to 3,000 killed) Lebanese Front, Tigers Militia, Syrian Army, Lebanese Armed Forces The Tel al-Zaatar Battle took place during the Lebanese Civil War from June 22 - August 12, 1976. Tel al-Zaatar was a UNRWA administered Palestinian Refugee camp housing approximately 50,000-60,000 refugees in northeast Beirut. Tel al-Zaatar massacre refers to crimes committed around this battle.
    Damour massacre War crime (Estimated 684 civilians killed) PLO, Lebanese National Movement Took place on January 20, 1976. Damour, a Christian town on the main highway south of Beirut. It was attacked by the Palestine Liberation Organisation units. Part of its population died in battle or in the massacre that followed, and the remainder were forced to flee.
    Sabra and Shatila massacre War crime (762 to 3,500 (number disputed)) Kataeb Party Took place in Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon between September 16 and September 18, 1982. Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were massacred in the camps by Christian Lebanese Phalangists while the camp was surrounded by the Israel Defense Forces. Israeli forces controlled the entrances to the refugee camps of Palestinians and controlled the entrance to the city. The massacre was immediately preceded by the assassination of Bachir Gemayel, the leader of the Lebanese Kataeb Party. Following the assassination, an armed group entered the camp and murdered inhabitants during the night. It is now generally agreed that the killers were "the Young Men", a gang recruited by Elie Hobeika.[177]
    1983 Beirut barracks bombing War crimes, crimes against peace (Attacks against parties not involved in a war), Islamic Jihad Organization On October 23, 1983, 241 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers were killed in their barracks at the Beirut International Airport when Islamic militants drove their trucks filled with bombs and struck separate buildings housing United States and French members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon.
    October 13 massacre War crime (500-700 killed during the fighting. Additionally at least 240 unarmed prisoners executed, including civilians) Syrian Army, Hafez al-Assad Took place on October 13, 1990, during the final moments of the Lebanese Civil War, when hundreds of Lebanese soldiers were executed after they surrendered to Syrian forces.[178]

    1978–present: Civil war in Afghanistan

    This war has ravaged the country for over 30 years now, with several foreign actors playing important roles during different periods. Since 2001 US 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 Taliban
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Executions and torture after fall of Mazar-i-Sharif on August 8, 1998 War crimes; Crime of torture (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 War crimes; 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, on September 9, 2001 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, two 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.
    Civil war in Afghanistan United States Army / British Royal Marines
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Torture of prisoners War crimes (Maltreatment leading to death of prisoners) United States Armed Forces homicides of at least two unarmed prisoners, allegations of widespread pattern of abuse
    Kandahar massacre Murder and wounding of civilians United States Armed Forces Nine of the victims were children. Some of the corpses were partially burned.
    Maywand District murders Murder of at least 3 Afghans United States Armed Forces Five members of a platoon were indicted for murder and collecting body parts as trophies. In addition, seven soldiers were charged with crimes such as hashish use, impeding an investigation, and attacking their team member who blew the whistle after he had participated in the crimes.
    2011 Helmand Province incident Murder of a wounded prisoner British Royal Marines

    1980–1988: Iran – Iraq War

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Iran–Iraq War Iraq
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Iran – Iraq War[citation needed] 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 the 1925 Geneva Protocol[179]) 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).[180]
    Attacks on neutral shipping[citation needed] War crimes, crimes 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
    Al-Anfal Campaign Crimes against humanity; Crime of Genocide No prosecutions A genocidal campaign by Baathist Iraq against the Kurdish people (and other non-Arab populations) in northern Iraq, led by President Saddam Hussein and headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid in the final stages of Iran–Iraq War. The campaign also targeted other minority communities in Iraq including Assyrians, Shabaks, Iraqi Turkmens, Yazidis, Mandeans, and many villages belonging to these ethnic groups were also destroyed.[181]
    Halabja poison gas attack Dutch court has ruled that the incident involved War Crimes and Genocide (part of the Al-Anfal Campaign); 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.[182] 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.[183][184]
    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Iran – Iraq War Iran
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Attacks on neutral shipping[citation needed] War crimes, crimes 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[citation needed] 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[citation needed]
    no prosecutions Mines damaged the US frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts

    1985–present: Uganda

    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][185] 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.

    1991–1999: Yugoslav wars

    1991–1995: Croatian War of Independence

    Also see List of ICTY indictees for a variety of war criminals and crimes during this era.
    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
    Battle of Vukovar War crimes (indiscriminate shelling of city for 87 days until it was leveled to the ground. At least 1.798 killed, civilians and soldiers)[186] JNA, Serb Volunteer Guard. Mile Mrkšić and Veselin Šljivančanin sentenced by the ICTY. August 25-November 18, 1991
    Ovčara massacre[187] 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. 18–21 November 1991; bodies buried in a mass grave
    Stajićevo camp, Morinj camp, Sremska Mitrovica camp, Velepromet camp, Knin camp Torture of POWs and illegal detention of civilians Milosevic indicted by the ICTY. November 1991-March 1992
    Dalj killings[188] 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[188] 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[189] War crimes 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[190] War crimes JNA and Krajina Serb Territorial Defense. Široka Kula near Gospić. On October 13, 1991.
    Baćin massacre[190] War crimes 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.
    Saborsko massacre[190] War crimes Serb-led JNA (special JNA unit from Niš), TO forces, rebel Serbs militia. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted. On October 28, November 7, and November 12, 1991.
    Erdut massacre War crimes (killing of 37 civilians)[191] Željko Ražnatović, Slobodan Milošević, Goran Hadžić, Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović indicted by the ICTY. November 1991-February 1992
    Škabrnja massacre[192] War crimes Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted. On November 18, 1991.
    Siege of Dubrovnik[193] War crimes JNA and Montenegrin territorial forces. Several JNA commanders sentenced. Shelling of UNESCO protected World Heritage site. October 1991.
    Voćin massacre[194] War crimes 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[195] War crimes Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted. On December 21, 1991.
    Zagreb rocket attack[196] War crimes 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.
    Ethnic cleansing in Serb Krajina[190] Crimes against humanity (Serb forces forcibly removed virtually all non-Serbs living there-nearly a quarter of a million people (mostly Croats))[197] 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
    Croatian War of Independence Croatian Army and paramilitary units
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Lora prison camp Crime of torture, War crimes (Torture of POWs) Croatian army. Several people convicted by Croatian courts.[citation needed] Croatian internment camp for Serb soldiers and civilians between 1992 and 1997
    Gospić massacre War crimes Croatian army. Commander Mirko Norac and others convicted by Croatian courts. 16–18 October 1991
    Operation Otkos 10[198] War crimes Croatian army. No prosecutions 31 October - 4 November 1991
    Miljevci plateau incident War crimes (Killings of 40 militiamen) Croatian army. No prosecutions 21 June 1992; invasion and permanent occupation of territory under international protection; bodies buried in mass graves nearby
    Battle for Maslenica Bridge War crimes (Killings of 490 or 491 individuals, including civilians) Croatian army. No prosecutions 22 January - 1 February 1993; invasion of territory under international protection
    Mirlovic Polje incident[199] War crimes Croatian paramilitaries. No prosecutions 6 September 1993; 5 men and 2 women, four were executed and three burned alive at the stake
    Operation Medak Pocket War crimes, Crime against peace (Killings of 29 civilians and 71 soldiers;[200] wounding 4 UN peacekeepers) Croatian army. Commanders Janko Bobetko, Rahim Ademi and Mirko Norac. Ademi acquitted, Bobetko died in the meantime, Norac sentenced to 7 years. 9–17 September 1993; invasion of territory under international protection and assault on UN peacekeeping forces
    Operation Flash War crimes Croatian army. No prosecutions 1–3 May 1995; invasion and permanent occupation of territory under international protection; Western Slavonia fully taken from RSK; 53 were killed in their own homes, while 30 during the Croatian raids of the refugee colons.
    Operation Storm War crimes (Killings of at least 677 civilians, 150-200,000 Serbian refugees [201]) Croatian army. Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač ultimately acquitted by the ICTY.[202][203] 4–8 August 1995; invasion and permanent occupation of territory under international protection; Individual war crimes committed during the operation.

    1992–1995: Bosnian War

    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[204] Crimes against humanity;Crime of genocide (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[205] 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[206] 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[207] 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[208] War crimes 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[209] War crimes 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.
    Siege of Bihać War crimes Army of Republika Srpska. From April 1992 to August 1995.
    Tuzla massacre[210] War crimes 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[211][212] War crimes 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[213] War crimes; 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[214] War crimes 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[215] War crimes 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[216] Crimes against humanity according to ICTY, (ethnic cleansing, murder of 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[217] 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[218] 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[219] 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 9 September 1993.

    1998–1999: Kosovo War

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Kosovo War Yugoslav army, Serbian police and paramilitary forces
    Incident type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Račak massacre[220] War crimes Serbian police, no prosecutions 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[221] War crimes Serbian police and paramilitaries, 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 War crimes 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.
    Ćuška massacre War crimes Yugoslav Army, Serbian police, paramilitary and Bosnian Serb volunteers, no prosecutions. Serbian forces summarily executed 41 Albanians in Ćuška on 14 May 1999, taking three groups of men into three different houses, where they were shot with automatic weapons and set on fire.
    Massacre at Velika Kruša[222] War crimes Serbian special forces, no prosecutions. 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 War crimes Serbian paramilitaries. 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 Kosovo Liberation Army
    Incident type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Lapušnik prison camp[223] War crimes Kosovo Liberation Army; Haradin Bala sentenced to 13 years. Detention camp (also referred to as a prison and concentration camp) near the city of Glogovac in central Kosovo during the Kosovo War, in 1998. The camp was used by Kosovo Albanian insurgents to collect and confine hundreds of male prisoners of Serb and non-Albanian ethnicity.
    Klečka killings War crime; (murder of 22 Serbian civilians) Kosovo Liberation Army, no prosecutions 22 Kosovo Serb civilians were killed by Albanian insurgents in the village of Klečka, and their remains were cremated in a lime kiln.[224]
    Lake Radonjić massacre[225][226] War crime; (murder of 34 civilians) Kosovo Liberation Army, no prosecutions 34 Serbs, non-Albanians and moderate Kosovo Albanians were killed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army near Lake Radonjić[227]
    Staro Gračko massacre[228] War crime; (murder of 14 Serb civilians) Kosovo Liberation Army, no prosecutions 14 Kosovo Serb farmers were executed by Kosovo Liberation Army gunmen, who then disfigured their corpses with blunt instruments.

    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. As of the status of the main state actor in the war crimes in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the ongoing war crimes tribunal in the Hague for violating the UN sanctions, Libya's Muamar Gaddafi was elected to the post of President of the African Union. As of late January, 2011, Exxon/Mobile has resumed explorationary drilling in Libya after the exchange of the Lockerbie bombing terrorist was returned to Libya and Libya was taken off terrorist list by the Bush administration with the legal stipulation that Libya could never be prosecuted for past war crimes(regardless of guilt)in the future.

    1990: Invasion of Kuwait

    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    1990:Invasion of Kuwait Iraq
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Invasion of Kuwait[citation needed] 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[citation needed] War crimes, 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.

    1991-2000/2002: Algerian Civil War

    During the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, a variety of massacres occurred through the country, many being identified as war crimes. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) has avowed its responsibility for many of them, while for others no group has claimed responsibility. In addition to generating a widespread sense of fear, these massacres and the ensuing flight of population have resulted in serious depopulation of the worst-affected areas. The massacres peaked in 1997 (with a smaller peak in 1994), and were particularly concentrated in the areas between Algiers and Oran, with very few occurring in the east or in the Sahara.

    1994-1996/1999-2009: Russia-Chechnya Wars

    During the First Chechen War (1994-1996) and Second Chechen War (1999-2000 battle phase, 2000-2009 insurgency phase) there were many allegations of war crimes and terrorism against both sides from various human rights organizations.

    1998–2006: Second Congo War

    • 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."[229]
    • 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.[230][231]

    2003–2011: Iraq War

    During the Iraq War

    2006 Lebanon War

    Allegations of war crimes in the 2006 Lebanon War refer to claims of various groups and individuals, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations officials, who accused both Hezbollah and Israel of violating international humanitarian law during the 2006 Lebanon War, and warned of possible war crimes.[241] These allegations included intentional attacks on civilian populations or infrastructure, disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks in densely populated residential districts.
    According to various media reports, between 1,000 and 1,200 Lebanese citizens were reported dead; there were between 1,500 and 2,500 people wounded and over 1,000,000 were temporarily displaced. Over 150 Israelis were killed (120 military); thousands wounded; and 300,000–500,000 were displaced because of Hezbollah firing tens of thousands of rockets at major cities in Israel.[242][243][244]

    2003–2009/2010: Darfur conflict; 2005–2010: Civil war in Chad

    During the Darfur conflict, Civil war in Chad (2005–2010) The conflict in Darfur has been variously characterized as a genocide.
    Sudanese authorities claim a death toll of roughly 19,500 civilians [245] while many non-governmental organizations, such as the Coalition for International Justice, claim over 400,000 people have been killed.[246]
    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.[247] A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died,[248] and others have estimated even more.

    2008-2009 Gaza War

    See also: Goldstone Report
    There were allegations of war crimes by both the Israeli military and Hamas. Criticism of Israel's conduct focused on the proportionality of its measures against Hamas, and on its alleged use of weaponized white phosphorus. Numerous reports from human right groups during the war claimed that white phosphorus shells were being used by Israel, often in or near populated areas.[249][250][251] In its early statements the Israeli military denied using any form of white phosphorus, saying "We categorically deny the use of white phosphorus". It eventually admitted to its limited use and stopped using the shells, including as a smoke screen. The Goldstone report investigating possible war crimes in the 2009 war accepted that white phosphorus is not illegal under international law but did find that the Israelis were "systematically reckless in determining its use in build-up areas". It also called for serious consideration to be given to the banning of its use as an obscurant.[252]

    2009 Sri Lankan Civil War

    There are allegations that war crimes were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the Sri Lankan Civil War, particularly during the final months of the conflict in 2009. The alleged war crimes include attacks on civilians and civilian buildings by both sides; executions of combatants and prisoners by the government of Sri Lanka; 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.[253][254] It is widely accused that the Secretary of Defense Gotabaya Rajapakse (brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa) ordered troops under his command to "Kill them All" when the troops on the grounds asked him for direction for handling the surrendering Tamil combatants.
    A panel of experts appointed by UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon to advise him on the issue of accountability with regard to any alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the civil war found "credible allegations" which, if proven, indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers.[255][256][257] The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law.[258][259] The Sri Lankan government has denied that its forces committed any war crimes and has strongly opposed any international investigation. It has condemned the UN report as "fundamentally flawed in many respects" and "based on patently biased material which is presented without any verification".[260]

    (2011–present): Syrian civil war

    International organizations have accused the Syrian government, ISIL and other opposition forces of severe human rights violations, with many massacres occurring.[261][262][263][264][265] Chemical weapons have been used many times during the conflict as well.[266][267][268] The Syrian government is reportedly responsible for the majority of civilian casualties and war crimes, often through bombings.[261][263][269][270] In addition, tens of thousands of protesters and activists have been imprisoned and there are reports of torture in state prisons.[271][272][273][274]
    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Syrian Civil War Syrian Government
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    Civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War Violent suppression of peaceful protests Crimes against peace (armed suppression of popular uprising leading to war) no prosecutions
    Use of mass detention and torture of Syrian civilians and political prisoners Crime of torture, war crimes no prosecutions
    Ghouta chemical attack War crimes; use of poison gas as a weapon no prosecutions The Ghouta chemical attack occurred during the Syrian Civil War in the early hours of 21 August 2013. Several opposition-controlled areas in the suburbs around Damascus, Syria, were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin. Estimates of the death toll range from at least 281 people to 1,729.
    2015 Douma market massacre War crimes no prosecutions The Syrian Air Force launched strikes on the rebel-held town of Douma, northeast of Damascus, killing at least 96 civilians and injuring at least 200 others.
    Armed conflict Perpetrator
    Syrian Civil War Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
    Incident Type of crime Persons responsible Notes
    ISIL beheading incidents Murder of neutral civilians; journalists; and aid workers Crimes against peace (murder of uninvolved parties); war crimes no prosecutions
    Chemical attacks on YPG War crimes; use of poison as a weapon no prosecutions
    Persecution of Yazidis by ISIL Crimes against humanity (ethnic cleansing, systematic forced conversions, crime of slaving); War crimes (Murder of Yazidi POWs); Crime of Genocide (recognized by the UN as an attempted genocide) no prosecutions

    See also

    Notes


    1. This list is a work in progress and is not complete.

    References



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  • Spector, Ronald H. After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam.

  • Lanning & Cragg (1993), pp. 186-188.

  • Lewy (1968), p. 273.

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  • "British army 'waterboarded' suspects in 70s". BBC News. 21 December 2009.

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  • Murder verdict of man sentenced to death quashed (The Irish Times, 22 June 2012)

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  • "Immigration Citizenship-Australia". Rayimmigration.com.au. Retrieved 2011-01-01.

  • Editorial The Jamaat Talks Backin The Bangladesh Observer December 30, 2005

  • Dr. N. Rabbee Remembering a Martyr Star weekend Magazine, The Daily Star December 16, 2005

  • Hamoodur Rahman Commission, Chapter 2, Paragraph 33

  • F. Hossain Genocide 1971 Correspondence with the Guinness Book of Records on the number of dead

  • White, Matthew, Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century

  • Rummel, Rudolph J., "Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900", ISBN 3-8258-4010-7, Chapter 8, Table 8.2 Pakistan Genocide in Bangladesh Estimates, Sources, and Calculations: lowest estimate 2 million claimed by Pakistan (reported by Aziz, Qutubuddin. Blood and tears Karachi: United Press of Pakistan, 1974. pp. 74,226), all the other sources used by Rummel suggest a figure of between 8 and 10 million with one (Johnson, B. L. C. Bangladesh. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1975. pp. 73,75) that "could have been" 12 million.

  • U.S. Consulate (Dacca) Cable, Sitrep: Army Terror Campaign Continues in Dacca; Evidence Military Faces Some Difficulties Elsewhere, March 31, 1971, Confidential, 3 pp

  • 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.""

  • Brownmiller, Susan, "Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape" ISBN 0-449-90820-8, page 81

  • Hamoodur Rahman Commission, Chapter 2, Paragraphs 32,34

  • Blood, Archer, Transcript of Selective Genocide Telex, Department of State, United States

  • Ajoy Roy, "Homage to my martyr colleagues", 2002

  • Shahiduzzaman "No count of the nation's intellectual loss" The New Age, December 15, 2005

  • Killing of Intellectuals Asiatic Society of Bangladesh

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  • Cambodian Holocaust Survivor

  • Les Secrets de la guerre du Liban : Du coup d'état de Béchir Gémayel aux massacres des camps palestiniens, by Alain Menargues, final chapter

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  • "Security Council members condemn use of chemical weapons in Iran-Iraq conflict; demand observance of Geneva protocol". UN Chronicle. 1987.

  • Link to article by the Star-Ledger

  • G. Black, Human Rights Watch, Middle East Watch (1993). Genocide in Iraq: the Anfal campaign against the Kurds. Human Rights Watch. pp. 312–313. ISBN 978-1-56432-108-4.

  • Whatever Happened To The Iraqi Kurds? (Human Rights Watch Report, March 11, 1991)

  • Dutch court says gassing of Iraqi Kurds was 'genocide' by Anne Penketh and Robert Verkaik in The Independent December 24, 2005

  • Dutch man sentenced for role in gassing death of Kurds CBC December 23, 2005

  • The LRA is described by sources such as The Times as a "cannibalistic cult that has slaughtered whole villages and left its victims without hands, feet or faces".[12]

  • Final report of the United Nations Commission of Experts, established pursuant to security council resolution 780 (1992), Annex VIII - Prison camps; Under the Direction of: M. Cherif Bassiouni; S/1994/674/Add.2 (Vol. IV), 27 May 1994, Special Forces, (p. 1070). Accessdate 20 October 2010.

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    1. "inside bashar assads torture chambers". yahoo news. Retrieved 15 October 2014.

    External links