List of war crimes

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.

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

War crimes under international law were firmly established by international trials such as the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo Trials, in which Austrian, German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted for war crimes committed during World War II.

1899–1902 Second Boer War

See also: British concentration camps

Lizzie van Zyl, a Boer child in a British concentration camp

The term "concentration camp" was used to describe camps operated by the British Empire in South Africa during the Second Boer War in the years 1900–1902. As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy, many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. Over 26,000 Boer women and children were to perish in these concentration camps.

1899–1902 Philippine–American War

See also: United States Senate Committee on the Philippines § Investigation, and American war crimes

In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger wrote: "The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog..."

In response to the Balangiga massacre, which wiped out a U.S. company garrisoning Samar town, U.S. Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith launched a retaliatory march across Samar with the instructions: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States, ..."

The war resulted in the deaths of at least 200,000 Filipino civilians. Some estimates for total civilian dead reach up to 1,000,000.

1914–1918: World War I

Austro-Hungarian troops executing captured Serbians, 1917. Serbia lost about 850,000 people during the war, a quarter of its pre-war population.

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
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
World War I		German Empire (Imperial Germany)
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. As Belgium was officially neutral after hostilities in Europe broke out and Germany invaded the country without explicit warning, this act was also in breach of the treaty of 1839 and the 1907 Hague Convention on Opening of Hostilities.
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
World War I		Ottoman Empire
Armenian Genocide	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.
Assyrian Genocide	War Crimes, Crimes against humanity, genocide, ethnic cleansing	Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20	Mass killing of Assyrian civilians by the Ottoman Empire's forces resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Turkey does not call the event genocide.
Greek genocide	War Crimes, Crimes against humanity, genocide, ethnic cleansing	Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20	Violent Ethnic Cleansing campaign against Greeks in Anatolia resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Turkey does not call the event genocide.
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 boarded 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. 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.
World War I		Russian Empire
Urkun	War Crimes, Crimes against humanity, Genocide	No prosecutions	Urkun was not covered by Soviet textbooks, and monographs on the subject were removed from Soviet printing houses. As the Soviet Union was disintegrating in 1991, interest in Urkun grew. Some survivors have begun to label the events a "massacre" or "genocide." In August 2016, a public commission in Kyrgyzstan concluded that the 1916 mass crackdown was labelled as "genocide." Arnold Toynbee alleges 500,000 Central Asian Turks perished under the Russian Empire though he admits this is speculative. Rudolph Rummel citing Toynbee states 500,000 perished within the revolt. Kyrgyz sources put the death toll between 100,000 and 270,000. Russian sources put the figure at 3,000. Kyrgyz historian Shayyrkul Batyrbaeva puts the death toll at 40,000, based on population tallies.
Russian and Armenian democide against Kurds and Turks	War Crimes, Crimes against humanity	No prosecutions	Analyst Rudolph Rummel said that Armenian irregulars in the Russian Army took revenge on Turks for their role in the Armenian Genocide. These Armenian soldiers killed thousands of Moslem Turkish and Kurdish civilians. Rummel estimates 150,000 massacred.
Deportation of Volhynia Germans	War Crimes, Crimes against humanity	Although Germans were permitted to return and attempt to reclaim their land, it is estimated that only one-half of their number did so. Many found their houses destroyed and their farms occupied by strangers.	Grand Duke Nicolas (who was still commander-in-chief of the Western forces), after suffering serious defeats at the hands of the German army, decided to implement the decrees for the German Russians living under his army's control, principally in the Volhynia province. The lands were to be expropriated, and the owners deported to Siberia. The land was to be given to Russian war veterans once the war was over. In July 1915, without prior warning, 150,000 German settlers from Volhynia were arrested and shipped to internal exile in Siberia and Central Asia. (Some sources indicate that the number of deportees reached 200,000). Ukrainian peasants took over their lands. The mortality rate from these deportations is estimated to have been 63,000 to 100,000, that is from 30% to 50%, but exact figures are impossible to determine.

1923–1932: Pacification of Libya

• The Pacification of Libya resulted in mass deaths of the indigenous people in Cyrenaica by Italy. 80,000 or over a quarter of the indigenous people in Cyrenaica perished during the pacification.
• 100,000 Bedouin citizens were ethnically cleansed by expulsion from their land.
• Specific war crimes alleged to have been committed by the Italian armed forces against civilians include deliberate bombing of civilians, killing unarmed children, women, and the elderly, rape and disembowelment of women, throwing prisoners out of aircraft to their death and running over others with tanks, regular daily executions of civilians in some areas, and bombing tribal villages with mustard gas bombs beginning in 1930.

1935–1941: Second Italo-Abyssinian War

• Italian use of mustard gas against Ethiopian soldiers in 1936 violated the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which bans the use of chemical weapons in warfare.
• Yekatit 12—In response to the unsuccessful assassination of Rodolfo Graziani on 19 February 1937, thousands of Ethiopians were killed, including all of the monks residing at Debre Libanos, and over a thousand more detained at Danan who were then exiled either to the Dahlak Islands or Italy.
• The Ethiopians recorded 275,000 combatants killed in action, 78,500 patriots (guerrilla fighters) killed during the occupation, 17,800 civilians killed by aerial bombardment and 30,000 in the February 1937 massacre, 35,000 people died in concentration camps, 24,000 patriots executed by Summary Courts, 300,000 people died of privation due to the destruction of their villages, amounting to 760,300 deaths.

1936–1939: Spanish Civil War

Republicans executed by Francoists at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War

At least 50,000 people were executed during the Spanish Civil War. In his updated history of the Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor writes, "Franco's ensuing 'white terror' claimed 200,000 lives. The 'red terror' had already killed 38,000." Julius Ruiz concludes that "although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37,843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150,000 executions (including 50,000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain."

César Vidal puts the number of Republican victims at 110,965. In 2008 a Spanish judge, Socialist Baltasar Garzón, opened an investigation into the executions and disappearances of 114,266 people between 17 July 1936 and December 1951. Among the murders and executions investigated was that of poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca.

1939–1945: World War II

Axis powers

The Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) were 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, Axis militaries were notorious for their brutal treatment of captured combatants.

Crimes perpetrated by Germany

Further information: Nazi Germany, German war crimes § World War II, and Consequences of Nazism

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

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

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

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

3. War Crimes Atrocities against enemy combatants or conventional crimes committed by military units (see War crimes of the Wehrmacht), and include:

• Invasion of Poland: During the period of 1 September – 25 October 1939 German forces in their military actions engaged in executions of Polish POWs, bombing hospitals, murdering civilians, shooting refugees, and executing wounded soldiers. The cautious estimates give a number of at least 16,000 murdered victims.
• Pacification Operations in German occupied Poland: During the occupation of Poland by German Reich, Wehrmacht forces took part in several pacification actions in rural areas, that resulted in murder of at least 20,000 Polish villagers.
• Le Paradis massacre: In May 1940, British soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment were captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. Fritz Knoechlein was tried found guilty and hanged.
• Wormhoudt massacre: In May 1940, British and French soldiers were captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. No one found guilty of the crime.
• d'Ardenne Massacres: In June 1944 Canadian soldiers were captured by the SS and murdered by the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. SS General Kurt Meyer (Panzermeyer) was sentenced to be shot 1946. His sentence was commuted and he was released in 1954.
• Malmedy massacre: In December 1944, United States POWs captured by Kampfgruppe Peiper were murdered outside Malmedy, Belgium.

  

  Announcement of execution of 150 Polish hostages as revenge for assassination of 6 Germans, Warsaw, Nazi-occupied Poland, May 1944

• Gardelegen (war crime): The German SS forced 1,016 slave laborers who were part of transports evacuated from several sub-camps of Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp and from the sub-camp Hannover-Stöcken of Neuengamme Concentration Camp into a large barn which was then lit on fire. Most of the prisoners were burned alive; some were shot trying to escape.
• Marzabotto massacre: The German SS killing of at least 770 civilians of Marzabotto as a collective punishment for their support of Italian partisans and the Italian resistance movement
• Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre: A massacre was committed in the hill village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany, Italy, in the course of an operation against the Italian resistance movement during the Italian Campaign of World War II. 560 local villagers and refugees were murdered and their bodies burnt in a scorched earth policy action by the Nazis.
• Cefalonia Massacre: The mass execution of the men of the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division by the Germans on the island of Cephalonia, Greece was committed after the Italian armistice.
• Oradour-sur-Glane massacre: On 10 June 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in then Nazi occupied France was destroyed. 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a Waffen-SS company.
• The annihilation of the Czech city of Lidice was committed as an act of vengeance for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.
• Massacre of Kalavryta: The extermination of the male population and the total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, in Greece, by German occupying forces during World War II, was committed on 13 December 1943.
• Distomo massacre: This attack was perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS in the village of Distomo, Greece, during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II.
• Kragujevac massacre: This was a nazi war crime in which Serbs, Jews and Roma men and boys in Kragujevac, Serbia, were murdered by German Wehrmacht soldiers on 20 and 21 October 1941.
• The suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and subsequent leveling of the whole city was a war crime.

  

  Naked Soviet prisoners of war in Mauthausen concentration camp. Unknown date

• The treatment of Soviet POWs throughout the war, who were not given the protections and guarantees of the Geneva Convention unlike other Allied prisoners was a war crime. Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs, resulted in some 3.3 million to 3.5 million deaths. This accounts for about 60% of all Soviet POWs.
• Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping was another war crime.
• Commando Order which stated that Allied combatants encountered during commando operations were to be executed immediately upon capture and without trial, even if they were properly uniformed, unarmed, or intending to surrender was a war crime.
• Commissar Order: An order stating that Soviet political commissars found among captured troops were to be executed immediately was a war crime.
• Vinkt Massacre: In May 1940 at least 86 civilians in Vinkt were killed by the German Wehrmacht.
• Heusden: A town hall was massacred in November 1944.
• German war crimes during the Battle of Moscow are another example.

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

    

    German police shooting women and children from the Mizocz Ghetto, 14 October 1942

  • 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. 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.
    • 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

    

    Aleksandras Lileikis, a Nazi Saugumas unit commander who oversaw the murder of 60,000 Jews in Lithuania. He later worked for the CIA.

  • 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.
• 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 industrialised 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 and their affiliates. After the war, from 1945–49, 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. 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	People responsible	Notes
Novi Sad massacre	Crimes against humanity	After the war, most of the perpetrators 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 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	Crimes against humanity; Crime of Genocide	After the war, the perpetrator 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	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	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	Crimes against humanity	A Hungarian officer was sentenced to death by the People's Tribunal at Cluj in absentia, 13 local Hungarians were 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	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 aggrandisement, 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 aggrandisement; 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 the (first) Slovak Republic (1939–1945)

• deportation of around 70 000 Slovak Jews into German Nazi concentration camps
• annihilation of 60 villages and their inhabitants
• deportation of Slovak Jews, Roma and political opponents into Slovak forced labour camps in Sereď, and Nováky
• brought to trial and sentenced to death: Jozef Tiso, Ferdinand Ďurčanský (he fled), Vojtech Tuka and 14 others

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 and entered World War II. For war crimes before this date which took place during the Second Sino-Japanese War, please see the section above which is titled 1937–1945: Second Sino-Japanese War.

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
World War II	Crimes against peace (Overall waging and/or conspiracy to wage a war of aggression for territorial aggrandisement, as established by the Tokyo Trials)	General Doihara Kenji, Baron Kōki Hirota, 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 Kiichirō, Hoshino Naoki, Kaya Okinori, Marquis Kido Kōichi, General Koiso Kuniaki, General Minami Jiro, Admiral Takasumi Oka, General Oshima Hiroshi, General Kenryo Sato, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, Shiratori Toshio, General Teiichi Suzuki, 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	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the United States (count 29 at the Tokyo Trials)	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	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. 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	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth (count 31 at the Tokyo Trials)	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	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.
	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the Netherlands (count 32 at the Tokyo Trials)	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
	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against France in Indochina (count 33 at the Tokyo Trials)	Mamoru Shigemitsu, Hideki Tōjō
	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the USSR (counts 35 and 36 or both at the Tokyo Trials)	Kenji Doihara, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Seishirō Itagaki
Nanjing Massacre; Narcotics Trafficking; Bacteriological Warfare	War crimes ("ordered, authorised, and permitted" inhumane treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) and others (count 54 at the Tokyo Trials)	Kenji Doihara, Seishirō Itagaki, Heitarō Kimura, Akira Mutō, Hideki Tōjō
Nanjing Massacre; Narcotics Trafficking; Bacteriological Warfare	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, torture ("deliberately and recklessly disregarded their duty" to take adequate steps to prevent atrocities (count 55 at the Tokyo Trials)	Shunroku Hata, Kōki Hirota, Heitarō Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Iwane Matsui, Akira Mutō, Mamoru Shigemitsu
"Black Christmas", Hong Kong, December 25, 1941,	Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians; mass rape, looting)	no specific prosecutions, although the conviction and execution of Takashi Sakai included some activities in Hong Kong during the time frame	On the day of the British surrender of Hong Kong to the Japanese, the Japanese committed atrocities against the local Chinese, most notably thousands of cases of rape. During the three-and-a-half-year Japanese occupation, an estimated 10,000 Hong Kong civilians were executed, while many others were tortured, raped, or mutilated.
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. Only one person survived the massacre, nurse Vivian Bullwinkel, who later testified at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 1947.
Bataan Death March, Philippines, 1942	Crime of torture, war crimes (Torture and murder of POWs)	General Masaharu Homma was convicted by an Allied commission of war crimes, including the atrocities of the death march out of Bataan, and the atrocities at Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan that followed. He was executed on April 3, 1946 outside Manila.	Approximately 75,000 Filipino and US soldiers, commanded by Major General Edward P. King Jr. formally surrendered to the Japanese, under General Masaharu Homma, on April 9, 1942. 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 Filipinos,
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	Authorised in December 1941 to implement a scorched earth policy in North China by Imperial General Headquarters. According to historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, "more than 2.7 million" civilians were killed in this operation that began in May 1942.
Parit Sulong massacre, Malaysia, 1942	War crimes (Murder of POWs)	Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura, was convicted for this crime by an Australian Military Court and hanged on June 11, 1951.	Recently captured Australian and Indian POWs, who had been too badly wounded to escape through the jungle, were murdered by Japanese soldiers. Accounts differ on how they were killed. Two wounded Australians managed to escape the massacre and provide eyewitness accounts of the Japanese treatment of wounded prisoners of war, as did locals who witnessed the massacre. Official records indicate that 150 wounded men were killed.
Laha massacre, 1942	War crimes (Murder of POWs)	In 1946, the Laha massacre and other incidents which followed the fall of Ambon became the subject of the largest ever war crimes trial, when 93 Japanese personnel were tried by an Australian tribunal, at Ambon. Among other convictions, four men were executed as a result. Commander Kunito Hatakeyama, who was in direct command of the four massacres, was hanged; Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama, who was found to have ordered the killings, died before he could be tried.	After the battle Battle of Ambon, more than 300 Australian and Dutch prisoners of war were chosen at random and summarily executed, at or near Laha airfield in four separate massacres. "The Laha massacre was the largest of the atrocities committed against captured Allied troops in 1942".
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.
Alexandra Hospital massacre, Battle of Singapore, 1942	War crimes	no prosecutions	At about 1pm on February 14, Japanese approached Alexandra Barracks Hospital. Although no resistance was offered, some staff members and patients were shot or bayoneted. The remaining staff and patients were murdered over the next two days, 200 in all.
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) was a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore by the Japanese military administration during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, after the British colony surrendered in the Battle of Singapore on 15 February 1942.
Changjiao massacre, China, 1943	Crimes against humanity, War crimes (Mass murder of civilian population & POWs, rape, looting)	General Shunroku Hata, commander, China Expeditionary Army, Imperial Japanese Army.	War crimes were committed including mass rape, looting, arson, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war.
Manila Massacre	Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians)	General Tomoyuki Yamashita (and Chief of Staff Akira Mutō)	As commander of the 14th Area Army of Japan in the Philippines, General Yamashita failed to stop his troops from killing over 100,000 Filipinos in Manila while fighting with both native resistance forces and elements of the Sixth U.S. Army during the capture of the city in February 1945. Yamashita pleaded inability to act and lack of knowledge of the massacre, due to his commanding other operations 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	Sakaibara executed June 18, 1947; subordinate, Lieutenant-Commander Tachibana sentenced to death - later commuted to life imprisonment
Unit 100	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.
Unit 8604	War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans)	no prosecutions
Unit 9420	War crimes; Use of poisons as weapons (biological warfare experiments on humans)	no prosecutions
Unit Ei 1644	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"	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.
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 mobilised by the Imperial Japanese Army for slave labor in Manchukuo under the supervision of the Kōa-in.
Kaimingye germ weapon attack	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. 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	Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide	57 people were tried and sentenced in the People's Tribunals Iaşi trial 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	Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide	28 people were tried and sentenced in the People's Tribunals Odessa trial 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	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:

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

Chetniks in Šumadija kill a Partisan through heart extraction

The Chetniks systemically massacred Muslims in villages that they captured. 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. 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.

Several hundred Muslims were murdered and their bodies were left hanging in the town or thrown into the Drina river. On 5 December 1941, the Chetniks received the town of Foča from the Italians and proceeded to massacre around 500 Muslims. Additional massacres against the Muslims in the area of Foča took place in August 1942. In total, more than 2000 people were killed in Foča.

In early January, Chetniks entered Srebrenica and killed around 1000 Muslim civilians there and in nearby villages. Around the same time the Chetniks made their way to Višegrad where deaths were reportedly in the thousands. Massacres continued in the following months in the region. In the village of Žepa alone about three hundred were killed in late 1941. In early January, Chetniks massacred fifty-four Muslims in Čelebić and burned down the village. On 3 March, Chetniks burned forty-two Muslim villagers to death in Drakan.

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.

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".

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". He added that "during the operation the total destruction of the Muslim inhabitants was carried out regardless of sex and age". The total number of deaths caused by the anti-Muslim operations between January and February 1943 is estimated at 10,000. 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. According to a statement from the Chetnik Supreme Command from 24 February 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 20 December 1941.

Actions against the Croats were of a smaller scale but comparable in action. In early October 1942 in the village of Gata, where an estimated 100 people were killed and many homes burnt in reprisal taken for the destruction of roads in the area carried out on the Italians' account. That same month, 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 500 Croats and Muslims and burnt numerous villages. Baćović noted that "Our Chetniks killed all men 15 years of age or older. ... Seventeen villages were burned to the ground." 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.

Crimes perpetrated by the Ustashas

The Ustaša intended to create an ethnically "pure" Greater Croatia, and they viewed those Serbs then living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina as the biggest obstacle to this goal. Ustasha ministers Mile Budak, Mirko Puk and Milovan Žanić declared in May 1941 that the goal of the new Ustasha policy was an ethnically pure Croatia. The strategy to achieve their goal was:

1. One-third of the Serbs were to be killed
2. One-third of the Serbs were to be expelled
3. One-third of the Serbs were to be forcibly converted to Catholicism

The Independent State of Croatia government cooperated with Nazi Germany in the Holocaust and exercised their own version of the genocide against Serbs, as well as Jews and Gypsies (Roma) (aka "gypsies") inside its borders. State policy towards Serbs had first been declared in the words of Milovan Žanić, a minister of the NDH Legislative council, on 2 May 1941:

File:Ustaše sawing off the head of a Serb civilian.jpg

Ustaša soldiers sawing off the head of Branko Jungić, an ethnic Serb, near Bosanska Gradiška.

This country can only be a Croatian country, and there is no method we would hesitate to use in order to make it truly Croatian and cleanse it of Serbs, who have for centuries endangered us and who will endanger us again if they are given the opportunity.

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." The execution methods used by the Ustasha were particularly brutal and sadistic and often included torture, dismemberment or decapitation. A Gestapo report to Heinrich Himmler from 1942 stated, "The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age but especially against helpless old people, women and children."

Numerous concentration camps were built in the NDH, most notably Jasenovac, the largest, where around 100,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma, as well as a number of Croatian political dissidents, died, mostly from torture and starvation. It was established in August 1941 and not dismantled until April 1945, shortly before the end of the war. 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, the Jastrebarsko children's camp to the northwest, and the Stara Gradiška camp (Jasenovac V) for women and children to the southeast.

Unlike Nazi camps, most murders at Jasenovac were done manually using hammers, axes, knives and other implements. According to testimony, on the night of August 29, 1942, guards at the camp organized a competition to see who could slaughter the most inmates, with guard and former Franciscan priest Petar Brzica winning by cutting the throats of 1,360 inmates. A special knife called a "Srbosjek" (Serb-cutter) was designed for the slaughtering of prisoners. Prisoners were sometimes tied with barbed wire, then taken to a ramp near to the Sava River where weights were placed on the wires, their throats and stomachs slashed before their bodies were dumped into the river. After unsuccessful experiments with gas vans, camp commander Vjekoslav Luburić had a gas chamber built at Jasenovac V, where a considerable number of inmates were killed during a three-month experiment with sulfur dioxide and Zyklon B, but this method was abandoned due to poor construction. The Ustashe cremated living inmates as well as corpses. Other methods of torture and killing done included: inserting hot nails under finger nails, mutilating parts of the body including plucking out eyeballs, tightening chains around ones head until the skull fractured and the eyes popped and also, placing salt in open wounds. Women were subjected to rape and torture, including breast mutilation. Pregnant women had their wombs cut out.

An escape attempt on 22 April 1945 by 600 male inmates failed and only 84 male prisoners escaped successfully. The remainder and about 400 other prisoners were then murdered by Ustasha guards, despite the fact that they knew the war was ending with Germany's capitulation. All the female inmates from the women's camp (more than 700) had been massacred by the guards the previous day. The guards then destroyed the camp and everything associated with it was burned to the ground. Other concentration camps were the Đakovo camp, Gospić camp, Jadovno camp, Kruščica camp and the Lepoglava camp.

Ustasha militias and death squads also burnt villages and killed thousands of civilian Serbs in the country-side in sadistic ways with various weapons and tools. Men, women, children were hacked to death, thrown alive into pits and down ravines, or set on fire in churches. Some Serb villages near Srebrenica and Ozren were wholly massacred, while children were found impaled by stakes in villages between Vlasenica and Kladanj. The Glina massacres, where thousands of Serbs were killed, are among the more notable instances of Ustasha cruelty.

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. Pavelić died on 28 December 1959 at the Hospital Alemán in Madrid, where the Roman Catholic church had helped him to gain asylum, at the age of 70 from gunshot wounds sustained in an earlier assassination attempt by Montenegrin Blagoje Jovović. Some other prominent Ustashe figures and their respective fates:

• Andrija Artuković, Croatian Minister of Interior. Died in Croatian custody.
• Mile Budak, Croatian politician and chief Ustashe ideologist. Tried and executed by Yugoslav authorities.
• Petar Brzica, Franciscan friar who won a throat-cutting contest at Jasenovac. Post-war fate unknown.
• Miroslav Filipović, camp commander and Franciscan friar notorious for his cruelty and sadism. Tried and executed by Yugoslav authorities.
• Slavko Kvaternik, Ustashe military commander-in-chief. Tried and executed by Yugoslav authorities.
• Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, commander of the Ustaše Defence Brigades (Ustaška Odbrana) and Jasenovac camp. Murdered in Spain.
• Dinko Šakić, Ustashe commander of Jasenovac. Fled to Argentina, extradited to Croatia for trial in 1998. Sentenced to 20 years and died in prison in 2008.

Most Ustashe fled the country following the war, mainly with the help of Father Krunoslav Draganović, secretary of the College of Sian Girolamo who helped Ustasha fugitives immigrate illegally to South America.

Crimes perpetrated by the Ukrainian nationalists

The Ukrainian OUN-B group, along with their military force – Ukrainian Insurgent Army(UPA) – are responsible for a genocide on the Polish population in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Starting in March 1943, with its peak in the summer 1943, as many as 80,000 -100,000. Although the main target were Poles, many Jews, Czechs and those Ukrainians unwilling to participate in the crimes, were massacred as well. Lacking good armament and ammunition, UPA members commonly used tools such as axes and pitchforks for the slaughter. As a result of these massacres, almost the entire non-Ukrainian population of Volhynia was either killed or forced to flee. However, the premix of this ethnic cleansing was the war of Polish partisan Homeland Army against Ukraine, in which Poland wanted to re-occupy Western Ukraine, treacherously captured in 1921. Homeland Army committed a genocide of Ukrainians during this conquest campaign, killed as many as 15000 mostly in near-border villages and practiced unprecedented cruelty against UPA partisans.

UPA commanders responsible for the genocide:

• Roman Shukhevych - general of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. As a leader of the UPA he was to be aware and to approve the project of ethnic cleansing in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
• Dmytro Klyachkivsky - colonel of the UPA. He gave the order "to wipe out an entire Polish male population between 16 and 60 years old" (according to the research of the Ukrainian historians, this citation may be falsified by the Soviet intelligence). Klyachkivsky is regarded as the main initiator of the massacres.
• Mykola Lebed - one of the OUN leaders, and UPA fighter. By the National Archives, he is described as "Ukrainian fascist leader and suspected Nazi collaborator"
• Stepan Bandera - leader of the OUN-B. His view was to remove all Poles, who were hostile towards the OUN, and assimilate the rest of them. The role of the main architect of the massacres is often assigned to him. However, he was imprisoned in German concentration camp since 1941, so there is a strong suspicion, that he wasn't fully aware of events in Volhynia.

Allied powers

Main article: Allied war crimes during World War II

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	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 Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania	War crimes	Vladimir Dekanozov, Andrey Vyshinsky, Andrei Zhdanov, Ivan Serov, Joseph Stalin	An NKVD-committed deportation of hundreds of thousands of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian intelligentsia, land owners and their families in June 1941 and again in March 1949.
NKVD prisoner massacres	War crimes; torture; mass murder	Ivan Serov, Joseph Stalin	An NKVD-committed mass murder.
Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war with Iran)	No prosecutions	In contravention of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact and the 1907 Hague Convention (III), the Soviet Union and Britain jointly invaded neutral Iran without a declaration of war on August 25, 1941 for reasons such as securing the Allied supply lines to the USSR (see the Persian Corridor) and limiting German influence there (the Shah of Iran, Reza Shah, was considered friendly to Nazi Germany).
Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush	Crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, genocide	No prosecutions	Deportation of the entire Chechen and Ingush population to Siberia or Centra Asia in 1944. It was acknowledged by the European Parliament as an act of genocide.
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars	Crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing	No prosecutions	Forced transfer of the entire Crimean Tatar population to Central Asia or Siberia in 1944.
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 Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II Expulsion of Germans after World War II	War crimes Crimes against humanity (mass expulsion)		War crimes committed against German civilian population by the Red Army in occupied Eastern and Central Germany, and against ethnic-German populations of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Jugoslavia. The number of civilian victims in the years 1944–46 is estimated in at least 300,000, not all victims of war crimes; many died from starvation, cold weather and diseases.
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.
Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland (1944–1947)	War crimes (mass rape)		Joanna Ostrowska and Marcin Zaremba of the Polish Academy of Sciences wrote that rapes of the Polish women reached a mass scale during the Red Army's Winter Offensive of 1945.
Battle of Berlin	War crimes (Mass rape)
Przyszowice massacre	War crimes; crimes against humanity	No prosecution	A massacre perpetrated by the Red Army against civilian inhabitants of the Polish village of Przyszowice in Upper Silesia during the period January 26 to January 28, 1945. Sources vary on the number of victims, which range from 54 to over 60 – and possibly as many as 69.

Crimes perpetrated by the United Kingdom

Main article: British war crimes

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping	Breach of London Naval Treaty (1930)	no prosecutions; Allied representatives admitted responsibility at Nuremberg Trials; questionable whether war crime or a breach of a treaty.	It was the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials of Karl Dönitz that Britain had been in breach of the Treaty "in particular of an order of the British Admiralty announced on 8 May 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk at sight in the Skagerrak."
Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran	Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against Iran)	no prosecutions	In contravention of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact and the 1907 Hague Convention (III), Britain and the Soviet Union jointly invaded neutral Iran without a declaration of war on August 25, 1941 for reasons such as securing the Allied supply lines to the USSR (see the Persian Corridor) and limiting German influence there (the Shah of Iran, Reza Shah, was considered friendly to Nazi Germany).
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.
Sinking of German hospital ship Tubingen	War crimes (attacking hospital ships)	no prosecutions	On 18 November 1944, the German hospital ship Tubingen was sunk by two British Beaufighter bombers off Pola, in the Adriatic Sea. The vessel, which had paid a brief visit to the Allied-controlled port of Bari to pick up German wounded under the auspices of the Red Cross, was attacked with rockets nine times, despite the calm sea and good weather allowed a clear identification of the ship's Red Cross markings. Six crewmembers were killed. American author Alfred M. de Zayas, who evaluated the 266 extant volumes of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, identifies the sinking of Tübingen and other German hospital ships as war crimes according to the Hague Convention (X) of 1907.

Crimes perpetrated by the United States

Main article: United States war crimes

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping	Breach of London Naval Treaty (1930)	no prosecutions; Chester Nimitz admitted responsibility at Nuremberg Trials; questionable whether war crime or a breach of a treaty.	During the post war Nuremberg Trials, in evidence presented at the trial of Karl Dönitz on his orders to the U-boat fleet to breach the London Rules, Admiral Chester Nimitz stated that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war.
Canicattì massacre	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.
Biscari massacre	War crimes (Murder of POWs)	Sergeant Horace T. West: court-martialed and was found guilty, stripped of rank and sentenced to life in prison, though he was later released as a private. Captain John T. Compton was court-martialed for killing 40 POWs in his charge. He claimed to be following orders. The investigating officer and the Judge Advocate declared that Compton's actions were unlawful, but he was acquitted.	Following the capture of Biscari Airfield in Sicily on July 14, 1943, seventy-six German and Italian POWs were shot by American troops of the 180th Regimental Combat Team, 45th Division during the Allied invasion of Sicily. These killings occurred in two separate incidents between July and August 1943.
Dachau liberation reprisals	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	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.
American mutilation of Japanese war dead	War crimes (Abuse of Remains)	Though there are no known prosecutions, the occasional mutilation of Japanese remains were recognised 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.

Crimes perpetrated by Canada

Main article: Razing of Friesoythe

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Razing of Friesoythe	Breach of The 1907 Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV), Article 23, which prohibits acts that "destroy or seize the enemy's property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war."	No investigation; no prosecutions. Major-general Christopher Vokes commander of the Canadian 4th Armoured Division freely admitted ordering the action, commenting in his autobiography that he had "No feeling of remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe."	In April 1945 the town of Friesoythe in north-west Germany was deliberately destroyed by the Canadian 4th Armoured Division acting on the orders of its commander, Major-general Christopher Vokes. The destruction was ordered in retaliation for the killing of a Canadian battalion commander. Vokes may have believed at the time that this killing had been carried out by German civilians. The rubble of the town was used to fill craters in the local roads.

Crimes perpetrated by the Yugoslav Partisans

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
World War II in Yugoslavia		Yugoslavian partisans
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Bleiburg repatriations	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.
1944–1945 killings in Bačka	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Ethnic cleansing	No prosecutions.	1944–1945 killings of ethnic Hungarians in Bačka.
Persecution of Danube Swabians	War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Ethnic cleansing	In a unanimously approved motion in 1950, the Federal Council called on the Federal Government to commit itself, based on the prisoner of war agreement, to the return of German prisoners of war condemned in the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia. Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer described in January 1950 the convictions of German prisoners of war in Yugoslavia as "crimes and crimes against humanity".	In Yugoslavia in particular, with many exceptions, the Danube Swabian minority "collaborated . . . with the occupation". Consequently, on November 21, 1944 the Presidium of the AVNOJ (the Yugoslav parliament) declared the ethnic German minority in Yugoslavia collectively hostile to the Yugoslav state. The AVNOJ Presidium issued a decree that ordered the government confiscation of all property of Nazi Germany and its citizens in Yugoslavia, persons of ethnic German nationality (regardless of citizenship), and collaborators. The decision acquired the force of law on February 6, 1945. Of a pre-war population of about 350,000 ethnic Germans in the Vojvodina, the 1958 census revealed 32,000 left. Officially, Yugoslavia denied the forcible starvation and killing of their Schwowisch populations, but reconstruction of the labor camps reveals that of the 170,000 Danube Swabians interned from 1944 to 1948, over 50,000 died of mistreatment. About 55,000 people died in the concentration camps, another 31,000 died serving in the German armed forces, and about 31,000 disappeared, mostly likely dead, with another 37,000 still unaccounted for. Thus the total victims of the war and subsequent ethnic cleansing and killings comprised about 30% of the pre-war German population. In addition, 35,000–40,000 Swabian children under age sixteen were separated from their parents and force into prison camps and re-education orphanages. Many were adopted by Serbian Partisan families.

1946–1954: Indochina War

The French Union's struggle against the independence movement backed by the Soviet Union and China claimed 500,000 to 1.5 million Vietnamese lives from 1945 to 1954. In the Haiphong massacre of 1946, about 6,000 Vietnamese were killed by naval artillery. The French employed electric shock treatment during interrogations of the Vietnamese, and nearly 10,000 Vietnamese perished in French concentration camps.

1947–1948: Malagasy Uprising

The French repressed the independence movement with killings and village burnings. Up to 90,000 local residents died in the fighting, along with about 800 French and other Europeans.

1948 Arab–Israeli War

Main article: Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine 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, Dutch, and loyalists killed by Indonesian nationalist forces
• Indonesian National Revolution About 100–150,000 Chinese, Communists, Europeans (French, German, British), pro Dutch etc. By Indonesian nationalist forces and Indonesian youth.

1948–1960: Malayan Emergency

• War crimes: In the 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 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.
• War crimes: includes beating, torturing, and killing by British troops and communist insurgents of non-combatants.
• 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 were 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.

1950–1953: Korean War

Main article: Korean_War § War_crimes

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 South Korean government-funded No Gun Ri Peace Foundation estimated in 2011 that 250–300 were killed, mostly women and children.

North Korean 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 (Template:Lang-ko 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. During the First Battle of Seoul, the North Korean Army wiped out one platoon which guarded Seoul National University Hospital on June 28, 1950. They massacred medical personnel, inpatients and wounded soldiers. The North Korean Army shot or buried people alive. The victims amounted to 900. According to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, the victims included 100 South Korean wounded soldiers.
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.
Sunchon Tunnel Massacre		North Korea	180 American prisoners of war, survivors of the Seoul-Pyongyang death march, were loaded onto a railroad car and brought to the Sunchon tunnel on October 30, 1950. Prisoners, who were already suffering from lack of food, water, and medical supplies were brought in groups of approximately 40 ostensibly to receive food and were shot by North Korean soldiers. 138 Americans in total died; 68 were murdered, 7 died of malnutrition, and the remainder died in the tunnel of pneumonia, dysentery, and malnutrition on the trip from Pyongyang.

• Rudolph 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.

South Korean perpetrated crimes

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Korean War		South Korea
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Jeju uprising	War crimes, Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians)	South Korea	The island of Jeju was considered a stronghold of the Korean independence movement and the South Korean Labor Party. . Syngman Rhee had proclaimed martial law to quell an insurgency. Up to 10% of the island's population died (14,000 to 30,000) as a result of the conflict, and another 40,000 fled to Japan.
Bodo League massacre	War crimes, Crimes against humanity (mass murder of civilians)	South Korea	The Bodo League massacre (Korean: 보도연맹 사건; Hanja: 保導聯盟事件) was a massacre and war crime against communists and suspected sympathisers 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; others estimate 200,000 deaths. The massacre was wrongly blamed on the communists for decades.
Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre	War crimes	South Korea	The Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre (Template:Lang-ko Hanja: 高陽衿井窟民間人虐殺 Goyang Geunjeong Cave civilian massacre) 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. After the victory of the Second Battle of Seoul, South Korean police arrested and killed people and their families who they suspected had been sympathisers during North Korean rule. During the massacre, South Korean Police conducted Namyangju Massacre in Namyangju near Goyang.
Sancheong-Hamyang massacre	War Crimes	South Korea	The Sancheong-Hamyang massacre (Korean: 산청・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 (Korean: 거창 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

Main article: Mau Mau uprising § War_crimes

• 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. 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 had 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.
• 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. 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries. The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability.
• 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 to escape. Official estimates place the death toll from the Lari massacre at 74 dead.
• Mau Mau militants also tortured, mutilated and murdered Kikuyu on many occasions. 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.

1954–1962: Algerian War

The insurgency began in 1945 and was revived in 1954, winning independence in the early 1960s. The French army killed thousands of Algerians in the first round of fighting in 1945. After the Algerian independence movement formed a National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1954, the French Minister of the Interior joined the Minister of National Defense in 1955 in ordering that every rebel carrying a weapon, suspected of doing so, or suspected of fleeing, must be shot. French troops executed civilians from nearby villages when rebel attacks occurred, tortured both rebels and civilians, and interned Arabs in camps, where forced labor was required of some of them. 2,000,000 Algerians were displaced or forcibly resettled during the war. Other French crimes included deliberate bombing, torture and mutilation of civilians, imprisonment without food in small cells, throwing prisoners out of helicopters to their death or into the sea with concrete on their feet, and burying people alive.

The FLN also indulged in a large amount of atrocities, both against French pieds-noirs and against fellow Algerians whom they deemed as supporting the French or simply as refusing to support the Liberation effort. These crimes included killing unarmed children, women and the elderly, rape and disembowelment or decapitation of women and murdering children by slitting their throats or banging their heads against walls.. French sources estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN during the war. The FLN also killed 30,000 to 150,000 in people in post-war reprisals.

1955–1975: Vietnam War

Main article: Vietnam War § War crimes

See also: List of massacres in Vietnam

United States perpetrated crimes

During the war 95 U.S. Army personnel and 27 U.S. Marine Corps personnel were convicted by court-martial of the murder or manslaughter of Vietnamese.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Vietnam War		United States
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Marion McGhee, Chu Lai	Murder	Lance Corporal Marion McGhee	On 12 August 1965 Lcpl McGhee of Company M, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines, walked through Marine lines at Chu Lai Base Area toward a nearby village. In answer to a Marine sentry's shouted question, he responded that he was going after a VC. Two Marines were dispatched to retrieve McGhee and as they approached the village they heard a shot and a woman's scream and then saw McGhee walking toward them from the village. McGhee said he had just killed a VC and other VC were following him. At trial Vietnamese prosecution witnesses testified that McGhee had kicked through the wall of the hut where their family slept. He seized a 14-year-old girl and pulled her toward the door. When her father interceded, McGhee shot and killed him. Once outside the house the girl escaped McGhee with the help of her grandmother. McGhee was found guilty of unpremeditated murder and sentenced him to confinement at hard labor for ten years. On appeal this was reduced to 7 years and he actually served 6 years and 1 month.
Xuan Ngoc (2)	Murder and rape	PFC John D. Potter, Jr. Hospitalman John R. Bretag PFC James H. Boyd, Jr. Sergeant Ronald L. Vogel	On 23 September 1966, a nine-man ambush patrol from the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, left Hill 22, northwest of Chu Lai. Private First Class John D. Potter, Jr. took effective command of the patrol. They entered the hamlet of Xuan Ngoc (2) and seized Dao Quang Thinh, whom they accused of being a Viet Cong, and dragged him from his hut. While they beat him, other patrol members forced his wife, Bui Thi Huong, from their hut and four of them raped her. A few minutes later three other patrol members shot Dao Quang Thinh, Bui, their child, Bui's sister-in-law, and her sister in- law's child. Bui Thi Huong survived to testify at the courts-martial. The company commander suspicious of the reported "enemy contact" sent Second Lieutenant Stephen J. Talty, to return to the scene with the patrol. Once there, Talty realized what had happened and attempted to cover up the incident. A wounded child was discovered alive and Potter bludgeoned it to death with his rifle. Potter was convicted of premeditated murder and rape, and sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life, but was released in February 1978, having served 12 years and 1 month. Hospitalman John R. Bretag testified against Potter and was sentenced to 6 month's confinement for rape. PFC James H. Boyd, Jr., pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 4 years confinement at hard labor. Sergeant Ronald L. Vogel was convicted for murder of one of the children and rape and was sentenced to 50 years confinement at hard labor, which was reduced on appeal to 10 years, of which he served 9 years. Two patrol members were acquitted of major charges, but were convicted of assault with intent to commit rape and sentenced to 6 months' confinement. Lt Talty was found guilty of making a false report and dismissed from the Marine Corps, but this was overturned on appeal.
Charles W. Keenan and Stanley J. Luczko	Murder	PFC Charles W. Keenan CPL Stanley J. Luczko	PFC Charles W. Keenan was convicted of murder by firing at point-blank range into an unarmed, elderly Vietnamese woman, and an unarmed Vietnamese man. His life sentence was reduced to 25 years confinement. Upon appeal, the conviction for the woman's murder was dismissed and confinement was reduced to five years. Later clemency action further reduced his confinement to 2 years and 9 months. Corporal Stanley J. Luczko, was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to confinement for three years
Thuy Bo incident	Murder (disputed)	Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines	From 31 January to 1 February 1967 145 civilians were purported to have been killed by Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. Marine accounts record 101 Viet Cong and 22 civilians killed during a 2-day battle.
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.	On March 16, 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.
Huế	Murder	Lcpl Denzil R. Allen Pvt Martin R. Alvarez Lcpl John D. Belknap Lcpl James A. Maushart PFC Robert J. Vickers	On 5 May 1968, Lcpl Denzil R. Allen led a 6-man ambush patrol from the 1st Battalion, 27th Marines near Huế. They stopped and interrogated 2 unarmed Vietnamese men who Allen and Private Martin R. Alvarez then executed. After an attack on their base that night the unit sent out a patrol who brought back 3 Vietnamese men. Allen, Alvarez, Lance Corporals John D. Belknap, James A. Maushart, PFC Robert J. Vickers, and two others then formed a firing squad and executed 2 of the Vietnamese. The third captive was taken into a building where Allen, Belknap, and Anthony Licciardo, Jr., hanged him, when the rope broke Allen cut the man's throat, killing him. Allen pleaded guilty to five counts of unpremeditated murder and was sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life reduced to 20 years in exchange for the guilty plea. Allen's confinement was reduced to 7 years and he was paroled after having served only 2 years and 11 months confinement. Maushart pleaded guilty to one count of unpremeditated murder and was sentenced to 2 years confinement of which he served 1 year and 8 months. Belknap and Licciardo each pleaded guilty to single murders and were sentenced to 2 years confinement. Belknap served 15 months while Licciardo served his full sentence. Alvarez was found to lack mental responsibility and found not guilty. Vickers was found guilty of 2 counts of unpremeditated murder, but his convictions were overturned on review
Ronald J. Reese and Stephen D. Crider	Murder	Cpl Ronald J. Reese Lcpl Stephen D. Crider	On the morning of 1 March 1969 an eight-man Marine ambush was discovered by three Vietnamese girls, aged about 13, 17, and 19, and a Vietnamese boy, about 11. The four shouted their discovery to those being observed by the ambush. Seized by the Marines, the four were bound, gagged, and led away by Corporal Ronald J. Reese and Lance Corporal Stephen D. Crider. Minutes later, the 4 children were seen, apparently dead, in a small bunker. The Marines tossed a fragmentation grenade into the bunker, which then collapsed the damaged structure atop the bodies. Reese and Crider were each convicted of 4 counts of murder and sentenced to confinement at hard labor for life. On appeal both sentences were reduced to 3 years confinement.
Son Thang massacre	murder	Company B, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. One person was sentenced to life in prison, another sentenced to 5 years, but both sentences were reduced to less than a year.	16 unarmed women and children were killed in the Son Thang Hamlet, on February 19, 1970, with those killed reported as enemy combatant.
Tiger Force	War crimes; Crime of Torture (disputed)	Tiger Force LRRP	Tiger Force was a the name of a long-range reconnaissance patrol unit of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry, 1st Brigade (Separate), 101st Airborne Division, which fought in the from November 1965 to November 1967. The unit gained notoriety after investigations during the course of the war and decades afterwards revealed extensive war crimes against civilians, which numbered into the hundreds. They were accused of routine torture, execution of prisoners and the intentional killing of civilians. US army investigators concluded that many of the alleged war crimes took place.
Operation Speedy Express	War Crimes (disputed)	9th Infantry Division (US Army) Commander: General Julian Ewell	A six-month operation across several provinces in the Mekong Delta, which were internally reported between 5,000 to 7,000 civilian casualties. The official U.S. body count was 10,889 enemy combatants killed with 748 weapons recovered. The commander of the 9th Division, MG Ewell, was allegedly known to be obsessed with body counts and favorable kill ratios and said "the hearts and minds approach can be overdone....in the delta the only way to overcome VC control and terror is with brute force applied against the VC". David Hackworth, a battalion commander during Speedy Express, said "a lot of innocent Vietnamese civilians got slaughtered because of the Ewell-Hunt drive to have the highest count in the land."
Brigadier General John W. Donaldson	Murder	11th Infantry Brigade Commander: Brigadier General John W. Donaldson	On 2 June 1971, Donaldson was charged with the murder of six Vietnamese civilians but was acquitted due to lack of evidence. In 13 separate incidences John Donaldson was reported to have flown over civilian areas shooting at civilians. He was the first U.S. general charged with war crimes since General Jacob H. Smith in 1902 and the highest ranking American to be accused of war crimes during the Vietnam War. The charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

• "Vietnam War Crimes Working Group" – Briefly declassified (1994) and subsequently reclassified (2002) documentary evidence compiled by a Pentagon task force detailing endemic war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Substantiating 320 incidents by Army investigators, includes seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 South Vietnamese civilians died (not including the ones at My Lai), 78 other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted, and 141 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
Bình An/Tây Vinh massacre	massacre	South Korea (disputed)	Around 1,004 civilians were purported to have been killed between 12 February and 17 March 1966, as part of Operation Masher.
Binh Tai Massacre	massacre	South Korea (disputed)	This was a massacre purportedly conducted on 9 October 1966 of 168 citizens in Binh Tai village in South Vietnam.
Bình Hòa massacre	massacre	South Korea (disputed)	This was a massacre purportedly conducted between December 3–6, 1966, of 430 unarmed citizens in Bình Hòa village, Quảng Ngãi Province in South Vietnam.
Hà My massacre	massacre	South Korea (disputed)	This was a massacre purportedly conducted by the South Korean Marines on 25 February 1968 of civilians in Hà My village, Quảng Nam Province in South Vietnam.
Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất massacre	massacre	South Korea (disputed)	This was a massacre purportedly conducted by the 2nd Marine Division of the South Korean Marines on 12 February 1968 of unarmed citizens in Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất village, Điện Bàn District of Quảng Nam Province in South Vietnam.

North Vietnamese and Vietcong perpetrated crimes

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Vietnam War		People's Army of Vietnam and Viet Cong
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
VC/PAVN terrorism	Murder and kidnapping	Viet Cong and People's Army of Vietnam	VC/PAVN forces murdered between 106,000 and 227,000 civilians between 1954 and 1975 in South Vietnam. VC terror squads, in the years 1967 to 1972, were claimed by the US Department of Defense as having assassinated at least 36,000 people and abducted almost 58,000 people. 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."
U.S. Embassy bombing	Terrorist bombing	Viet Cong	On 30 March 1965 the Viet Cong detonated a car bomb in the street outside the U.S. Embassy in Saigon killing two Americans, 19 Vietnamese and one Filipino and injuring 183 others
1965 Saigon bombing	Terrorist bombing	Viet Cong	On 25 June 1965 the Viet Cong detonated a bomb on a floating restaurant "My Canh Café" on the banks of the Saigon River. 31–32 people were killed, and 42 were wounded. Of the casualties, 13 were American and most others were Vietnamese citizens. Another bomb exploded next to a tobacco stall on the riverbank near the restaurant, killing at least one American.
Đắk Sơn massacre	massacre	Viet Cong	On December 5, 1967, two battalions of Viet Cong were reported to have killed 252 civilians in a "vengeance" attack on the hamlet of Đắk Sơn, home to over 2,000 Montagnards. Its alleged that the Vietcong believed that the hamlet had at one point given aid to refugees fleeing Viet Cong forces.
Massacre at Huế	massacre	People's Army of 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 and 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war. Victims were found bound, tortured, and sometimes apparently buried alive.
Son Tra massacre	massacre	Viet Cong	On the night of 28/9 June 1968 the Viet Cong attacked Sơn Trà, a fishing village located approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) southeast of Chu Lai Base Area. It had a population of approximately 4,000 people including many resettled refugees. After a mortar attack which forced many of the civilians to take shelter in their defensive bunkers, between 75 and 300 VC then moved through the village throwing satchel charges into bunkers killing their occupants and starting fires killing 73 civilians and 15 pacification workers; a further 103 civilians were wounded. 570 homes were destroyed in the attack and the resulting fires leaving almost 2,800 people homeless.
Thanh My massacre	massacre	Viet Cong	In the early morning of 11 June 1970 the Viet Cong launched a coordinated attack on Phu Thanh village, a complex of several hamlets, straddling Highway 1 about 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Landing Zone Baldy. Two groups of sappers entered the village, armed with grenades and satchel charges, most began burning houses and hurling their grenades and satchel charges into family bomb shelters filled with civilians who had fled to them for protection from the shelling. Civilian casualties totalled 74 dead, many of them women and children; 60 severely injured; and over 100 lightly wounded with 156 houses destroyed and 35 damaged.
Duc Duc massacre	massacre	People's Army of Vietnam	On 29 March 1971 the PAVN attacked Duc Duc in Quảng Nam Province systematically destroying the civilian hamlets with satchel charges and by setting fires. 103 civilians died in the blazing hamlets; 96 were injured and 37 kidnapped. At least 1,500 homes were destroyed.
Shelling of Highway 1	Indiscriminate fire	People's Army of Vietnam	From 29 April to 2 May 1972 indiscriminate PAVN fire on civilians fleeing Quảng Trị down Highway 1 killed over 2,000 civilians.
Shelling of Cai Lay schoolyard	Indiscriminate fire	Viet Cong	On 30 August 1973 during a Viet Cong attack on South Vietnamese positions mortar fire hit a schoolyard killing approximately 20 civilians.

• Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final North Vietnamese Spring Offensive were alleged to have been killed or abducted on the road to Tuy Hòa in 1975.

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.
• 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. 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, Holden had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in Belfast, at the age of 58. 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.
• 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.

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.	During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, widespread atrocities were committed against the Bengali population of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). With 1–3 million people killed in nine months, 'genocide' is the term that is used to describe the event in almost every major publication and newspaper. Although the word 'genocide' was and is still used frequently amongst observers and scholars of the events that transpired during the 1971 war, the allegations that a genocide took place during the Bangladesh War of 1971 were never investigated by an international tribunal set up under the auspices of the United Nations, due to complications arising from the Cold War. A process is underway in 2009–2010 to begin trials of some local war collaborators.
Civilian Casualties	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) and India and Bangladesh on the other hand (From 1972 to 1975 the first post-war prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, estimated that 3 million died). This is the figure officially maintained by the Government of Bangladesh. Most scholarship on the topic estimate the number killed to be between 1 and 3 million. A further eight to ten million people fled the country to seek safety in India.
Atrocities on women and minorities	Crimes against humanity; Crime of genocide; Crime of torture (torture, rape and murder of civilians)	no prosecutions	The minorities of Bangladesh, especially the Hindus, were specific targets of the Pakistan army. Numerous East Pakistani women were tortured, raped and killed during the war. The exact numbers are not known and are a subject of debate. Bangladeshi sources cite a figure of 200,000 women raped, giving birth to thousands of war-babies. Some other sources, for example Susan Brownmiller, refer to an even higher number of over 400,000. Pakistani sources claim the number is much lower, though having not completely denied rape incidents.
Killing of intellectuals	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. 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.

Bihari and pro Pakistanis massacre in Bangladesh

Main article: Persecution of Biharis in Bangladesh

It is estimated that Bangladesh guerilla army killed about 1,000 to 150,000 biharis 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.

Indonesian Invasion of East Timor

Main articles: Indonesian invasion of East Timor, East Timor genocide, and Santa Cruz massacre

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))	Israel Defence Forces, Lebanese Forces, Kataeb Party, South Lebanon Army	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.
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.

1978–present: Civil war in Afghanistan

This war has ravaged the country for over 30 years, 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 Terror" that is also treated in the corresponding section below.

Armed conflict			Perpetrator
Civil war in Afghanistan			Taliban and Al Qaeda
Incident	Date	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Executions and torture after the Battle of Mazar-i-Sharif	August 8, 1998 – August 10, 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	August 8, 1998	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	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	Date	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Dasht-i-Leili massacre	December 2001	War crimes (Maltreatment leading to death of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) prisoners of war)	Northern Alliance partisans	Allegedly placed 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	Date	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Bagram torture and prisoner abuse	December 2002	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	11 March 2012	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	June 2009 – June 2010	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	15 September 2011	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	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)	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).
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.
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. On December 23, 2005 a Dutch court ruled in a case brought against Frans van Anraat for supplying chemicals to Iraq, that "[it] thinks and considers legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets the requirement under the genocide conventions as an ethnic group. The court has no other conclusion that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq." and because he supplied the chemicals before 16 March 1988, the date of the Halabja attack, he is guilty of a war crime but not guilty of complicity in genocide.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Iran–Iraq War		Iran
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Attacks on neutral shipping	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	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. One source estimates 3% of the Iran–Iraq War's casualties were under the age of 14.
Laid mines in international waters		no prosecutions	Mines damaged the US frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts

Over 100,000 civilians other than those killed in Saddam's genocide are estimated to have been killed by both sides of the war by R.J.Rummel.

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

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

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)	JNA, Serb Volunteer Guard. Mile Mrkšić and Veselin Šljivančanin sentenced by the ICTY.	August 25-November 18, 1991
Ovčara massacre	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 10 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	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.	September 21, 1991; bodies buried in a mass grave in the village of Celija
Dalj massacre	War crimes (Massacre of 28 detainees)	Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS under Željko Ražnatović. Dalj was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	October 4, 1991
Lovas massacre	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.	On October 10, 1991
Široka Kula massacre	War crimes	JNA and Krajina Serb Territorial Defense.	Široka Kula near Gospić on October 13, 1991.
Baćin massacre	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 October 21, 1991.
Saborsko massacre	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)	Željko Ražnatović, Slobodan Milošević, Goran Hadžić, Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović indicted by the ICTY.	November 1991-February 1992
Škabrnja massacre	War crimes	Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On November 18, 1991.
Siege of Dubrovnik	War crimes	JNA and Montenegrin territorial forces. Several JNA commanders sentenced.	Shelling of UNESCO protected World Heritage site. October 1991.
Voćin massacre	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	War crimes	Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On December 21, 1991.
Zagreb rocket attack	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	Crimes against humanity (Serb forces forcibly removed virtually all non-Serbs living there-nearly a quarter of a million people (mostly Croats))	JNA and Serb paramilitaries. Many people, including leaders Milan Babić and Milan Martić, convicted at ICTY and Croatian courts.	June–December 1991
Armed conflict		Perpetrator
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.	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	War crimes	Croatian Army. No prosecutions	31 October – November 4, 1991
Paulin Dvor massacre	War crimes	Croatian Army	December 11, 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	War crimes	Croatian paramilitaries. No prosecutions	6 September 1993; 5 men and 2 women, four shot dead; three burned alive
Operation Medak Pocket	War crimes, Crime against peace (killings of 29 civilians and 71 soldiers; 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)	Croatian Army. Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač ultimately acquitted by the ICTY.	4–8 August 1995
Varivode massacre	War crimes	Croatian Army. No prosecutions	September 28, 1995

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	Crimes against humanity;Crime of genocide (Murder of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys)	Army of Republika Srpska. President Radovan Karadžić sentenced to 40 years and General Ratko Mladić to a life in prison for genocide by the ICTY; later Radovan Karadžić was sentenced to life imprisonment on appeal.	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	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	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	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	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	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	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	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	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	War crimes	Army of the Republika Srpska. Four indicted.	Massacre of at least 50 Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb Army in the Rogatica Municipality on June 15, 1992.
Bosanska Jagodina massacre	War crimes	Army of the Republika Srpska. No prosecutions.	The execution of 17 Bosniak civilians from Višegrad on May 26, 1992, all men.
Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Bosnian War		Croat forces, HVO.
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	-
Ahmići massacre	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	Crimes against humanity according to ICTY (murder of 37 civilians)	Croatian Defence Council, Ivica Rajić convicted.	On October 23, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council attacked the village of Stupni do and killed 37 Bosniaks
Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing	Crimes against humanity according to ICTY. (2,000 civilians killed and missing)	Croatian Defence Council. Nine politicians and officers convicted, among them Dario Kordić.	Numerous war crimes committed by the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia's political and military leadership on Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) civilians in the Lašva Valley region of Bosnia-Herzegovina, from April 1993 to February 1994.
Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Bosnian War		Bosniak forces, Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	-
Massacre in Grabovica	War crimes (13 civilians murdered)	Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nihad Vlahovljak, Sead Karagićm and Haris Rajkić convicted.	13 Croatian inhabitants of Grabovica village by members of the 9th Brigade and unidentified members of the Bosnian Army on the 8th or 9 September 1993.
Gornja Jošanica massacre	War crimes (56 civilians murdered)	Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. No prosecutions.	56 Bosnian Serb civilians, including 21 women and three children, in the village of Gornja Jošanica. Victims were stabbed multiple times, had their throats slit, skulls and body parts crushed or mutilated.

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	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	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	War crimes	Serbian special forces, no prosecutions.	Massacre at Velika Kruša near Orahovac, Kosovo, took place during the Kosovo War on the afternoon of March 25, 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	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.
Lake Radonjić massacre	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
Staro Gračko massacre	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	Crimes against peace (waging a war of aggression for territorial aggrandisement; "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 civilised nations and armed groups, thus constituting Crimes against peace.

1991–2000/2002: Algerian Civil War

Main article: List of massacres during the 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

Main articles: Second Chechen War crimes and terrorism and Russian war crimes

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.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
First Chechen War, Second Chechen War		Russian Federation
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
1995 Shali cluster bomb attack	War crimes, crimes against peace (attacks against parties not involved in the war), crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Russian fighter jets dropped cluster munitions on the town of Shali. Targets included a school; cemetery, hospital, fuel station and a collective farm.
Samashki massacre	War crimes, crimes against peace (attacks against parties not involved in the war), crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	The massacre of 100–300 civilians in the village of Samashki by Russian paramilitary troops.
Elistanzhi cluster bomb attack	War crimes, crimes against peace (attacks against parties not involved in the war), crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Two Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 use cluster munitions on the remote mountain village of Elistanzhi. The local school is destroyed with 9 children inside.
Grozny ballistic missile attack	War crimes, crimes against peace (attacks against parties not involved in the war), crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Over a 100 Chechen civilians die in indiscriminate bombing on the Chechen capital of Grozny by the Strategic Missile Troops.
Siege of Grozny	War crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Thousands civilians die from bombings
Baku–Rostov highway bombing	Crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Low flying Russian Air Force helicopters perform repeated attack runs on a large numbers refugees trying to enter Ingushetia.
1999 Grozny refugee convoy shooting	War crimes, crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	OMON officers use automatic rifles on a convoy of refugees at a federal roadblock on the road to Ingushetia.
Alkhan-Yurt massacre	War crimes, crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Over two weeks drunken Russian troops under the command of General Vladimir Shamanov went on the rampage after taking the town from the forces of Akhmed Zakayev.
Staropromyslovski massacre	War crimes, crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Summary executions of at least 38 confirmed civilians by Russian federal soldiers in Grozny, Chechnya.
Bombing of Katyr-Yurt	War crimes, crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Indiscriminate bombing by the Russian Air Force of the village of Katyr-Yurt and a refugee convoy under white flags.
Novye Aldi massacre	War crimes, crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	The killings, including executions, of 60 to 82 local civilians by special police unit, OMON, and rapes of at least six women along with arson and robbery in Grozny, Chechnya.
Komsomolskoye massacre	War crimes, crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	Chechen combantants who surrendered after the Battle of Komsomolskoye on the public promise of amnesty are killed and "disappeared" shortly after.

1998–2006: Second Congo War

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

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

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

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

2001-present: US Invasion of Afghanistan

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
United States invasion of Afghanistan		United States
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Bagram torture and prisoner abuse	War crimes	On October 14, 2004, the Criminal Investigation Command forwarded its report from its investigation to the commanders of 28 soldiers. As of November 15, 2005, 15 soldiers have been charged. Some interrogators involved in this incident were sent to Iraq and were assigned to Abu Ghraib prison.	The torture and homicide of prisoners.

The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court authorised on 5 March 2020 the Prosecutor to commence an investigation into alleged war crimes perpetrated during the recent conflict in Afghanistan. As a reaction to this, the US government under President Trump decided on September 2 of the same year to seize any private properties that the Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in this case might have in the United States, and threatened sanctions to any person collaborating with the court.

2003–2011: Iraq War

During the Iraq War

• Blackwater Baghdad shootings On September 16, 2007, Blackwater military contractors shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad. The fatalities occurred while a Blackwater Personal Security Detail (PSD) was escorting a convoy of US State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with United States Agency for International Development officials. The shooting led to the unraveling of the North Carolina-based company, which since has replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services.
• Beginning in 2004, accounts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (also known as Baghdad Correctional Facility) came to public attention. These acts were committed by military police personnel of the United States Army together with additional US governmental agencies. In January 2014, evidence accuses British troops of being involved in widespread torture and abuse towards Iraqi civilians and prisoners.
• War crimes: 2006 al-Askari Mosque bombing by Al-Queda. The bombing was followed by retaliatory violence with over a hundred dead bodies being found the next day and well over 1,000 people killed in the days following the bombing – by some counts, over 1,000 on the first day alone.
• The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family by United States Army soldiers on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by Americans included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza Al-Janabi. The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, who were at school during the massacre, were orphaned by the event.
• War crimes: Iraqi insurgent groups have committed many armed attacks and bombings targeting civilians. According to Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr insurgents killed over 12,000 Iraqis from January 2005 to June 2006, giving the first official count for the victims of bombings, ambushes and other deadly attacks. See: Iraq War insurgent attacks, List of suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003 and List of massacres of the Iraq War for a more comprehensive list.

2006 Lebanon War

Main article: Allegations of war crimes in the 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. 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.

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

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

During the Darfur conflict, Civil war in Chad (2005–2010) The conflict in Darfur has been variously characterised as a genocide.

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

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

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 weaponised 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. 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.

2009 Sri Lankan Civil War

Main article: Alleged war crimes during the 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.

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. The panel has called on the UNSG to conduct an independent international inquiry into the alleged violations of international law. 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".

2011–present: Syrian civil war

Corpses of the victims of the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack

See also: List of massacres during the Syrian Civil War and Prosecution of Syrian civil war criminals

International organizations have accused the Syrian government, ISIL and other opposition forces of severe human rights violations, with many massacres occurring. Chemical weapons have been used many times during the conflict as well. The Syrian government is reportedly responsible for the majority of civilian casualties and war crimes, often through bombings. In addition, tens of thousands of protesters and activists have been imprisoned and there are reports of torture in state prisons. Over 470,000 people were killed in the war by 2017.

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	Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya Prison between September 2011 and December 2015."
Houla massacre	Crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	In August 2012, U.N. investigators released a report which stated that it was likely that Syrian troops and Shabiha militia were responsible for the massacre.
Siege of Aleppo	Crimes against humanity, mass murder, massacre, attacks against civilians, use of banned chemical and cluster weapons	no prosecutions	War crimes emerged during the battle, including the use of chemical weapons by both Syrian government forces and rebel forces, the use barrel bombs by the Syrian Air Force, the dropping of cluster munitions on populated areas by Russian and Syrian forces, the carrying out of "double tap" airstrikes to target rescue workers responding to previous strikes, summary executions of civilians and captured soldiers by both sides, indiscriminate shelling and use of highly inaccurate improvised artillery by rebel forces. During the 2016 Syrian government offensive, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that "crimes of historic proportions" were being committed in Aleppo.
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.
Atarib market massacre	Crimes against humanity, attacks on civilians	no prosecutions
2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical attack	War crimes; use of poison gas as a weapon	no prosecutions.	The Syrian Government ordered an attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Shaykhun in Northwestern Syria in the early morning of 4 April 2017. The chemical caused at least 80 civilians deaths, and three medical workers were injured. The chemical caused asphyxiation and mouth foaming. It is suspected by Turkish authorities to be the poison Sarin.
Siege of Eastern Ghouta	War crimes; use of poison gas as a weapon; bombardments; starvation of population under siege; attacks against protected objects (schools, hospitals)	no prosecutions.

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
Genocide 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

November 2020–present: Tigray War

During the Tigray War, which included fighting between the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) soldiers and Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) forces in the Tigray Region, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) described the 9–10 November 2020 Mai Kadra massacre committed by Tigray youth group "Samri" in its 24 November 2020 preliminary report as "grave human rights violations which may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes".

See also

• Democide
• Genocide
• Genocides in history
• Laws of war
• List of massacres
• List of Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center
• List of war criminals
• Mass murder
• Torture
• War crimes

External links

• 1944–1945 Killing of Allied POWs in Europe
• A Criminological Analysis of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq By Ronald C. Kramer and Raymond J. Michalowski
• Kramer, Alan: Atrocities, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.