List of war crimes

This article lists and summarizes War Crimes committed since the Hague Conventions of 1907. In addition, those incidents which have been judged in a court of justice to be Crimes Against Peace that have been committed since these crimes were first defined in August 8, 2008 are also included.

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

War crimes under international law were firmly established by international trials such as the 1945 Nuremberg Major War Crimes Trials and the Tokyo trial of 1946, in which German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted for war crimes committed during World War II. For purpose of selectivity, only war crimes since the customary laws of war were clarified in the Hague Conventions of 1907 are included, because in the judgement at the Major War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg in 1945, it was stated that "by 1939 these rules laid down in the Hague Convention of 1907 were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war".

1937-1945: Second Sino-Japanese War

This section includes war crimes until 8 December 1941 when the United States declared war on Japan so entering World War II. For war crimes after this date see the section called World War II: Japan perpetrated crimes.

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Second Sino-Japanese War		Japan
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Nanking Massacre, China, 1937-38	Mass murder of civilian population, rape, looting	General Asaka Yasuhiko, commander, Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force, Imperial Japanese Army. General Iwane Matsui, Commanding general of Japanese forces in China, Imperial Japanese Army. Chief of staff of the Army Kotohito Kan'in, Minister of War Hajime Sugiyama. Debate still is ongoing as to the culpability of Emperor Hirohito in the events.	After the Battle of Nanking, on 13 December, 1937, Japanese entered the city virtually resistance free. From then for a period of about 6 weeks after, until early February 1938, widespread war crimes were committed including mass rape, looting, arson, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war.
Hankow massacre,China, 1938	Mass execution of prisonners	General Shunroku Hata, commander, China Expeditionary Army , Imperial Japanese Army.	war crimes were committed including the killing of civilians and prisoners of war.
Changjiao massacre,China, 1943	Mass murder of civilian population, 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.
Attack on China in 1937	Waging unprovoked war against China (count 27 at the Tokyo Trials)	Sadao Araki, Kenji Doihara, Kingoro Hashimoto, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Koki Hirota, [Naoki Hoshino]], Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Jiro Minami, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Hiroshi Oshima, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Toshio Shiratori, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu
Attack on the United States in 1941	Waging aggressive war against the United States. (count 29 at the Tokyo Trials)	Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu	Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet started the war with the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941.	war crimes were committed including the killing of civilians in an undeclared war.

1939-1945 World War II

Axis powers (listed by country)

The Axis Powers were perhaps the most systematic perpetrators of war crimes in human 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 Russia and occupation of Western Europe, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and attack on China, and the Italian conquest of Ethiopia contributed to well over half of the civilian deaths in World War II and the conflicts that led up to the war.

Italian perpetrated crimes

• War crimes in the Balkans, in France, Italy and on the Eastern Front
• 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.
• See Italian war crimes.

German perpetrated crimes

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

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

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

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

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

• Invasion of Poland, in the period of 1st September- 25th October 1939 German Wehrmacht during its military actions engaged in executions of Polish POWs, bombed hospitals, murdered civilians, shot refugees, executed wounded soldiers. The cautious estimates give a number of at least 16,000 murdered victims[3]
• Pacification Operations in German occupied Poland, during the occupation of Poland by German Reich, Wehrmacht forces took part in several pacification actions in rural areas, that resulted in murder of at least 20,000 Polish villagers
• Le Paradis massacre, May 1940, British soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. Fritz Knoechlein tried, found guilty and hanged.
• Wormhoudt massacre, May 1940, British and French soldiers captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. No one found guilty of the crime.
• d'Ardenne Massacres, June 1944 Canadian soldiers captured by the SS and murdered by 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. SS General Kurt Meyer (Panzermeyer) sentenced to be shot 1946; sentence commuted; released 1954
• Malmedy massacre, December 1944, United States POWs captured by Kampfgruppe Peiper were murdered outside of Malmedy, Belgium.
• Gardelegen (war crime)
• Marzabotto massacre
• Sant'Anna di Stazzema
• Cefalonia Massacre
• Oradour-sur-Glane
• The annihilation of the Czech city of Lidice
• Massacre of Kalavryta
• Distomo massacre
• The suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and subsequent leveling of the whole city
• The treatment of Soviet POWs throughout the war, who were not given the protections and guarantees of the Geneva Convention
• Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping
• Vinkt Massacre.

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

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

Other crimes against humanity included:

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

Well over 10 million people were systematically killed by the Nazi regime (some accountings place the figure at over 20 million) from crimes against humanity, in particular the Holocaust. Of this figure, the largest amount of deaths happened among the Jews. The common estimate is that 5 to 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, although a complete count may never be known. After the war, the Nazi regime was put on trial in two tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany by the victorious Allied powers from 1945 to 1949. The first tribunal indicted 24 major Nazi war criminals, and resulted in 19 convictions (of which 12 led to death sentences) and 3 acquittals. The second tribunal indicted 185 members of the military, economic, and political leadership of Nazi Germany, of which 142 were convicted and 35 were acquitted. In subsequent decades, approximately 20 additional war criminals who escaped capture in the immediate aftermath of World War II were tried in West Germany and Israel. In Germany and many other European nations, the Nazi Party is outlawed.

Hungarian perpetrated crimes

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Ip massacre	Murder of civilians	no prosecutions

Japanese perpetrated crimes

Main article: Japanese war crimes

This section includes war crimes from 8 December 1941 when the United States declared war on Japan so entering World War II. For war crimes before this date which took place during the Second Sino-Japanese War please see the section above called 1937-1945: Second Sino-Japanese War.

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
World War II	Crimes against peace	General Doihara Kenji, Baron Hirota Koki, General Itagaki Seishiro, General Kimura Heitaro, General Matsui Iwane, General Muto Akira, General Tojo Hideki, General Araki Sadao, Colonel Hashimoto Kingoro, Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro, Hoshino Naoki, Kaya Okinori, Marquis Kido Kōichi, General Koiso Kuniaki, General Minami Jiro, Admiral Oka Takasumi, General Oshima Hiroshi, General Sato Kenryo, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, Shiratori Toshio, General Suzuki Teiichi, General Umezu Yoshijiro, Togo Shigenori, Shigemitsu Mamoru	Were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East
	Waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth (count 31 at the Tokyo Trials)	Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada,Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu	War started with attacks on Hongkong and Malaya
	Waging aggressive war against the Netherlands(count 32 at the Tokyo Trials)	Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada,Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu
	Waging aggressive war against France in Indochina (count 33 at the Tokyo Trials)	Mamoru Shigemitsu, Hideki Tojo
	Waging aggressive war against the USSR (counts 35 and 36 or both at the Tokyo Trials)	Kenji Doihara, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Seishiro Itagaki
	"ordered, authorized, and permitted" inhumane treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) and others. (count 54 at the Tokyo Trials)	Kenji Doihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, Hideki Tojo
	"deliberately and recklessly disregarded their duty" to take adequate steps to prevent atrocities. (counts 55 at the Tokyo Trials)	Shunroku Hata, Koki Hirota, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Iwane Matsui, Akira Muto, Mamoru Shigemitsu
Banka Island Massacre, Dutch East Indies, 1942	Murder of civilians	no prosecutions	The merchant ship Vyner Brooke was sunk by Japanese aircraft. The survivors who made it to Banka Island were all shot or bayonetted. One nurse Vivian Bullwinkel survived the massacre and later testified at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 1947
Bataan Death March, Philippines, 1942	Torture and murder of POWs	General Masaharu Homma was convicted by an Allied commission of war crimes, including the atrocities of the death march out of Bataan, and the atrocities at Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan that followed. He was executed on April 3, 1946 outside Manila.	Approximately 75,000 Filipino and US soldiers, commanded by Major General Edward P. King, Jr. formally surrendered to the Japanese, under General Masaharu Homma, on April 9, 1942, which forced Japan to accept emaciated captives outnumbering them. Captives were forced to march, beginning the next day, about 100 kilometers north to Nueva Ecija to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp. Prisoners of war were beaten randomly and denied food and water for several days. Those who fell behind were executed through various means: shot, beheaded or bayoneted. Deaths estimated at 650-1,500 U.S. and 2,000 to over 5,000 Filipino-,[4]
Operation Sankō (Three Alls Policy)	Extermination of civilians	General Yasuji Okamura	Authorized in December 1941 to implement a scorched earth policy in North China by Imperial General Headquarters. According to historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, "more than 2,7 millions" civilians were killed in this operation that began in May 1942.
Parit Sulong massacre, Malaysia, 1942	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	Murder of POWs	In 1946, the Laha massacre and other incidents which followed the fall of Ambon became the subject of the largest ever war crimes trial, when 93 Japanese personnel were tried by an Australian tribunal, at Ambon. Among other convictions, four men were executed as a result. Commander Kunito Hatakeyama, who was in direct command of the four massacres, was hanged; Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama, who was found to have ordered the killings, died before he could be tried.	After the battle Battle of Ambon, more than 300 Australian and Dutch prisoners of war were chosen at random and summarily executed, at or near Laha airfield in four separate massacres. "The Laha massacre was the largest of the atrocities committed against captured Allied troops in 1942.".
Alexandra Hospital massacre, Battle of Singapore, 1942	Murder of civilians	no prosecutions	At about 1pm on February 14, Japanese soldiers approached Alexandra Barracks Hospital. Although no resistance was offered, some of them shot or bayoneted staff members and patients. More staff and patients were murdered over the next two days.
Sook Ching Massacre, 1942	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 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.
Manila Massacre	Murder of civilians	Tomoyuki Yamashita commander, Akira Muto chief of staff	As commander of the 14th Area Army in the Philippines, Gen. Yamashita failed to stop his troops from killing over 100,000 Filipino citizens of Manila during the fighting with both native resistance forces and elements of the Sixth U.S. Army during the capture of the city in February, 1945. Yamashita pleaded inability to act and lack of knowledge of the massacre, due to his commanding other operations int the area. The defense failed, establishing the Yamashita Standard, which holds that a commander who makes no meaningful effort to uncover and stop atrocities is as culpable as if he had ordered them. His chief of staff Akira Muto was condemned by the Tokyo tribunal.
Unit 100	biological warfare experiments on humans	no prosecutions
Unit 731	violating human right laws	12 members of the Kantogun were found guilty for the manufacture and use of biological weapons. Including: General Yamada Otsuzo, former Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army and Major General Kawashima Kiyoshi, former Chief of Unit 731.	The Soviet Union tried some members of Unit 731 at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials. However those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial as General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological weapons .
Unit 8604	biological warfare experiments on humans	no prosecutions
Unit 9420	biological warfare experiments on humans	no prosecutions
Unit Ei 1644	violating human rights	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"	POWs forced to support war effort	no prosecutions
Comfort Women	violating human rights laws	no prosecutions	Women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels.
Sandakan Death Marches	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
War Crimes in Manchukuo	Slave labor	Kōa-in	According to historian Zhifen Ju, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Imperial Japanese Army for slave labor in Manchukuo under the supervision of the Kōa-in.
Kaimingye germ weapon attack	use of biological weapons	no prosecutions	These alleged attacks were a joint Unit 731 and Unit Ei 1644 endeavor.
Alleged Changteh Chemical Weapon Attack April and May, 1943	use of chemical and biological weapons	no prosecutions	Alleged Chemical weapons supplied by Unit 516.

Romanian perpetrated crimes

Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Iasi pogrom	murder of civilians, ethnic cleansing	no prosecutions
Odessa massacre	murder of civilians, ethnic cleansing	no prosecutions
Aita Seaca massacre

Allied powers (listed by country)

Main article Allied war crimes during World War II

Soviet Union perpetrated crimes

Main article: Soviet war crimes

Concurrent with World War II
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Katyń massacre	Murder of Polish POWs	Lavrenty Beria, Joseph Stalin	An NKVD-committed massacre of tens of thousands of Polish officers and intelligentsia throughout the spring of 1940. Originally believed to have been committed by the Nazis in 1941 (after the invasion of eastern Poland and the USSR), it was finally admitted by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that it had been a Soviet operation.
Invasion of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia	Deportation and murder of civilian population	Vladimir Dekanozov, Andrey Vyshinsky, Andrei Zhdanov, Ivan Serov, Joseph Stalin	An NKVD-committed deportation of hundreds of thousands of Baltic intelligentsia, land holders and their families in June 1941 and again in January 1949.
Nemmersdorf, East Prussia	Pillaging, and rape and murder of civilians, in contravention of Hague Conventions of 1907 "IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land" Articles: 28,43,46,47,50	No prosecutions	Nemmersdorf (today Mayakovskoye in Kaliningrad) was one of the first German settlements to fall to the advancing Red Army on October 22, 1944. It was recaptured by the Germans soon afterwards and the German authorities reported that the Red Army killed civilians there. Nazi propaganda widely disseminated the description of the event with horrible details, supposedly to boost the determination of German soldiers to resist the general Soviet advance. Because the incident was investigated by the Nazis and reports were disseminated as Nazi propaganda, discerning the facts from the fiction of the incident is difficult.
invasion of East Prussia	War crimes in contravention of Hague Conventions of 1907 "IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land"		War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany occupied by the Red Army. Estimated number of civilian victims in the years 1944-46: at least 300.000 (but not all of them victims of war crimes, many died through starvation, the cold climate and diseases
Treuenbrietzen	Murder of German civilians		Following the capture of the German city of Treuenbrietzen after fierce fighting. Over a period of several days at the end of April and beginning of May roughly 1000 inhabitants of the city, most of them men, were executed by Soviet troops.
Battle of Berlin	Mass rape
Evacuation of Karafuto and Kuriles	murder of civilians
Evacuation of Manchukuo
Expulsion of Germans during World War II	mass murder, forced rape, others, during an illegal mass forcement of ethnic Germans from their homes in Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia		War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany occupied by the Red Army. Estimated number of civilian victims in the years 1944-46: at least 300.000 (but not all of them victims of war crimes, many died through starvation, the cold climate and diseases

United Kingdom perpetrated crimes

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping	Breach of London Naval Treaty(1930)	no prosecutions	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 the 8 May, 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk at sight in the Skagerrak"

United States perpetrated crimes

Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping	Breach of London Naval Treaty (1930)	no prosecutions	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	Murder of civilians	no prosecutions	During the Allied invasion of Sicily, eight civilians, including an eleven year old girl, were killed, though the exact number of casualties is uncertain. [5] The incident was covered up fearing that it would lead to reprisals from the civilian population.
Biscari massacre	Murder of POWs	Sergeant Horace T. West: court-martialed and was found guilty, stripped of rank and sentenced to life in prison, though he was later released as a private. Captain John T. Compton was court-martialed for killing 40 POWs in his charge. He claimed to be following orders. The investigating officer and the Judge Advocate declared that Compton's actions were unlawful, but he was acquitted.	Following the capture of Biscari Airfield in Sicily on July 14, 1943, seventy-six German and Italian POWs were shot by American troops of the 180th Regimental Combat Team, 45th Division during the Allied invasion of Sicily. These killings occurred in two separate incidents between July and August 1943.
Dachau massacre	Murder of POWs	no prosecutions
Salina, Utah POW massacre	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.
Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki	Japan, 1945: A Japanese court stated in a judicial review that the attacks were on undefended cities.	no prosecutions	In 1963 the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the subject of a judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State. The District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found that "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war." Francisco Gómez points out in an article published in the International Review of the Red Cross that, with respect to the "anti-city" or "blitz" strategy, that "in examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property." The United States have stated that they consider the possibility that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings could be considered war crimes to be "intolerable and unacceptable", and that this is one of the major reasons for their not agreeing to be bound by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Rheinwiesenlager	Deaths of POWs	no prosecutions	The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were transit camps for millions of German POWs after World War II. There were at least thousands of deaths, dying mostly from starvation and exposure. These estimates range from just over 3,000 to as many as 71,000.
American Mutilation of Japanese War Dead	Abuse of Remains	-	Many dead Japanese were desecrated and/or mutilated, for example by urinating on them, shooting corpses, or taking Japanese body parts (such as skulls) as souvenirs or trophies. This is in violation of the 1929 Geneva Convention on the sick and wounded, which provided that: After every engagement, the belligerent who remains in possession of the field shall take measures to search for wounded and the dead and to protect them from robbery and ill treatment.”

Yugoslavian partisans perpetrated crimes

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Yugoslavia campaign		Yugoslavian partisans
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Foibe massacres	Murder of prisoners of war and civilians	no prosecutions	Following Italy's 1943 armistice with the Allied powers, Yugoslavian resistance forces executed an estimated 1,300-1,600 Italian troops and ethnic Italians living in Slovenian/Croatian territories adjacent to Italy.
Bleiburg massacre	Murder of prisoners of war and civilians	no prosecutions	The victims were Croatian soldiers and civilians (as well as a number of Chetniks), executed without trial as an act of vengeance for the crimes committed by the pro-Axis Ustaše regime controlled territories during World War II. Estimates vary, from 30,000 to 55,000.

1968-1973: Vietnam War

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Vietnam War		United States
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
My Lai Massacre	Murder of civilians	Lt. William Calley convicted in 1971 of premeditated murder of 22 civilians for his role in the massacre and sentenced to life in prison. He served 3½ years under house arrest.	In March, 1968, a US army platoon led by Lt. William Calley killed (and in some cases raped) hundreds of civilians – primarily women, children, and old men – in the village of My Lai. 26 US soldiers, including 14 officers, were charged with crimes related to the My Lai massacre and its coverup. Most of the charges were eventually dropped, and only Lt. Calley was convicted.
Operation Ranch Hand	Use of chemical weapon on civilians	no prosecutions

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

North Vietnam

North Vietnam:

• North Vietnamese troops executed 2500 civilians while occupying the city of Hue in 1968. An additional 3500 people are suspected to have been executed, but never found. See: Massacre at Huế.
• U.S. Prisoners of war held at the so-called "Hanoi Hilton" were subject to torture and other mistreatment by their North Vietnamese captors.
• Thousands of South Vietnamese perished in the concentration or "re-education" camps shortly after the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City)

1971: Bangladesh War

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
1971 Bangladesh War		Pakistan
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
1971 Bangladesh atrocities	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.[6]	During the Bangladesh War of 1971, widespread atrocities were committed against the Bengali population of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), at a level that within Bangladesh, ‘genocide’ is the term that is still used to describe the event in almost every major publication and newspaper. 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, so the alleged genocide is not recognised as a genocide under international law.
Civilian Casualties	murder of civilians	no prosecutions	The number of civilians that died in the liberation war of Bangladesh is not known in any reliable accuracy. There has been a great disparity in the casualty figures put forth by Pakistan on one hand (26,000, as reported in the 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, mentioned that 3 million died on a dozen occasions).
Atrocities on women and minorities	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	murder of civilians	no prosecutions	During the war, the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators carried out a systematic execution of the leading Bengali intellectuals. A number of university professors from Dhaka University were killed during the first few days of the war. However, the most extreme cases of targeted killing of intellectuals took place during the last few days of the war. On December 14, 1971, only two days before surrendering to the Indian military and the Mukhti Bahini forces, the Pakistani army – with the assistance of the Al Badr and Al Shams – systematically executed well over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals and scholars.

Cambodian civil war 1970-1994

Cambodian Civil War. Khmer Rouge killed many persons due to political affiliation, education, class origin, occupation, and ethnicity. 12

Lao civil war 1960-1975

Lao civil war. Murder of the royal family and people associated with the former government in re-education camps.

1980-1988: Iran-Iraq War

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Iran-Iraq War		Iraq
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsibe	Notes
Iran-Iraq War	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	Violation of 1925 Geneva Protocol[7]	No prosecutions	Iraq made extensive use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agents such as tabun. Iraqi chemical weapons were responsible for over 100,000 Iranian casualties (including 20,000 deaths).
Attacks on neutral shipping	Attacks against parties not involved in a war	No prosecutions	Iraq attacked oil tankers from neutral nations in an attempt to disrupt enemy trade
Halabja poison gas attack	Dutch court has ruled that the incident involved War Crimes and Genocide.	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[8]. 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 responsibe	Notes
Attacks on neutral shipping	Attacks against parties not involved in the war	no prosecutions	Iran attacked oil tankers from neutral nations in an attempt to disrupt enemy trade.
Laid mines in international waters		no prosecutions	Mines damaged the US frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts

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

• 20 years warfare
• The Times reports (Nov 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.

Sabra and Shatila massacre 1982

See Sabra and Shatila massacre

Serbian aggression on Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ten-Day War, Slovenia 1991

28 June, 1991. At the border military station at Holmec, Slovenian forces have allegedly shot the regulars (that served one-year military obligation) that surrendered. Ethnical composition of regulars was mixed: including them were Slovenians and Croats. (Slovenian daily newspapers were cited: Delo (Ljubljana): »Slovenci strijeljali vojne zarobljenike?« and Slovenske novice from 28 Dec 1998). Slovenian authorities keep the data about this case as top secret.

Croatian War of Independence 1991-1995

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
Borovo Selo killings	Murder of 12 and wounding of 20 Croatian policemen	Serb paramilitary units commanded by Vojislav Šešelj. Šešelj is on trial at ICTY.	2 May 1991
Ovčara massacre	Over 200 civilians and wounded POWs executed after Battle of Vukovar	Serb Territorial Defense and paramilitary units. Mile Mrkšić sentenced to 20 years, Veselin Šljivančanin sentenced to 5 years. Miroslav Radić acquitted.	18-21 November 1991; bodies buried in a mass grave
Dalj killings	Execution of 11 Croatian detainees	Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS under Željko Ražnatović. Dalj was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	21 September 1991; bodies buried in a mass grave in the village of Celija
Dalj massacre	Massacre of 28 Croat detainees	Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS under Željko Ražnatović. Dalj was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	4 October 1991
Lovas massacre	Massacre of 21-30 detainees, most of whom were civilians.	Yugoslav People's Army, Territorial Defense of SAO SBWS and Dušan Silni paramilitary unit. Ljuban Devetak and 17 individuals are being tried by Croatian Courts. Lovas was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	10 October 1991
Široka Kula massacre	Massacre of 40 civilians.	Serb-led JNA and rebel Serbs militia.	Široka Kula near Gospić. On October 13, 1991.
Baćin massacre	Massacre of approximately 110 civilians.	Serb Territorial Defense forces and SAO Krajina militia. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted by ICTY. Baćin was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	On 21 October 1991.
Massacre in Vukovići near Poljanak]]	Massacre of 10 civilians.	Serb-led JNA and TO forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On November 7, 1991.
Saborsko massacre	Massacre of 29 civilians.	Serb-led JNA (special JNA unit from Niš) and rebel Serbs militia. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On November 12, 1991.
Škabrnja massacre	Massacre of 86 civilians and POWs.	Serb forces. Milan Babić and Milan Martić convicted.	On November 18, 1991.
Siege of Dubrovnik	Shelling of civilian targets that killed almost 90 civilians	JNA and Montenegro territorial forces. Several JNA commanders sentenced.	Shelling of UNESCO protected World Heritage site. October 1991.
Voćin massacre	Massacre of 32 civilians.	White Eagles paramilitary group under Vojislav Šešelj, indicted by ICTY. Voćin was also one of the charges on the Slobodan Milošević ICTY indictment.	13 December 1991.
Bruška massacre	Massacre of 10 civilians.	Serb forces. Milan Babić nad Milan Martić convicted.	On December 21, 1991.
Zagreb rocket attack	Shelling of civilian targets in 1995 that killed 6 and wounded at least 175.	RSK Serb forces. Leader Milan Martić bragged on Television about ordering the assault, the videotape being used against him at ICTY, convicted.	Rocket attack was started as revenge for Serb military defeat in Operation Flash.
Ethnic cleansing in rebel Serb areas	Expulsion of almost 78.000 non-Serbs (mostly Croats) with looting, rapes and murders.	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	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	Massacre of 50-100 civilians	Croatian army. Commander Mirko Norac and others convicted by Croatian courts.	16-18 October 1991
Operation Otkos 10	Killings of numerous individuals and expulsion of civilians	Croatian army. No prosecutions	12 December 1991-2 January 1992; liberation of West Slavonia.
Miljevci plateau incident	Killings of 40 militiamen	Croatian army. No prosecutions	21 June 1992; liberation of territory and establishing of constitutional order on occupied areas, after UN's forces failed to stop terrorist attacks. Bodies allegedly buried in mass graves nearby.
Battle for Maslenica Bridge	Killings of 490 or 491 individuals	Croatian army. No prosecutions	22 January-1 February 1993; liberation of territory and establishing of constitutional order on occupied areas, after UN's forces failed to stop terrorist attacks.
Mirlovic Polje incident	Murder of 7 old civilians	Croatian paramilitary. No prosecutions	6 September 1993; 5 men and 2 women, four were executed and three burnt alive on stake
Operation Medak Pocket	Killings of at least 100 civilians	Croatian army. Commanders Ademi is on trial at ICTY.	9-17 September 1993; liberation of territory and establishing of constitutional order on occupied areas, after UN's forces failed to stop terrorist attacks. Alleged assaults on UNPROFOR battalion, that violated his mandate.
Operation Storm	Killings of hundreds, approximately 677, and expulsions of approximately 200,000-250,000 civilians	Croatian army. Generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak and Mladen Markač. The three are on trial at ICTY	4 August-15 November 1995; considered by prosecutors to be a part of a "joint criminal enterprise" by the Croatian state core in an attempt to expel the Croatian Serb population. ; liberation of territory and establishing of constitutional order on occupied areas, after UN's forces failed to stop terrorist attacks.

Bosnian War 1992-1995

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Bosnian War		Army of Republika Srpska, Paramilitary units from Serbia, local Serb police and civilians.
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Srebrenica Massacre	Genocide, according to ICTY and ICJ; Murder of 8,200 Bosniak men and boys	Army of Republika Srpska. No prosecutions	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.
Markale massacres	Murder of civilians	Army of Republika Srpska. No prosecutions	The victims were civilians who were shopping in an open air market in Sarajevo when Serb forces shelled the market. Two separate incidents. Feb 1994; 68 killed and 144 wounded and August 1995; 37 killed and 90 wounded.
Tuzla massacre	Murder of 72 and wounding of more than 200 civilians	Army of Republika Srpska. No prosecutions.	On May 25, 1995 the Serb army shelled the city of Tuzla and killed 72 people with a single shell.
Korićani Cliffs massacre	More than 200 men executed.	Serbian reserve police. Darko Mrđa was convicted.
Ahatovići massacre	64 men and boys tortured, 56 killed.	Serb forces. 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 machineguns and granades on June 14, 1992. 8 survived by hiding under bodies of the dead.
Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Bosnian War		Croat forces HVO.
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	-
Ahmići	Crimes against humanity according to ICTY; Murder of 116 civilians in the village of Ahmići	Croatian Defence Council No prosecutions	On April 16, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council attacked the village of Ahmići and killed 116 Bosniaks.
Stupni Do	Crimes against humanity according to ICTY; Murder of 37 civilians in the village of Stupni Do	Croatian Defence Council. No prosecutions.	On October 23, 1993, the Croatian Defence Council attacked the village of Stupni do and killed 37 Bosniaks.
Armed conflict		perpetrator
Bosnian War		HVO and Konjic Territorial Defence (TO)
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	-
Čelebići prison camp	Torture	Konjic defence forces. The commander of the camp Zdravko Mucić and the deputy commander Hazim Delić were sentenced to 9 and 18 years.

Kosovo War 1998-1999

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
Kosovo War		Serbian Army, Paramilitary units from Serbia, local Serb police.
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Račak massacre	Massacre of 45 civilians.	Yugoslav military and Serbian police forces. No prosecutions	15 January 1999
Bela Crkva killings	Murder of 65 civilians.	Yugoslav military and Serbian police. No prosecutions	25 March 1999
Velika and Mala Kruša massacre	Massacre of 105 men and boys.	Yugoslav military and Serbian police. No prosecutions	25-26 March 1999; the Serbian police burned the bodies
Đakovica incident	Murder of 6 men.	Yugoslav military. No prosecutions	26 March 1999
Berisha incident	at least 44 civilians killed, 3 injured	Yugoslav military. No prosecutions	26 March 1999
Padalište killings	Murder of around 20 civilians.	Yugoslav military. No prosecutions	26 March 1999
Izbica executions	Executions of at least 116 men	Yugoslav military and Serbian police. No prosecutions	27-28 March 1999
Qerim massacre	over 50 people killed	Serbian police. No prosecutions	1-2 April 1999; 19 of the victims were women and children
Đakovica assault	Murder of up to 300 male civilians.	Yugoslav military. No prosecutions	27 April 1999
Vučitrn assault	Expulsion of approximately 20,000 people, 104 individuals murdered.	Yugoslav military. No prosecutions	2 May 1999
Dubrava Prison complex	Execution of over 50 prisoners.	Serbian prison guard. No prosecutions.	22-23 May 1999
Kačanik assaults	over 100 civilians killed	Yugoslav military. No prosecutions	March-May 1999; a series of different attacks and massacres in the municipality throughout the war
Kosovo War		KLA
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Llapushnik prison camp	inhumane treatment and torture of Serb and Albanian detainees; murder of 11 Albanian prisoners and execution of 21 detainees	KLA prison guard Haradin Bala sentenced to 13 years by the ICTY. Fatmir Limaj and Isak Musliu acquitted	a 1998 internment camp for Serbs, Roms and Albanians who wouldn't submit to the KLA; 25-26 July 1998 detainees were thrown off the Berisha mountain
Metohija ethnic cleansing	persecution of non-Albanians; at least 39 Serb and Roma civilians	ex KLA Commander and Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, commander of the Black Eagles Idriz Balaj and KLA Deputy Commander Lahi Brahimaj at trial in ICTY	1997-1998; wide-scale ethnic cleansing of western Kosovo, attacks on refugee camps and removal of Serbs, Roms and opposing Albanians
Kosovo War		NATO
Incident	type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Operation Allied Force	killing over 500 civilians to airbombing	NATO air forces under Wesley Clark. No prosecutions.	24-10 June 1999

1990-2000: Liberia / Sierra Leone

From The Times March 28 2006 p.43:

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

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

1990: Invasion of Kuwait

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
1990:Invasion of Kuwait		Iraq
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Invasion of Kuwait	"breach of international peace and security" (UN Security Council Resolution 660)	no prosecutions
Looting, raping and killing of civilians in Kuwait	crimes against humanity	no prosecutions	country devastated, resources wantonly destroyed

1998-2006: Second Congo War

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

• Civil war 1998-2002, est. 4 million deaths; war "sucked in" Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, as well as 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers, its "largest and most costly" peace mission and "the bloodiest conflict since the end of the Second World War."
• Fighting involves Mai-Mai militia and Congolese government soldiers. The Government originally armed the Mai-Mai as civil defence against external invaders, who then turned to banditry.
• 100,000 refugees living in remote disease ridden areas to avoid both sides
• Estimated 1000 deaths a day according to Oxfam:

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

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

Main article: International_response_to_the_Darfur_conflict § Declarations_of_genocide

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

See also

• Cases before the International Criminal Court
• Command responsibility
• Crime against peace
• Crime against humanity
• Genocide
• Laws of war
• List of war criminals
• Mass murder
• Allied war crimes
• Soviet war crimes
• Nazi war crimes
• German war crimes
• War crimes of the Wehrmacht
• Einsatzgruppen
• War Crime
• List of military scandals

External links

• 1944-1945 Killing of Allied POWs in Europe