War+Crime

**The trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic at The Hague throws a renewed spotlight on the prosecution of war crimes.** But what exactly are war crimes? What body of laws do they refer to and who has the right to try a suspect for such crimes? The concept of war crimes is a recent one. Before World War II, it was generally accepted that the horrors of war were in the nature of war. But during World War II the murder of several million people - mainly Jews - by Nazi Germany, and the mistreatment of both civilians and prisoners of war by the Japanese, prompted the Allied powers to prosecute the people they believed to be the perpetrators of these crimes. The Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 led to 12 Nazi leaders being executed. A similar process started in Tokyo in 1948. Seven Japanese commanders were hanged, though the Allies decided not to put Emperor Hirohito in the dock. These trials were essentially the precedents for the cases that the modern-day tribunal in The Hague hears. In addition, individual governments, feeling that justice has not been done, have acted on their own initiative.
 * Radovan Karadzic is set to follow Slobodan Milosevic to The Hagu ||
 * [[image:http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif height="1"]] || [[image:http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/start_quote_rb.gif height="13"]] **At the heart of the concept of war crimes is the idea that an individual can be held responsible for the actions of a country or that nation's soldiers** [[image:http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/end_quote_rb.gif height="13" align="right"]] ||

This happened most famously in 1960, when Adolf Eichmann, a high-profile Nazi closely involved in the organisation of the concentration camps and the policies of the Holocaust, was tracked down in Argentina by Israeli agents. He was kidnapped and taken to Israel where he was put on trial and subsequently hanged. A more recent example was the 1987 trial of Klaus Barbie - a leading Nazi during the German occupation of France. Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Kafala, Tarik. "War Crime." Def. 1. // BBC News - Home //. 2 Apr. 2000. Web. 29 Mar. 2011. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1420133.stm>.

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 130%;">Essay Prompt  After defining what a warcrime is, reading both Albert Eisntein and President H.S. Truman's letters,   explain wheither or the use nuclear weapons could be considered a warcrime. - 6 Paragraph min  - Must have an outline   - Citations must be given.