Joint Criminal Enterprise

Journal of International Criminal Justice

Volumn 5, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 91-108

  van der Wilt, Harmen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

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EID: 33947590282     PISSN: 14781387     EISSN: 14781395     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jicj/mql043     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. Compare E. van Sliedregt, The Criminal Responsibility of Individuals for Violations of International Humanitarian Law (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2003), 353-358.
2. Judgment, Brdanin (IT-99-36-T), Trial Chamber, 1 September 2004, §§ 344-355 (hereinafter Brdanin).
3. Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter reads: The following acts, or any of them, are crimes within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individNal responsibility: CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing; WAR CRIMES ... CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY ... Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of the plan.
4. Articles 9 and 10 of the Nuremberg Charter.
5. S. Pomorski, 'Conspiracy and Criminal Organisation', in G. Ginsburgs and V.N. Kudriavtsev (eds), The Nuremberg Trial and International Law (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1990), at 224: 'And that is exactly what the last sentence of Article 6 does: It makes participation in conspiracy the legal equivalent of complicity'.
6. A. Ashworth, Principles of Criminal Law (3rd edn., Oxford: OUP, 1999), at 476: 'Agreement is the basic element in conspiracy. The idea of an agreement seems to involve a meeting of minds, and there is no need for a physical meeting of the persons involved so long as they reach a mutual understanding of what is to be done'.
7. Jackson who, as Chief of Counsel for the United States in the Nuremberg Trial had fiercely supported the conspiracy doctrine, attacked the doctrine with similar vigour in his separate opinion in Krulewitch v. United States (336 U.S. 440 (1949)): 'A recent tendency has appeared in this Court to expand this elastic offense (i.e. conspiracy) and to facilitate its proof.
8. In Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, it sustained a conviction of a substantive crime where there was no proof of participation in or knowledge of it, upon the novel and dubious theory that conspiracy is equivalent in law to aiding and abetting'.
9. P. Calvocoressi, Nuremberg: The Facts, the Law and the Consequences (London: Chatto and Windus, 1947), at 81: 'The prosecution did not indict an organisation as such or asked that any organisation should be punished.... The purpose of securing such a declaration was to facilitate proceedings against other individuals, accomplices and members of the same gang. In the last resort the objects of the prosecution's attack remained individuals and not collectives'.
10. The Reichskabinet, the High Command of the German military and the Sturmabteilung (SA) escaped the stigma, partly because these organizations concerned comparatively small groups whose members could be held individually responsible, and partly because their criminal intentions could not be established beyond reasonable doubt; compare Calvocoressi, supra note 8, at 82-92
11. and Pomorski, supra note 5, at 244-246.
12. In his brilliant essay on collective responsibility, Joel Feinberg considers collective ('vicarious') responsibility without contributory fault in criminalibus only warranted in case of strong group solidarity and the possibility of mutual social control, J. Feinberg, Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 233-241.
13. R.K. Woetzel, The Nuremberg Trials in International Law (London: Stevens and Sons, 1962), 208.
14. 1 Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, 262, 268, 273, Washington 1947.
15. Articles 2(3)(b) ICTRSt. and 4(3)(b) ICTYSt.
16. Kambanda, a former prime minister of Rwanda, was the sole person to be convicted for 'conspiracy to commit genocide', Judgment, Kambanda (ICTR-97-23-1), 4 September 1998, confirmed by the Appeals Chamber in Judgment, Kambanda (ICTR-97-23-A), Appeals Chamber, 19 October 2001.
17. In the same vein: A.M. Danner and J.S. Martinez, 'Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility, and the Development of International Criminal Law', 93 California Law Review (2005) 75, at 110 and 119.
18. Judgment, Tadić (IT-94-1-A), Appeals Chamber, 15 July 1999, §196 (hereinafter Tadić). The Appeals Chamber elucidated that the participation of the accused might consist in inflicting non-fatal violence upon the victims, providing material assistance, or facilitating the activities of their co-perpetrators.
19. Dachau Concentration Camp case (Weiss and Thirty-Nine Others), UNWCC, Vol. XI, 5-17
20. Belsen Concentration Camp case ((Kramer and Forty-four others), UNWCC, Vol. II, 1-157.
21. Tadić, §203.
22. Tadić, §204.
23. Ibid.
24. Tadić, §202 and §228.
25. Critical on the conflation of both categories are S. Powles, 'Joint Criminal Enterprise: Criminal Liability by Prosecutorial Ingenuity and Judicial Creativity?', 2 Journal of International Criminal Justice (2004) 606-619, at 609
26. and van Sliedregt, supra note 1, at 353.
27. Judgment, Krstić (IT-98-33-T), Trial Chamber, 2 August 2001, §615 (hereinafter Krstić).
28. Krstić, §616.
29. Krstić, §632.
30. Krstić, §635.
31. Brdanin, supra note 2.
32. Brdanin, §§ 344-347.
33. Brdanin, §351.
34. Brdanin, §355.
35. Judgment, Kvočka (IT-98-33-T), 2 November 2001, §285.
36. Judgment, Kvočka (IT-98-30/1-A), Appeals Chamber, 28 February 2005, 9§1 (hereinafter Kvička Appeals Chamber).
37. Kvoćka, §278.
38. Kvočka, Appeals Chamber, §101.
39. Kvočka, Appeals Chamber, §118.
40. Decision on Jurisdictional Appeals: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Karemera et al. (ICTR-98-44-AR72.5 and ICTR-98-44-AR72.6), Appeals Chamber, 12 April 2006, §12.
41. Judgment, Krajišnik (IT-00-39/40), Trial Chamber, 27 September 2006, §884.
42. For a different point of view, compare K. Gustafson, 'The Requirement of an "Express Agreement" for Joint Criminal Enterprise Liability: A Critique of Brdanin' in this issue who considers the 'express agreement' requirement to be too narrow and unnecessarily limiting the scope of criminal liability.
43. Article 25(3) reads: A person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime ... if that person ... (d) in any other way contributes to its commission by a group of persons acting with a common purpose. Such contribution shall be intentional and shall either: (i) be made with the aim of furthering the criminal activity or purpose of the group, or (ii) be made in the knowledge of the intention to commit the crime. Article 30 ICCSt. reads: (1) Unless otherwise provided, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge. For a similar point of view, see van Sliedregt, supra note 1, at 356.
44. In a critical assessment of the JCE doctrine, George Fletcher and Jens Ohlin also contend that 'the culpability nexus between the contribution and the ultimate criminal harm is left vague'. G.P. Fletcher and J.D. Ohlin, 'Reclaiming Fundamental Principles of Criminal Law in the Darfur Case', 3 Journal of International Criminal Justice (2005) 539-561, at 549.
45. In the same vein, see: Van Sliedregt, supra note 1, at 353: 'Participation in a criminal organisation like a detention camp may be inferred from one's position of authority within the system. This way criminal responsibility is based on an objective factor like function, which may not necessarily correspond to personal culpability'.
46. Z. Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 98.
47. Most illuminating in this respect is Hannah Arendt's comment on Eichmann's reaction when he was confronted with the practical effects of his decisions: 'He had seen the places to which the shipments were directed, and he had been shocked out of his wits'. H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem; A Report on the Banality of Evil (rev. and enlarged edn., Penguin Books: 1963), at 90.
48. Bauman, supra note 42, at 99 (emphasis added).
49. Bauman mentions the example of workers in the chemical plants that produced napalm and asks the rhetorical question whether those workers would accept responsibility for burned babies or even would be aware that others might reasonably think they were responsible (ibid., at 100). In such cases criminal responsibility is likely to move up to the owners of the plants.
50. Bauman, supra note 42, at 99-100.
51. Bauman, supra note 42, at 100 (emphasis added).
52. van Sliedregt, supra note 1, at 360.
53. Compare - for Dutch law - A.M. van Woensel, In de daderstand verheven; Beschouwingen over functioneel daderschap in het Nederlandse strafrecht (Arnhem: Gouda Quint, 1993) ('Elevated to Perpetration; Reflections on Functional Perpetration in Dutch Criminal Law')
54. and - for German law - C. Roxin, Tätershaft und Tatherrshaft (6th edn., Berlin/NY: De Gruyter, 1999), 248: 'Wer in einen Organisationsapparat an irgendeiner Stelle in der Weise eingeschaltet ist, daβ er ihm untergebenen Personen Befehle erteilen kann, ist kraft der ihm zukommenden Willensherrshaft mittelbarer Täter, wenn er seine Befugnisse zur Durchführung strafbarer Handlungen einsetst'. With complete approval Roxin quotes Jäger, who contends that 'daβ auch eine Handlung, die nur in der Unterzeichnung eines Diokuments oder einem telefonischen Anruf besteht, Mord sein kann - und zwar auch nach geltenem Deutschen Recht im vollen Umgang und ohne Einschränkung.' Roxin defines the concept as Organisationsherrschaft, which probably can best be translated by 'Control over the Organization'.
55. Supreme Court, 23 February 1954, NJ (Netherlands Law Reports), 1954, at 378.
56. Noyon-Langemeyer-Remmelink, Het Wetboek van Strafrecht, losbladig commentaar (Deventer: Kluwer, 2005), deel I, aant. 19 bij Art. 47 Sr. (The Criminal Code: A Loose-leaf Commentary)
57. H. van der Wilt, Het kwaad in functie (Evil in Function), Inaugural address, Amsterdam: Vossiuspers, at 20-25.
58. J. de Hullu, Materieel strafrecht; over algemene leerstukken van strafrechtelijke aansprakelijkheid naar Nederlands recht (Substantive Criminal Law: On General Doctrines of Criminal Responsibility in Dutch Law) (Deventer: Kluwer, 2000), 153.
59. Compare H. Vest, 'Humanitätsverbrechen - Herausforderung für das Individualstrafrecht?' (International Crimes: A Challenge for Individual Criminal Responsibility in Criminal Law?), 113 Zeitschrift zur Gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaften (2001), Heft 3 at 493
60. and Roxin, supra note 48, at 242-252.
61. For a thorough discussion of the question whether political and military leaders should be qualified as instigators (Anstifters) or perpetrators (on the basis of Organisationsherrsschaft) of international crimes, compare: K. Ambos, Der Allgemeine Teil des Völkerstrafrechts: Ansätze einer Dogmatisierung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot: 2003), at 590-594.
62. Although the JCE doctrine admittedly serves an important symbolic function, as will be demonstrated in the final part of this essay.
63. On the 'cog in the machine' argument and Eichmann's replacability, see Roxin,supra note 48, at 246 who quotes parts of Servatius' closing statement.
64. On the legal justifications of the atrocities, see Arendt, supra note 43, at 135-150.
65. Arendt, supra note 43, at 289 acutely comments: 'If the defendant excuses himself on the ground that he acted not as a man but as a mere functionary whose functions could just as easily have been carried out by anyone else, it is as if a criminal pointed to the statistics of a crime - which set forth that so-and-so many crimes per day are committed in such-and-such a place - and declared that he only did what was statistically expected, that it was mere accident that he did it and not somebody else, since after all somebody had to do it'.
66. Ibid.
67. Vest, supra note 52, at 494, makes a useful distinction between 'Orqanisationsherrschaft innerhalb des Apparates' (control over the organization within the state system) and 'Organisationsherrschaft über den Apparat' (control over the whole state system): 'Sie steuern "nur" ein Teilgeshehen, indem - und solange - sie das Funktionieren der Institution modifizieren'. (They, i.e. the lower and mid level functionaries only govern or control part of the events in so far - and as long - as they modify the functioning of the institute).
68. Compare again Arendt, supra note 43, at 100: 'Of course it is important to the political and social sciences that the essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanise them'.
69. Tadić, §188: 'This provision (i.e. Art. 7 (1) of the Statute) covers first and foremost the physical perpetration of a crime by the offender himself, or the culpable omission of an act that was mandated by a rule of law'.
70. Tadić, §191.
71. Compare E.J. Lampe, 'Systemunrecht und Unrechtssysteme' (System Injustice and Unjust Systems), 106 Zeitschrift zur Gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaften (1994), at 743, who points at the German legal figure of the Hintermann (comparable to'perpetration by means') and comments: 'Denn dem hierarchischen Aufbau totalitärer Unrechtssysteme entspricht die Rechtsfigur eines "Täters hinter dem Täter" besser'.
72. Lampe, supra note 61, at 714 poignantly refers to the 'feeling of solidarity' in criminal organizations and contends that 'Im rechtlich pervertierten Staat ist es hauptsächlich bei der Herrschaftsclique, im übrigen aber schwächer oder gar nicht vorhanden und läßt sich dann nur propagandistisch erzeugen.'
73. Nuremberg Judgment in L. Friedman, The Law of War. A Documentary History, Vol. II (NY: Random House, 1972), 940.
74. in a number of cases the ICTY addressed in particular the relationship between Arts 7(1) and 7(3) of its Statute. In the Delalić Appeals Judgement, the Appeals Chamber held that 'If convictions and sentences are entered on both counts (i.e. on the basis of Article 7(1) and Article 7(3)), it would not be open to aggravate the sentence on the Article 7(3) charge on the basis of the additional direct participation, nor the sentence on the Article 7(1) charge on the basis of the accused's position of authority, as to do so would impermissibly duplicate the penalty imposed on the basis of the same conduct.' Judgement, Delalić et al. (IT-96-21-A), Appeals Chamber, 20 February 2001, §745.
75. Ashworth, supra note 6, at 474.