Command, superior and ministerial responsibility

[RBHam]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/iraq/abughraib_commandresponsibility.html

Politicians who either order or encourage war crimes or crimes against humanity are as responsible as those who actually carry them out.

When the Allies prosecuted the Germans at Nuremberg, they successfully based their case, in part, on the idea that Adolf Hitler and the key Nazi leaders were a bunch of gangsters. So they used conspiracy law developed in the 1930s by the United States for use against bootleggers and drug dealers.

At Tokyo, this theory did not work, because, unlike the core of Nazis around Hitler, the Japanese defendants had held different ministerial and military roles at different times. The prosecutors could not prove an overall conspiracy. So the Tokyo tribunal instead applied a strict interpretation of the parliamentary concept of ministerial responsibility.

Under the Tokyo precedent, in theory, politicians can be prosecuted for crimes carried out in their area of responsibility or if they were aware of crimes and did nothing to stop them.

In reality, only those defeated in war, such as the leaders of Germany and Japan as well as Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia and the leaders of the Rwandan genocide, have ever faced international tribunals – one reason that critics charge that war crimes trials are "victors' justice."