“As difficult as it may be at this moment to publicly commit to a fair trial, due to emotions and the sheer horror of what transpired on October 7, this is the time for Israel to do so.”

 – Dr. Isaac Amon and Edward “Coach” Weinhaus, Esq.

The allegations against HAMAS for October 7, 2023, and its subsequent actions are monstrous. On that Saturday, HAMAS, a terrorist organization, whose founding charter openly calls for the elimination of the Jewish State and killing of Jews worldwide,[1] crossed into Israel and murdered over 1,200 men, women, and children. While Jews were the vast majority (indeed, it was the largest number of Jews killed in one day since the Holocaust ended in 1945), victims came from scores of nationalities, religions, and backgrounds. Over 250 people celebrating peace at a music festival were murdered en masse, whilst entire families were slaughtered in their communities, pets were shot, and houses set on fire. Women were allegedly raped so brutally their pelvises were shattered; children, including babies, were beheaded and burnt. Elderly men and women were killed as well, including those who had survived the Shoah. Some bodies were so defaced and desecrated, both before and even after death, that they could only be identified through DNA and dental records. Some 240 men, women, and children were cruelly taken hostage in the Gaza Strip, where most remain. A deal was just made to exchange 50 hostages abducted by Hamas for 150 Palestinians in Israeli jails.[2]

The immediate Israeli focus is on recovering the remaining hostages and ending Hamas’ control of Gaza, which they have governed since winning legislative elections in 2006. Since ousting their political rival Fatah in 2007, they have confiscated billions of dollars in aid intended for Palestinian civilians, fired rockets at Israeli civilians from civilian areas (hospitals, schools, kindergartens), and violently silenced dissent. The IDF is currently operating in the Gaza Strip looking for the masterminds of the October 7 attack. Foremost among them is Yahya Sinwar, the political leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip (freed in a previous prisoner swap), and Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has declared them “dead men walking.” No doubt, many in Israel and elsewhere share this view.

Yet, at this time of reckoning, the question of legal accountability has started to figure into the mindset of Israeli policymakers. As Jerome Marcus observed, Israel will have to decide where and how to hold HAMAS perpetrators it has captured, and whether trials should be held.[3] The Justice Ministry began contemplating the creation of special courts to have war crimes trials, likely modeled on Israel’s trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961.[4] This decision, if taken, may include special legislation authorizing the use once more of the death penalty, which was only used in the Eichmann case. In 1954, the Knesset mostly voted to abolish the death penalty except for treason. Nonetheless, the special legislation authorizing punishment of Nazis and collaborators for war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and crimes against humanity remains in effect.  Israeli law thus preserves the right to impose the death sentence for commission of these atrocities. Indeed, Israel could simply temporally expand the penalty already authorized as HAMAS’ atrocities were comparable with Nazis, especially the Einsatzgruppen.

If HAMAS perpetrators and participants of October 7 are captured alive, Israel has a better answer than summarily executing them. Procedural due process demands that even the worst among humanity receive a fair trial, with attendant protections granted to defendants, including the right to counsel, to know the charges, to cross-examine witnesses, and to have the ability to scrutinize the evidence. The trials should be recorded and open to the press and the public.

As difficult as it may be at this moment to publicly commit to a fair trial, due to emotions and the sheer horror of what transpired on October 7, this is the time for Israel to do so. As the verdict of history has repeatedly demonstrated, what morally distinguishes the rule of law from the rule of tyrants and dictators is transparency, fairness, and justice. It is the only way to ensure not only legitimacy before the court of public opinion but to ensure those who question have answers. Particularly significant will be the answers provided by professionally duty-bound advocates and not the latest viral social media post on TikTok, Instagram, or X.

Background Of Pre-Nuremberg War Crime Tribunals

Current discourse in media and culture – regardless of whose side one takes – is focusing on the concepts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.  These terms were largely defined in the 20th century in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, or the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. But the first trial for those crimes arguably dates to the Late Middle Ages. The first recorded international trial occurred in 1474, when Sir Peter von Hagenbach, governor of Breisach (a city in Germany) was tried for killing civilians, “trampl[ing] underfoot the laws of God and man.”[1] The 28 judges came from various parts of Austria, France, and locales throughout the Western Rhine, including the cities of Strasbourg, Basel, and Berne. He was provided a defense counsel, Hans Irmy, who challenged the prosecution on two grounds; the court had no jurisdiction to try him and Hagenbach was merely following orders. Rejecting both legal arguments, the judges sentenced him to death. While it was not a criminal trial, consistent with our widely accepted standards, (von Hagenbach was tortured to confess and he was denied the opportunity to call his lord Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, as a witness), he was afforded defense counsel, the ability to confront adverse witnesses, and deliberations lasted a full day (comparable to two to three modern court days).[2]

The idea of trying leaders for these types of crimes long remained. Following World War I, the Allied Powers briefly contemplated war crimes trials. Article 227 of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles explicitly called for a special international tribunal to put the abdicated German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, on trial for a “supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.”[3] Yet, the Netherlands, which granted the Kaiser political asylum, refused to extradite him; he lived there until he died in 1941 (during World War II).[4] It would take the worst global conflagration in human history to make atrocity crimes trials a reality.

The Nuremberg Trials

 In January 1942, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the United Kingdom, the Free French, and eight governments in exile whose countries were under Axis occupation signed the Inter-Allied Declaration at the Palace of St. James in London. This document announced that among the principal war aims would be “the punishment, through the channel of organized justice, of those guilty of or responsible for these crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them or participated in them.”[1] In other words,  German political and military leaders would be held legally accountable for their actions. The October 1943 Moscow Declaration reaffirmed the Allied commitment to “pursue [war criminals] to the uttermost ends of the earth and deliver them to their accusors [sic] in order that justice may be done.”[2] A similar warning was issued at Potsdam in late July 1945 for Japanese leaders, openly declaring that “stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals…”.[3]

On May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. The time for accountability had come, and with it, a new legal precedent. Three courses of action were possible; the accused could be a) released, b) summarily executed, or c) brought to trial.[4] While the Soviet Union advocated summary execution[5] a position supported by the British [6], the United States sought to bring the major Nazi war criminals to trial.[7] Their view ultimately prevailed, and the Allies (US, UK, France, and the USSR) adopted the London Charter in August, creating an international military tribunal, comprised of one judge (and one deputy or alternate) from each signatory.[8]

The US appointed Attorney General Francis Biddle and Judge John J. Parker while Judges Geoffrey Lawrence and Norman Birkett represented the UK. Henri Donnedieu de Vabres and Robert Falco came from France while the USSR sent General Ion Nikitchenko and Lt. Col. Alexander Volchkov[9]. Proceedings were to be simultaneously translated English, French, Russian, and German. The rights of defendants were specified, including the crucial opportunity to present evidence, cross-examine witnesses, and the right to have legal counsel.[10] The Chief Prosecutors (one from each Allied Power like the judges) were U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, UK Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross, Professor Francois de Menthon from France, who was soon replaced by Auguste Champetier de Ribes. The USSR sent Lt. General Roman Rudenko.[11]

Twenty-four leading Nazis were indicted for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against peace, or the crime of aggression.[12] As three were ultimately not tried, verdicts were pronounced on twenty-one defendants.[13] Nonetheless, it was imperative for the legacy of these trials that they would have their procedural rights guaranteed. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson – the Chief American Prosecutor – declared in his Opening Statement:

The wrongs which we seek to condemn have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated…[but] [w]e must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well.[14]

The defendants were allowed the right to select their counsel while expenses were covered by the Allies.[15] The trials were recorded and filmed for citizens to view around the world.[16] Indeed, the “Nuremberg trials were documented with film, photographs, and audio on a scale that had never been used in a trial.”[17]The trial lasted until October 1946, when 12 defendants were sentenced to death,[18] seven (“Spandau 7”) were given various prison terms,[19] and three were acquitted.[20]

The major Nazi leaders were not the only alleged WWII war criminals tried. In Japan, an International Military Tribunal for the Far East was convened, indicting 28 Class-A Japanese war criminals.[21] After the trial of the major Nazi war criminals ended in 1946, U.S. military courts in West Germany held twelve subsequent trials. Among them were ones focusing on doctors (Trial #1), judges (Trial #3), I.G. Farben (Trial #6) and Einsatzgruppen (Trial #9), paramilitary SS death squads that murdered a million Jews in Eastern Europe by bullets alone.[22]

Nuremberg Procedural Protections As Precedent

With no major legal precedent to draw upon, the trials at Nuremberg ensuring procedural rights for the accused stood in contrast to the prominent show trials of Nazi Germany.[1] The Allied decision to prosecute was a decisive break with the past, vindicating the principle that right makes might and that individuals can be held accountable for the worst crimes. It also established an evidentiary record that can never be challenged. Nuremberg was thus a defining moment in human history and the development of international criminal law and procedure.[2]

These trials paved the way for modern international criminal justice. In the 1990s, after genocide and immense violence in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the United Nations Security Council established ad hoc international criminal tribunals (ICTY and the ICTR) to try individuals accused of committing atrocities – war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.[3] (cite) The ICTR finished in 2015 whilst the ICTY closed its doors in 2017. [4] The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals was established to complete the remaining work of these tribunals.[5] It remains active due to two fugitives (indicted for genocide by the ICTR) who remain at large.[6]Notably, Nuremberg provided the great legal precedent for Israel’s most famous trial – that of Adolf Eichmann.

CASE: Israel’s Trial of Adolf Eichmann

In 1960, Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, or Final Solution to the Jewish Question, was captured in Argentina, where he was living under a false name. Taken to the State of Israel, he was charged with crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and membership in criminal organizations (the SD, SS, and Gestapo). He was prosecuted under special legislation – the 1950 Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law – which had been passed by the first Knesset.[7] Similar to Nuremberg, Eichmann was permitted to choose his own counsel from a pre-approved list.[8] Israel paid the costs of Dr. Robert Servatius, who had been defense counsel at Nuremberg. The judges were Yitzhak Raveh, Benjamin Halevy, and Moshe Landau. Chief Prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, memorably began the State’s case by declaring:

When I stand before you here, Judges of Israel…I am not standing alone. With me are six million accusers. But they cannot rise to their feet and point an accusing finger towards him who sits in the dock and cry: “I accuse…”[9]

Over 100 witnesses were called by the prosecution. Like Nuremberg, Eichmann had the right to cross-examine witnesses, to contest the charges, and he was able to testify. At the end of the trial, he rejected his guilt, proclaiming he had merely followed orders – the same defense Hagenbach made nearly five centuries earlier.

On June 1, 1962, Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death, executed – the only time in Israel – and his cremated ashes were scattered into the Mediterranean.

Nuremberg focused much more on the documentary record; as Justice Jackson phrased it, “we must establish incredible events by credible evidence.” Most documents were thus taken directly from Nazi records with many of the defendants’ own signatures present to ensure the legitimacy of the trial. The Eichmann trial, which did not lack documentation, significantly dedicated itself to the testimony of survivors, adding a human dimension to the immense scope of the widespread and systematic Nazi genocide. Due to this trial, the Holocaust was thrust into greater public consciousness, both in Israel and around the world.

Other War Crime Tribunals Against Nazis

Subsequent trials in West Germany (which prosecuted mid to lower-ranking officials at death camps), Klaus Barbie in France, John Demjanjuk in Israel and Germany, as well as denaturalization cases in the United States have all been indelibly influenced by the pioneering legacy of the Nuremberg Trials. To live up to an idea such as  “Never Again” at the highest moral level, it is necessary to try the guilty before punishing them. Summary executions miss the moment to document, educate, and preserve the record for posterity. Simply eliminating a wrong-doer is not enough to win the war of ideas or the battle of cultures. It also does not illustrate the idea that right makes might, which is part of the rule of law.

The Allies understood this in the immediate aftermath of the devastation of World War II as did Israel when Gideon Hausner rose to his feet and commenced the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann over six decades ago. Current Israeli leadership, policymakers, and the public are best-served by remembering this history when HAMAS leaders and perpetrators are brought to justice.

Legal Issues Related To Forthcoming HAMAS Trials

When Israel holds war crimes trials of HAMAS terrorists as the authors contend they must, two issues will surely present themselves. The first is the question of ex post facto laws. This principle, known in criminal law as nulla poena sine lege (no punishment without law) is established in legal theory and practice, dating back millennia.[10] Indeed, it is among the universal aspects of the rule of law.[11] A state may generally not punish individuals for behavior that was not criminal at the time it was done or retroactively increase severity of the punishment. In the Eichmann trial, however, the Jerusalem District Court clarified this contention, holding that “there is no ex post facto-ism in the law of murder.”[12] Moreover, the Court significantly proclaimed that “[a] law that authorizes the punishment of Nazis and their collaborators does not “conflict,” through its retroactive application, “with the rules of natural justice,” in the words of the President; on the contrary, it enforces the dictates of elementary justice.”[13]

The brutal actions of October 7 – the literal embodiment of atrocity crimes and mankind’s worst depravities – were live-streamed by HAMAS.[14] Perhaps needless to say, these actions are criminalized under Israeli (and all natural and moral law), whilst the 1950 special law on Nazis and their Collaborators specifically authorizes the death penalty for these types of appalling crimes.

Since Eichmann’s trial and execution, Israel has sought the death penalty sparsely. In 1988, the Israeli Prosecution sought the death penalty in the trial of Cleveland’s John Demjanjuk, although the Supreme Court of Israel overturned his conviction in 1993, whereupon he was released back to the USA.[15] Eventually, his US citizenship was revoked, and he was ultimately extradited to Germany, where he was convicted of 27, 900 counts of accessory to murder before he died.[16]

In planning trials for the October 7 perpetrators, specifically designed legislation based on the 1950 Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Law would be permissible, especially as Israel seeks to impose the death penalty. Some of it is already being proposed in the Knesset.[17] It may well be a moral necessity, both from a retributive and deterrent perspective of justice. The ghastly nature of HAMAS’ atrocities demands the ultimate punishment that the law permits. As the Supreme Court of Israel said in affirming Eichmann’s death sentence, his actions “must be deemed today as having always borne the stamp of international crimes, banned by the law of nations and entailing individual criminal responsibility.”[18] That declaration equally applies to HAMAS’ terrible actions of October 7, 2023, for they perpetrated cruelties on par with the Nazis and must be prosecuted as such.

The second issue is that of appropriate legal jurisdiction. No doubt friends and foes of Israel alike will contend that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should investigate and potentially prosecute this case. For Israel, and the authors suggest for justice, that is a non-starter for a few reasons. First, the ICC does not impose death as a punishment.[19] Not allowing the State of Israel to impose this sentence (after prosecuting and convicting HAMAS in a fair trial) would subject a democratic government to the wrath of its population who would not stand for the perpetrators to potentially walk again in its midst. Yahya Sinwar, for example, was healed of a brain tumor by Israeli doctors and released. The clear and present threat to all Israeli lives and the rest of humanity gravely remains if that pattern is repeated. If Israel’s elected representatives decide to authorize the death penalty, as they did for Adolf Eichmann, international courts cannot try HAMAS perpetrators.

Second, Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute empowering the ICC’s jurisdiction over it. Neither is the US, China, Russia, India, Turkey, or Iran, and many others. Welcoming ICC investigation of HAMAS at this time would set a precedent potentially subjecting Israel’s response to the ICC as well. Israel should not now cede its legal sovereignty to prosecute the worst crimes in its history and seek justice for the largest number of Jews slain in one day since the Holocaust.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the ICC is a court of last resort, operating when national jurisdictions are either unable or unwilling to prosecute. In this case, HAMAS atrocities were committed on Israeli soil, most of the murdered were Israeli Jews, as are the hostages in Gaza, and the Israeli legal system (well-respected and famously independent) is more than capable of holding these trials.

Israel is accordingly the most appropriate jurisdiction to prosecute HAMAS, even under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Under this principle, certain types of crimes can be punished by all nations for the perpetrators are hostis humani generis, or “enemies of the human race.” Like pirates and slave traders, “everyone who catches them is competent to try them.”[20] National jurisdictions have carried out prosecutions of international crimes – examples include prosecutions in Austria and Germany in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s; the Israeli trial of John Demjanjuk in the 1980s; Denmark in the 1990s, and the UK in 2000. As of 2022, 12 countries initiated investigations into 169 individuals for international crimes committed in 28 countries; there are a total of 40 war crimes charges, 34 crimes against humanity charges, and 17 genocide charges.[21] Israel is well within its sovereign right to prosecute and punish Hamas perpetrators.[22] The Jewish State can bring these cases in the name of humanity, both the dead and the living.

Conclusion

Like all criminal trials, the prosecution has to prove crimes beyond a reasonable doubt and defendants will need to have procedural due process protections. Notably, Israel has to afford defendants the right to counsel. Given current Israeli public defender resistance to representing HAMAS, foreign lawyers may have to be appointed – as occurred at the Nuremberg and Eichmann Trials – to represent HAMAS perpetrators (perhaps alongside public defenders or legal counsel appointed by the court).

By recording and holding public trials of HAMAS perpetrators, the Jewish State allows all to bear witness to the murderers and the murdered, exposes the crimes of HAMAS to the world at large; and memorializes the historical record. Openly prosecuting these atrocities has another long-term benefit, as articulated by Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg Trials nearly eight decades ago:

The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favour. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a Trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.[23]

If Israel submits surviving HAMAS perpetrators to the judgment of the law, justice will not only be done but will be seen to be done and Israelis, Palestinians, the world, and the rule of law will be better off. By “summon[ing] such detachment and intellectual integrity…this trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice.”[24] Decades from now, this decision will be respected, and this trial will take its place alongside Eichmann and Nuremberg.

###

Dr. Isaac Amon is Managing Editor of TribunalForum. He was a legal fellow at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, a research assistant to the ICC Special Adviser on Crimes Against Humanity, and previously investigated and documented ISIS atrocity crimes. He was recently awarded the 2023 W. Oliver Rasch Award by the Missouri Bar Foundation.

Edward “Coach” Weinhaus is CEO of Legal News Publishing company Judiciocracy LLC, Publisher of TribunalForum.

 

[1] From 1933-1945, about 12,000 Germans were executed on the orders of “special courts” in Nazi Germany. See Peter Hoffman, The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945″ p.xiii.

[2] Henry T. King Jr., The Legacy of Nuremberg, 34 Case W. Res. J. Int’l L. 335 (2002)

[3] https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/repertoire/international-tribunals

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] https://www.irmct.org/en/cases/searching-fugitives#:~:text=Of%20the%2093%20persons%20indicted,and%20no%20powers%20of%20arrest. See alsohttps://www.irmct.org/en/news/irmct-prosecutor-confirms-death-fugitive-aloys-ndimbati

[7] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nazis-and-nazi-collaborators-punishment-law-1950

[8] See Joseph Powderly, The Trials of Eichmann, Barbie and Finta, in ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW 36 n.28 (William Schabas & Nadia Bernaz eds., 2011).

[9] Attorney General Gideon Hausner in his opening speech at the trial of Adolf Eichmann

https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/eichmann/index.asp

[10] 2 VINOGRADOFF, OUTLINES OF HISTORICAL JURISPRUDENCE (1922) 139, 140

[11] “The principle that the legal effect of conduct should ordinarily be assessed under the law that existed when the conduct took place has timeless and universal human appeal. It was recognized by the Greeks, see 2 P. Vinogradoff, Outlines of Historical Jurisprudence 139-140 (1922), by the Romans, see Justinian Code, Book 1, Title 14, § 7, by English common law, see 3 H. Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae 531 (T. Twiss trans. 1880); Smead, 20 Minn.L.Rev. at 776-778, and by the Code Napoleon, 1 Code Napoleon, Prelim. Title, Art. I, cl. 2 (B. Barrett trans. 1811). It has long been a solid foundation of American law.” See  SCALIA, J., Concurring in Kaiser Alumium v. Bonjorno, 494 U.S. 827, 855 (1990).

[12] Cited in Nicholas N. Kittrie, A Post Mortem of the Eichmann Case – The Lessons for International Law, 55 J. Crim. L. Criminology & Police Sci. 16, 21 (1964).

[13] Attorney General v. Eichmann, District Court of Jerusalem, Criminal Case No. 40/61, Paragraph 7. Available at: https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/aceae7/pdf/

[14] https://www.politico.eu/article/graphic-videos-hamas-attacks-spread-twitter-x-israel/

[15] https://internationalcrimesdatabase.org/Case/191/Demjanjuk/

[16] Id.

[17] https://www.jns.org/after-hamas-rampage-israeli-lawmaker-submits-death-penalty-bill/

[18] Attorney-General of the Government of Israel v. Eichmann (Israel Sup. Ct. 1962), Int’l L. Rep., vol. 36, p. 287, 1968 (English translation).

[19] https://how-the-icc-works.aba-icc.org/#:~:text=Sentencing%20%26%20Reparations-,Sentencing,imprisonment%20or%20a%20life%20imprisonment.

[20] D. Lasok, The Eichmann Trial, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Apr., 1962), 355, 363.

[21] Trial International, Universal Jurisdiction Annual Review 2023, p. 13.

[22] See Israel, Rules of Warfare on the Battlefield, Military Advocate-General’s Corps Command, IDF School of Military Law, Second Edition, 2006, pp. 41-42.

[23] (Nuremberg, July 26, 1946), 20 Temp. L.Q. 85 (1946), 12 Vital Speeches 710 (1946); Case & Com., Jan.-Feb., 1947, p. 3 (condensed).

[24] “Second Day, Wednesday, 11/21/1945, Part 04”, in Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Volume II. Proceedings: 11/14/1945-11/30/1945. [Official text in the English language.] Nuremberg: IMT, 1947. pp. 98-102.

[1] https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-648522001/view?partId=nla.obj-648522473#page/n3/mode/1up

[2] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/moscow.asp

[3] https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/etc/c06.html

[4] See Matthew Lippman “Nuremberg: Forty Five Years Later” in Guenael Mettraux (ed) Perspectives on the Nuremberg Trial (Oxford University Press, New York, 2008) 492 at 522; Charles Anthony Smith The Rise and Fall of War Crimes Trials from Charles I to Bush II (Cambridge University Press, New York City, 2012) at 85.

[5] Jonathan Turley, Transformative Justice and the Ethos of Nuremberg, 33 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 655, 661 (2000).

[6] Id.

[7] Id.

[8] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/jack60.asp

[9] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/nuremberg-judges/

[10] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/imtrules.asp

[11] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/topics/nuremberg-trials#:~:text=In%20the%20days%20before%20Germany,for%20the%20European%20Axis%20powers.

[12] The 24 were Martin Bormann, Karl Donitz, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Hans Fritzsche, Walther Funk, Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Robert Ley, Konstantin von Neurath, Franz von Papen, Erich Raeder, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Hjalmar Schact, Baldur von Schirach, Arthur Seuss-Inquart, Albert Speer, and Julius Streicher.

[13] Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was declared unfit to stand trial, Robert Ley committed suicide, and Martin Bormann was tried in absentia. It was only discovered in 1973 that Bormann had died in 1945.

[14] “Second Day, Wednesday, 11/21/1945, Part 04”, in Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal. Volume II. Proceedings: 11/14/1945-11/30/1945. [Official text in the English language.] Nuremberg: IMT, 1947. pp. 98-102.

[15] Benjamin B. Ferencz, Nurnberg Trial Procedure and the Rights of the Accused, 39 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 144, 147 (1948-1949).

[16] Id at 144-145 (1948-1949).

[17] https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2020/11/17/the-nuremberg-trials-75-years-later/

[18] Bormann, Goering, Frank, Frick, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Jodl, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, and Streicher were sentenced to death. As Bormann was not physically present and Goering committed suicide the night before his scheduled execution, only 10 were hanged though 12 were sentenced to die.

[19] Schirach, Donitz, Neurath, Raeder, Speer, Funk, and Hess were imprisoned at Spandau Prison in West Berlin.

[20] Fritzsche, Papen, and Schact were acquitted.

[21] http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/tokyo/tokyolinks.html

[22] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/subsequent-nuremberg-proceedings

[1] G. SCHWARZENBERGER, INTERNATIONAL LAW AS APPLIED BY INTERNATIONAL COURTS AND TRIBUNALS 462 (1968). See also M.H. KEEN, THE LAWS OF WAR IN THE LATE MIDDLE Aos 23-59 (1965).

[2] https://academic.oup.com/book/26719/chapter/195540728

[3] https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1919Parisv13/ch16subch1

[4] https://historycollection.com/day-history-dutch-refuse-extradite-wilhelm-ii-1920/

[1] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/22/middleeast/israel-approves-hamas-hostage-deal-intl/index.html

[3] https://www.jns.org/israel-must-decide-what-to-do-with-hamas-prisoners/

[4] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-03/ty-article/.premium/israel-may-establish-special-court-for-hamas-terrorists-who-took-part-in-massacres/0000018b-94c9-db7e-af9b-ffcb00bd0000#:~:text=Israel%27s%20Justice%20Ministry%20is%20considering,held%20consultations%20on%20this%20matter.