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accomplishment of any such act constitutes a war crime under the Nuremberg Charter. Furthermore, the Nuremberg Charter involves a list of seven key principles that collectively define international criminal law. The seven principles are as follows: Principle I: Any person who commits an act that constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment. Principle II: The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act that constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law. Principle III: The fact that a person who committed an act that constitutes a crime under international law acted as head of state or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law. Principle IV: The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him. Principle V: Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law. Principle VI: The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable under international law: a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances. (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war that include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment, or deportation to slavelabor , or for any other purpose, of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder, or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity. c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or The Power Elite, State Crime, and War Crime 115 persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime. Principle VII: Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law (www.nuremberg .law.harvard.edu, 2008, p. 1–2). The International Law Commission, acting on the request of the United Nations General Assembly, produced a report in 1950 titled Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal (United Nations, 1950). The Nuremberg Principles were also adopted by the United Nations in 1950 and they have had a great influence on the laws of war. As explained by Henkin (1995, p. 111), “At Nuremberg, sitting in judgment on the recent past, the Allied victors declared waging aggressive war to be a state crime (under both treaty and customary law), as well as an individual crime by those who represented and acted for the aggressor states” (emphasis added). Kramer et al. (2005) explained that the Nuremberg principles helped to create an important new body of international rules—that is, international criminal law. Cassese (2003, p. 15) argued that international criminal law is “designed both to proscribe international crimes and to impose upon States the obligation to prosecute and punish at least some of those crimes.” Beyond obligating nations to punish war crimes, the Nuremberg Charter also led to numerous proposals by members of the international community after 1950 for the establishment of a permanent international criminal court. Those proposals were acted upon by the international community in the late twentieth century with the creation of the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague. Significantly, the Nuremberg trials established the only legal precedents for the cases tried at the world court (Cassese, 2003). A discussion of the International Criminal Court and its jurisdiction is provided in the following section. The International Criminal Court The international community had long aspired to the establishment of a permanent international court and, in the twentieth century, reached consensus on definitions of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes (Cassese, 2003; Kafala, 2003). As previously mentioned, in 2002, a treaty-based court, called the International Criminal Court (ICC), was...

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