§ 2. Crimes
Section 5
1. Anyone who commits, in the case of an international armed conflict, one of the grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, namely the following acts if committed against persons protected by the said Conventions:
(a) intentional killing;
(b) torture (as defined in section 1 (1)(d)) or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;
(c) intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health;
(d) extensive intentional and unlawful destruction and appropriation of goods without military necessity;
(e) compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the armed forces of a hostile power;
(f) intentionally depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the right to a fair and regular trial;
(g) unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement; or
(h) the taking of hostages;
shall be liable to life imprisonment or a term of imprisonment not exceeding thirty years or a sixth category fine.
2. Anyone who commits, in the case of an international armed conflict, one of the grave breaches of the Additional Protocol (I), concluded in Bern on 12 December 1977, to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts (Netherlands Treaty Series 1980, 87), namely:
(a) the acts referred to in subsection 1, if committed against a person protected by the Additional Protocol (I);
(b) any intentional act or omission which jeopardises the health of anyone who is in the power of a party other than the party to which he or she belongs, and which:
(i) entails any medical treatment which is not necessary as a consequence of the state of health of the person concerned and is not consistent with generally accepted medical standards which would be applied under similar medical circumstances to persons who are nationals of the party responsible for the acts and who are in no way deprived of their liberty;
(ii) entails the carrying out on the person concerned, even with his consent, of physical mutilations;
(iii) entails the carrying out on the person concerned, even with his consent, of medical or scientific experiments; or
(iv) entails removing from the person concerned, even with his consent, tissue or organs for transplantation;
(c) the following acts, when they are committed intentionally and in violation of the relevant provisions of Additional Protocol (I) and cause death or serious injury to body or health:
(i) making the civilian population or individual citizens the object of attack;
(ii) launching an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects, in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects;
(iii) launching an attack against works or installations containing dangerous forces, in the knowledge that such an attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects;
(iv) making non-defended localities or demilitarised zones the object of attack;
(v) making a person the object of attack in the knowledge that he is hors de combat; or
(vi) the perfidious use, in violation of article 37 of Additional Protocol (I), of the distinctive emblem of the red cross or red crescent or of other protective emblems recognised by the Geneva Conventions or Additional Protocol (I); or
(d) the following acts if committed intentionally and in violation of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol (I):
(i) the transfer by the occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies or the transfer of all or part of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory in violation of article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention;
(ii) unjustifiable delay in the repatriation of prisoners of war or civilians;
(iii) practices of apartheid and other inhuman and degrading practices involving outrages upon personal dignity, based on racial discrimination;
(iv) making clearly recognised historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples and to which special protection has been given by special arrangement, for example within the framework of a competent international organisation, the object of attack, causing as a result extensive destruction thereof, where there is no evidence of the violation by the adverse Party of Article 53, subparagraph (b), of Additional Protocol (I) and when such historic monuments, works of art and places of worship are not located in the immediate proximity of military objectives; or
(v) depriving a person protected by the Geneva Conventions or Article 85, paragraph 2, of Additional Protocol (I) of the right to a fair and regular trial
shall be liable to life imprisonment or a term of imprisonment not exceeding thirty years or a sixth category fine.
3. Anyone who commits, in the case of an international armed conflict, one of the following acts:
(a) rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, enforced sterilisation or any other form of sexual violence which can be deemed to be of a gravity comparable to a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions;
(b) forced pregnancy;
(c) subjecting persons who are in the power of an adverse party to the conflict to physical mutilation or medical or scientific experiments of any kind, which are neither justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the person concerned nor carried out in his or her interest, and which cause death to or seriously endanger the health of such persons or persons;
(d) treacherously killing or wounding individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;
(e) killing or wounding a combatant who is in the power of the adverse party, who has clearly indicated he wishes to surrender, or who is unconscious or otherwise hors de combat as a result of wounds or sickness and is therefore unable to defend himself, provided that he refrains in all these cases from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape; or
(f) making improper use of a flag of truce, of the flag or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy or of the United Nations, as well as of the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions, resulting in death or serious personal injury,
shall be liable to life imprisonment or a term of imprisonment not exceeding thirty years or a sixth category fine.
4. Anyone who, in the case of an international armed conflict, intentionally and unlawfully commits one of the following acts shall be liable to a term of imprisonment not exceeding fifteen years or a fifth category fine:
(a) making the object of attack cultural property that is under enhanced protection as referred to in articles 10 and 11 of the Second Protocol, concluded in The Hague on 26 March 1999, to the Hague Convention of 1954 for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (Netherlands Treaty Series 1999, 107);
(b) using cultural property that is under enhanced protection as referred to in (a) or the immediate vicinity of such property in support of military action;
(c) destroying or appropriating on a large scale cultural property that is under the protection of the Convention, concluded in The Hague on 14 May 1954, for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (Netherlands Treaty Series 1955, 47) or the Second Protocol thereto;
(d) making cultural property that is under protection as referred to in (c) the object of attack; or
(e) theft, pillaging or appropriation of – or acts of vandalism directed against – cultural property under the protection of the Convention referred to in (c).
5. Anyone who, in the case of an international armed conflict, commits one of the following acts:
(a) intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects that are not military objectives;
(b) intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such an attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;
(c) attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;
(d) the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or part of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory;
(e) declaring abolished, suspended or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party;
(f) compelling the nationals of the hostile party to take part in the operations of war directed against their own country, even if they were in the belligerent’s service before the commencement of the war;
(g) employing poison or poisoned weapons;
(h) employing asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and all analogous liquids, materials or devices;
(i) employing bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core or is pierced with incisions;
(j) committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(k) utilising the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas, or military forces immune from military operations;
(l) intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions;
(m) intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;
(n) intentionally directing attacks against buildings, material, medical units and transport, and personnel using the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions in conformity with international law;
(o) intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in humanitarian assistance or peace missions in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under the international law of armed conflict;
(p) intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives;
(q) pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault;
(r) conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or armed groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities;
(s) declaring that no quarter will be given; or
(t) destroying or seizing property of the adversary unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of the conflict;
shall be liable to a term of imprisonment not exceeding fifteen years or a fifth category fine.
6. If an act as referred to in subsection 4 or 5:
(a) results in the death of or serious bodily injury to another person or involves rape;
(b) involves violence, committed in association, against one or more persons or violence against a dead, sick or wounded person;
(c) involves destroying, damaging, rendering unusable or removing, in association with others, any property which belongs wholly or partly to another;
(d) involves compelling, in association with others, another person to do, refrain from doing or permit something;
(e) involves pillaging, in association with others, a town or place, even when taken by assault;
(f) involves breaking a promise or breaching an agreement concluded with the adverse party as such; or
(g) involves making improper use of a by the laws and customs protected flag or emblem or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy,
the perpetrator shall be liable to life imprisonment or a term of imprisonment not exceeding thirty years or a sixth category fine.
7. Subsection 2 (b) (iv) shall not apply if the act described therein:
(a) is consistent with the generally accepted medical standards which would be applied under similar medical circumstances to persons who are nationals of the party responsible for the acts and who are in no way deprived of their liberty; or
(b) concerns a case in which blood is donated for transfusion or skin for transplantation, provided that this occurs voluntarily and without compulsion or insistence and only for therapeutic purposes, in circumstances that are in keeping with generally accepted medical standards and supervisory measures intended to protect the interests of both donor and recipient.
Section 6
1. Anyone who, in the case of an armed conflict not of an international character, commits a violation of article 3 common to all of the Geneva Conventions, namely the commission against persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those who are placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, of one of the following acts:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular killing of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture (as defined in section 1 (1) (d));
(b) the taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; or
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are generally recognised as indispensable;
shall be liable to life imprisonment or a term of imprisonment not exceeding thirty years or a sixth category fine.
2. Anyone who, in the case of an armed conflict not of an international character, commits one of the following acts:
(a) rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, enforced sterilisation or any other form of sexual violence which can be deemed to be of any gravity comparable to a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions;
(b) forced pregnancy;
(c) subjecting persons in the power of another party to the conflict to physical mutilation or medical or scientific experiments of any nature whatever, which are neither justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the person concerned nor carried out in his or her interest and which cause death to or can seriously endanger the health of such persons or persons; or
(d) treacherously killing or wounding individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;
shall be liable to life imprisonment or a term of imprisonment not exceeding thirty years or a sixth category fine.
3. Anyone who, in the case of an armed conflict not of an international character, commits one of the following acts:
(a) intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;
(b) intentionally directing attacks against buildings, material, medical units and transport, and personnel using the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions in conformity with international law;
(c) intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in humanitarian assistance or peace missions in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under the international law of armed conflict;
(d) intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives;
(e) pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault;
(f) conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or armed groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities;
(g) declaring that no quarter will be given; or
(h) destroying or seizing the property of an adversary unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the circumstances of the conflict; or
(i) giving instructions for the transfer of the civilian population for reasons connected with the conflict, other than on account of the safety of the citizens or where imperatively demanded by the circumstances of the conflict;
shall be liable to a term of imprisonment not exceeding fifteen years or a fifth category fine.
4. Section 5, subsection 6, shall apply mutatis mutandis to an act as referred to in subsection 3.
Section 7
1. Anyone who, in the case of an international or non-international armed conflict, commits a violation of the laws and customs of war other than as referred to in sections 5 or 6 shall be liable to a term of imprisonment not exceeding ten years or a fifth category fine.
2. A term of imprisonment not exceeding fifteen years or a fifth category fine shall be imposed:
(a) if an act as referred to in subsection 1 is likely to result in the death of or serious bodily injury to another person;
(b) if an act as referred to in subsection 1 involves one or more outrages committed upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(c) if an act as referred to in subsection 1 involves compelling another person to do, refrain from doing or permit something, or
(d) if an act as referred to in subsection 1 involves pillaging a city or place, even when taken by assault.
3. Section 5, subsection 6, shall apply mutatis mutandis to an act as referred to in subsection 1.
National penalties
National penalties - war crimes
EDIT.