Former Liberian President Charles Taylor was just convicted at The Hague. From Saddam Hussein to Slobodan Milosevic, see other tyrants brought to justice.
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After a trial that lasted nearly five years, former Liberian President Charles Taylor was convicted of war crimes for atrocities in Sierra Leone by a United Nations-backed court—the first time since the Nuremberg trials that a head of state was found guilty by an international tribunal. The Hague convicted Taylor on 11 counts of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, including murder, slavery, rape, and the use of child soldiers in Sierra Leone’s civil war. “Brave men, women and children have taken the stand against Charles Taylor,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement after the verdict. “They have included amputees, rape victims, former child soldiers, and persons enslaved, robbed, and terrorized. We are awed by their courage.” Taylor, who can still appeal, will be sentenced on May 16, but as Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee wrote of the verdict on The Daily Beast: “These young men and women are looking for closure and a way to move forward. We all are.”
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In October 2005, nearly two years after his capture, Saddam Hussein was put on trial by the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Though some considered it the “show trial of the century” Hussein faced charges that he ordered the executions of more than 150 Shiites in 1982. And in a second trial the following August, he was accused of killing more than 5,000 Kurds—as well as invading Kuwait. In December 2006, the deposed Iraqi president was convicted by the tribunal and sentenced to death. He was hanged four days later and all other charges were dropped.
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Having led a military coup against Salvador Allende in 1973, Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile as its president until he stepped down in 1990. Eight years later, having left the country, Pinochet was arrested in a London hospital and charged with crimes against humanity, the first time in history that a world leader had been arrested under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Pinochet’s defense team claimed that the ex-dictator was entitled to amnesty as a former head of state, and that he was also suffering from dementia. Rather than be extradited to Spain (the source of the international arrest warrant) to stand trial, Pinochet returned to Chile in March 2000, where the government granted him immunity. But in August of that year, the country’s Supreme Court stripped his immunity and he was charged with human rights violations. He was put under house arrest in 2004, and in 2006 he was charged with more crimes, including assassination, kidnapping and torture. At the time of his death in December 2006, Pinochet faced more than 300 charges but was never convicted of any.
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In September 2000, a year after Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, he was ousted from power. In March of the following year, Milosevic was arrested in Serbia and charged with abuse of power, embezzlement, and other corruption. He was then transferred to The Hague, where he was charged with, among other things, genocide, torture, religious persecution and attacks on civilians. At his subsequent 2004 trial—which lasted more than two years—Milosevic defended himself but died in prison of heart failure before he could be convicted.
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After nearly a quarter century of ruling Romania, President Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown from power in December 1989. Along with his wife, Elena, Ceausescu fled Bucharest by helicopter but was captured by the police and handed over to the army. While in custody, the Ceausescus were tried by a secret military tribunal—on charges including genocide—and found guilty. They were immediately executed by a firing squad on Christmas Day as a camera crew filmed. The video was then released to the shocked nation, which later rejoiced that the tyranny had finally ended. The White House issued a statement saying it was “regrettable” that the trial had not been shown in public.
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Having been captured by the United States at the end of World War II, Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Nazi Holocaust, escaped custody in 1946 and later fled to Argentina. There, under a false identity, Eichmann worked as an executive for Mercedes-Benz until he was captured by Israel’s Mossad in 1960. While the legality of his arrest was challenged, Eichmann was brought to Israel, where he was charged with crimes against humanity. After a 14-week trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann was found guilty, sentenced to death, and hanged on May 31, 1962. The following year, Hannah Arendt published her landmark account of the trial—Eichmann in Jerusalem—in which she described the former Nazi as epitomizing “the banality of evil.”
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Following Japan’s surrender in September 1945, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the arrest of 40 war criminals, including prime minister Hideki Tojo. Days later, with military police surrounding his home, Tojo shot himself in the chest, but was not killed. "I am very sorry it is taking me so long to die," he said, while bleeding profusely. “I wait for the righteous judgment of history. I wished to commit suicide but sometimes that fails." After healing from his wounds, Tojo was put on trial for war crimes by The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, where he formally accepted responsibility for his actions, saying, “It is natural that I should bear entire responsibility for the war in general, and, needless to say, I am prepared to do so.” Tojo was sentenced to death on November 12, 1948 and hanged the next month. Before he was executed, the former prime minister apologized for the atrocities committed by his military.
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The most famous war crimes trials in history, The Nuremberg Trials spanned four years and sought to bring the surviving leaders of the Nazi regime to justice. In the first trial, “The Major War Figures Case,” Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer and 21 others were convicted of war crimes and 11 were sentenced to death. (In subsequent trials, 142 of the 185 defendants were found guilty and 24 received death sentences.) In his summation in the Major Figures Case, prosecutor Robert H. Jackson said of the defendants: “These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous.”
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