88 the concentration camps. Generally speaking, the charges against them were that they had acted in pursuance of a common design to kill or mistreat prisoners and hence to commit war crimes. 250 In his summing up in the Belsen case, the Judge Advocate adopted the three requirements identified by the Prosecution as necessary to establish guilt in each case: (i) the existence of an organised system to ill-treat the detainees and commit the various crimes alleged; (ii) the accused’s awareness of the nature of the system; and (iii) the fact that the accused in some way actively participated in enforcing the system, i.e., encouraged, aided and abetted or in any case participated in the realisation of the common criminal design. 251 The convictions of several of the accused appear to have been explicitly based upon these criteria. 252 203. This category of cases (which obviously is not applicable to the facts of the present case) is really a variant of the first category, considered above. The accused, when they were found guilty, were regarded as co-perpetrators of the crimes of ill-treatment, because of their objective “position of authority” within the concentration camp system and because they had “the power to look after the inmates and make their life satisfactory”253 but failed to do so. 254 It would seem that in these cases the required actus reus was the active 250 See Dachau Concentration Camp case, UNWCC, vol. XI, p. 14: “It seems, therefore, that what runs throughout the whole of this case, like a thread, is this: that there was in the camp a general system of cruelties and murders of the inmates (most of whom were allied nationals) and that this system was practised with the knowledge of the accused, who were members of the staff, and with their active participation. Such a course of conduct, then, was held by the court in this case to constitute ‘acting in pursuance of a common design to violate the laws and usages of war’. Everybody who took any part in such common design was held guilty of a war crime, though the nature and extent of the participation may vary”. 251 The Judge Advocate summarised with approval the legal argument of the Prosecutor in the following terms: “The case for the Prosecution is that all the accused employed on the staff at Auschwitz knew that a system and a course of conduct was in force, and that, in one way or another in furtherance of a common agreement to run the camp in a brutal way, all those people were taking part in that course of conduct. They asked the Court not to treat the individual acts which might be proved merely as offences committed by themselves, but also as evidence clearly indicating that the particular offender was acting willingly as a party in the furtherance of this system. They suggested that if the Court were satisfied that they were doing so, then they must, each and every one of them, assume responsibility for what happened.” (Belsen case, UNWCC, vol. II, p. 121.) 252 In particular, the accused Kramer appears to have been convicted on this basis. (See ibid., p. 121: “The Judge Advocate reminded the Court that when they considered the question of guilt and responsibility, the strongest case must surely be against Kramer, and then down the list of accused according to the positions they held.” (emphasis added). 253 Ibid., p.121. 254 In a similar vein, the Case against R. Mulka et al. (“Auschwitz concentration camp case”) can be mentioned. Although the court reached the same result, it nevertheless did not apply the doctrine of common design but instead tended to treat the defendants as aiders and abettors as long as they remained within the framework provided by their orders and as principal offenders if they acted outside this framework. This meant that if it could not be proved that the accused actually identified himself with the aims of the Nazi Case No.: -94-1-A 15 July 1999