160 Therefore, if the Trial Chamber meant that the existence of personal motives excluded the possibility of a crime against humanity being committed if the elements of the crime were proven, I should have difficulty insupporting that. But I respectfully agree with the Appeals Chamber that the Trial Chamber did not mean to sayso. What the Trial Chamber said, in paragraph 659 of its judgement, was this: Thus if the perpetrator has knowledge, either actual or constructive, that these acts were occurring on a widespread or systematic basis and does not commit his act for purely personal motives completely unrelated to the attack on the civilian population, that is sufficient to hold him liable for crimes against humanity. Therefore the perpetrator must know that there is an attack on the civilian population, know that his act fits in with the attack and the act must not be taken for purely personal reasons unrelated to the armed conflict. 34. There are difficulties in the passage, but, read as a whole and in the context in which it occurred, I do not think it meant that, if the accused "knows that his act fits in with the attack", that attack being one "on the civilian population", the mere circumstance that he acted out of personal motives sufficed to exclude the commission of the crime. "Denunciation" type cases, in which the accused sought to avail himself of the arrangements relating to the attack on the civilian population in order to advance his personal motives, are crimes against humanity. And rightly so, for those are cases in which, however personal were the motives, the act fitted in with the attack on the civilian population, within the contemplation of the phrase used by the Trial Chamber. 35. What, I apprehend, the Trial Chamber had in mind was a distinguishable situation in which, although the accusedknew of the attack on the civilian population, he did not in fact intend to link his act to the attack but acted "forpurely personal motives completely unrelated to the attack on the civilian population".6 Thus, in the period of an attack on a certain civilian population, a jealous husband, being a member of the aggressor group, might kill his wife, being a member of the attacked civilian population, for exactly the same reasons, and no other, for which he would have killed her had she been a member of his own group. It does not appear to me that the mere fact that he knew of the attack on the civilian population could serve to classify his act as a crime against humanity in the absence of proof that he intended that his act should fit in with the arrangements for theattack. That proof is apparent in "denunciation" type cases.It is absent in the example suggested; the arrangements relating to the attack on the civilian population played no part in the commission of the act. Were the law as submitted by 6 (Emphasis added). “The intent (or motive) of the perpetrator in ‘murder’… must be linked to carrying out the ‘state action or policy’”. See Cherif Bassiouni, Crimes against Humanity in International Criminal Law (Dordrecht, 1992), p.292.

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents