116 deliver his victim through denunciation to the forces of arbitrariness or terror are required”. 319 258. The case involving the killing of mentally disturbed patients, decided by the same court and cited by the Prosecution, is also a persuasive authority concerning the irrelevance of personal motives with regard to the constituent elements of crimes against humanity. 320 259. The Prosecution’s submission finds further support in other so-called denunciation cases rendered after the Second World War by the Supreme Court for the British Zone and by German national courts, in which private individuals who denounced others, albeit for personal reasons, were nevertheless convicted of crimes against humanity. 260. In Sch., the accused had denounced her landlord solely “out of revenge and for the purpose of rendering him harmless” after tensions in their tenancy had arisen. The denunciation led to investigation proceedings by the Gestapo which ended with the landlord’s conviction and execution. The Court of First Instance convicted Sch. and sentenced her to three years’ imprisonment for crimes against humanity. 321 The accused appealed against the decision, arguing that “crimes against humanity were limited to participation in mass crimes and … did not include all those cases in which someone took action against a single person for personal reasons”. The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, holding that neither the Nuremberg Judgement nor the statements of the Prosecutor 319 Ibid., p. 499. OGHBZ, Supreme Court for the British Zone (Criminal Chamber) (5 March 1949), S. StS 19/49, in Entscheidungen des Obersten Gerichtshofes für die Britische Zone I, 1949, pp. 321-343. The Accused, Dr. P and others, were medical doctors and a jurist working in a hospital for mentally disturbed patients. Pursuant to Hitler’s directive which ordered the transferral of mentally ill persons to other institutions (where the patients were secretly killed in gas chambers), the Defendants in a few cases participated in the transfer of patients. In most cases, however, they objected to these instructions and tried to save their patients’ lives by releasing them from hospital or by classifying them in categories which were not subject to Hitler’s directive. The Defendants, charged with aiding and abetting murder, were acquitted by the Court of First Instance because it could not be proven that they had acted with the requisite mens rea with regard to participation in the killing of the patients. The Court of First Instance did not take into consideration whether the Defendants’ behaviour could constitute a crime against humanity. This was criticised by the Supreme Court for the British Zone, which ordered the re-opening of the trial before the Court of First Instance to ascertain whether the Accused could be found guilty of a crime against humanity. The Supreme Court stated that a “perpetrator [of a crime against humanity] is indeed also anyone who contributes to the realisation of the elements of the offence, without at the same time wishing to promote National Socialist rule, […] but who acts perhaps out of fear, indifference, hatred for the victim or to receive some gain. [This is] because even when one acts from these motives (“Beweggründe”), the action remains linked to this violent and oppressive system (“Gewaltherrschaft”)” (ibid., p. 341). The Defendants, ultimately, were not convicted of crimes against humanity for procedural reasons unrelated to the definition of the offence. 321 Decision of Flensburg District Court dated 30 March 1948 in Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. II, pp. 397402. See this decision for the findings of the District Court to the effect that the denunciation was made for personal reasons. 320 Case No.: -94-1-A 15 July 1999