55
international. 155 The court did not enquire as to whether or not the specific acts committed
by the accused or other Bosnian Serbs had been ordered by the authorities of the FRY.156
130.
Precisely what measure of State control does international law require for organised
military groups? Judging from international case law and State practice, it would seem that
for such control to come about, it is not sufficient for the group to be financially or even
militarily assisted by a State. This proposition is confirmed by the international practice
concerning national liberation movements. Although some States provided movements
such as the PLO, SWAPO or the ANC with a territorial base or with economic and military
assistance (short of sending their own troops to aid them), other States, including those
against which these movements were fighting, did not attribute international responsibility
for the acts of the movements to the assisting States. 157
Nicaragua also supports this
155
The Court stated the following:
“The conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina was an international conflict for the purposes of Article 2 of the
Fourth Geneva Convention. Owing to the declaration of independence and the referendum of 29
February and 1 March 1992 and to international recognition on 6 April 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina had
become an autonomous State, independent from Yugoslavia.
The armed conflict that took place on its territory in the following period was not an internal clash
(conflict), in which an ethnic group was trying to break with the existing State of Bosnia-Herzegovina
and which [as a consequence] had no international character. The expert witness Fischer pointed out
that, by using the term international humanitarian law applicable to this conflict, the United Nations
Security Council has used the term usual in international terminology to refer to the law applicable to
international armed conflicts. This [according to the expert witness] showed that the Security-Council
considered the conflict to be international. The expert witness Fischer cited the following
circumstances as indicia of an international conflict according to the prevailing view in international
law: the participation of organs of a State in a conflict on the territory of another State, e.g. the
participation of officers in the clashes, or the financing of and provision of technical equipment to one
party to the conflict by another State; the latter at least when it is combined with the aforementioned
interconnection [Verflechtung] between personnel. According to this Chamber’s findings, these criteria
are met in the case at hand. The Chamber has found that at the beginning of May officers of the JNA,
which at that time was purely Serb, began taking Doboj and the surrounding villages. There can,
therefore, be no doubt regarding the existence of an international armed conflict at that point in time.
However, this Chamber has further found that after 19 May 1992, when the JNA officially withdrew
from Bosnia-Herzegovina, officers of the JNA continued to be employed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and
paid by Belgrade, and that at the end of May matériel, weapons and vehicles were still being brought
from Belgrade to Bosnia-Herzegovina. As a consequence, a close personal, organisational and
logistical interconnection [Verflechtung] of the Bosnian-Serb army, paramilitary groups and the JNA
persisted. The headquarters of the Bosnian-Serb army maintained a liaison office in Belgrade.”
(ibid., pp. 158-160 of the unpublished typescript; unofficial translation).
156
The Judgement of the Düsseldorf Court of Appeal was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Justice
(Bundesgerichtshof) by a judgement of 30 April 1999 (unpublished). The appeal was based, inter alia, on a
misapplication of substantive law. This ground also included the question of whether the conflict was
international in character. The Bundesgerichtshof did not address the matter specifically, thus implicitly
upholding the judgement of the Düsseldorf Court. (See, in particular, pp. 19-20 and 23 of the German
typescript (3 StR 215/98), on file with the International Tribunal library).
157
See e.g., the debates in the U.N. Security Council in 1976, on the raids of South Africa into Zambia to
destroy bases of the SWAPO (see in particular the statements of Zambia (SCOR, 1944th Meeting of 27 July
1976, paras. 10-45) and South Africa (ibid., paras. 47-69); see also SC resolution no. 393 (1976) of 30 July
1976)); see also the debates on the Israeli raids in Lebanon in June 1982 (in particular the statements of
Case No.: -94-1-A
15 July 1999