Nuremberg Trial Analysis

1015 Words5 Pages

THE NUREMBERG AND TOKYO TRIBUNALS
The two tribunals expressed the principle that International Law may impose obligations directly upon individuals. As observed by the Nuremberg tribunal following the second World War ‘Crimes against International Law are committed by men and NOT by Abstract entities and therefore only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of International Law be enforced’.
THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL
Despite this early use of the term, the first prosecutions for crimes against humanity took place after the Second World War in 1945 before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg. The charter that established the IMT of Nuremberg defined crimes against humanity as Murder, Extermination, …show more content…

Of the 24 defendants who were accused of war crimes, 12 received death sentences, nine received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, and three were acquitted. Of the 185 people later tried, 12 received death sentences and 85 others received prison sentences. Though the Nuremberg trials were controversial at the time, they established a precedent for international law and eventually led to the establishment of the International Court of Justice(ICJ) and the International Criminal Court. (ICC). The ICJ settles disputes among states while the ICC deals with …show more content…

The prosecution team consisted of justices from eleven Allied nations: Australia, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The Tokyo trial lasted from May 1946 to November 1948.
Of the eighty (80) Class A war criminal suspects detained in the Sugamo prison after 1945, twenty-eight (28) men were brought to trial before the IMTFE. The accused included nine civilians and nineteen professional military men. The defendants were accused of promoting a scheme of conquest that contemplated and carried out killing, maiming and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and civilian captives. They proceeded to force them to labor under inhumane conditions plundering public and private property, shamelessly destroying cities, towns and villages beyond any justification of military necessity. They also executed mass murder, rape, looting, brigandage (Highway robbery), torture and other barbaric brutalities upon the helpless civilian population of the over-run