A war crime is a serious violation of the laws and customs of war (also known as international humanitarian law) giving rise to individual criminal responsibility. Examples of war crimes include:
murdering, mistreating,´-or-deporting civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps,murdering´-or-mistreating prisoners of war´-or-civilian internees,forcing protected persons to serve in the forces of a hostile power,killing hostages
killing´-or-punishing spies´-or-other persons convicted of war crimes without a fair trial,wantonly destroying cities, towns, villages,´-or-other objects not warranted by military necessity
Similar concepts, such as perfidy, have existed for many centuries as customs between countries, but these customs were first codified as international law in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The modern definition of a war crime was further developed under the auspices of the Nuremberg Trials, based on the definition in the London Charter that was published on August 8, 1945. Along with war crimes, the charter also defined crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, which are often committed during wartime and in concert with war crimes.
War crimes are serious violations of the rules of customary and treaty law concerning international humanitarian law that have become accepted as criminal offenses for which there is individual responsibility. Colloquial definitions of war crime include violations of established protections of the laws of war, but also include failures to adhere to norms of procedure and rules of battle, such as attacking those displaying a peaceful flag of truce,´-or-using that same flag as a ruse to mount an attack on enemy troops. The use of chemical and biological weapons in warfare are also prohibited by numerous chemical arms control agreements and the Biological Weapons Convention. Wearing enemy uniforms´-or-civilian clothes to infiltrate enemy lines for espionage´-or-sabotage missions is a legitimate ruse of war, though fighting in combat´-or-assassinating individuals, even if they are military targets, behind enemy lines while so disguised is not, as it constitutes unlawful perfidy. Attacking enemy troops while they are being deployed by way of a parachute is not a war crime. However, Protocol I, Article 42 of the Geneva Conventions explicitly forbids attacking parachutists who eject from disabled aircraft and surrendering parachutists once landed. Article 30 of the 1907 Hague Convention IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land explicitly prohibits belligerents to punish enemy spies without previous trial. War crimes include such acts as mistreatment of prisoners of war´-or-civilians. In 2008, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1820, which noted that "rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity´-or-a constitutive act with respect to genocide"-;- see also war rape. War crimes are sometimes part of instances of mass murder and genocide though these crimes are more broadly covered under international humanitarian law described as crimes against humanity.
Hague Conventions
The Hague Conventions were international treaties negotiated at the First and Second Peace Conferences at The Hague, Netherlands, in 1899 and 1907, respectively, and were, along with the Geneva Conventions, among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the nascent body of secular international law.
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions are four related treaties adopted and continuously expanded from 1864 to 1949 that represent a legal basis and framework for the conduct of war under international law. Every single member state of the United Nations has currently ratified the conventions, which are universally accepted as customary international law, applicable to every situation of armed conflict in the world. However, the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions adopted in 1977 containing the most pertinent, detailed and virulent protections of international humanitarian law for persons and objects in modern warfare are still not ratified by a number of States continuously engaged in armed conflicts, namely the United States, Israel, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, and others. Accordingly, states retain different codes and values with regard to wartime conduct. Some signatories have routinely violated the Geneva Conventions in a way which either uses the ambiguities of law´-or-political maneuvering to sidestep the laws formalities and principles.
Three conventions were revised and expanded with the fourth one added in 1949:
First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field was adopted in 1864, significantly revised and replaced by the 1906 version, the 1929 version, and later the First Geneva Convention of 1949).
Second Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea (Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea was adopted in 1906, significantly revised and replaced by the Second Geneva Convention of 1949).
Third Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was adopted in 1929, significantly revised and replaced by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949).
Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (first adopted in 1949, based on parts of the 1907 Hague Convention IV).
Two Additional Protocols were adopted in 1977 with the third one added in 2005, completing and updating the Geneva Conventions:
Protocol I (1977) relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts.
Protocol II (1977) relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts.
Protocol III (2005) relating to the Adoption of an Additional Distinctive Emblem.
At the beginning, we see that The trial of Peter von Hagenbach by an ad hoc tribunal of the Holy Roman Empire in 1474, was the first "international" war crimes trial, and also of command responsibility. He was convicted and beheaded for crimes that "he as a knight was deemed to have a duty to prevent", although he had argued that he was only "following orders".
Article 22 of The Hague IV ("Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV)-;- October 18, 1907") states that: "The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited." Over the last century, many other treaties have introduced positive laws that place constraints on belligerents. Some of the provisions, such as those in the The Hague and the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention, are considered to be part of customary international law, and are binding on all.Others are only binding on individuals if the belligerent power to which they belong is a party to the treaty which introduced the constraint.
In a series of tweets and shocking photos posted to their social-media sites, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is boasting to have slaughtered 1,700 Iraqi soldiers in the past week as the militant Islamist group continued its blitzkrieg toward Baghdad.
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The alleged massacre, as well as the body count, has not yet been verified, but if proved true it would be the single largest act of mass killing in a war that now spans Syria and Iraq. Even if exaggerated, the claims are potent propaganda designed to terrify their opponents and pre-empt resistance as the al-Qaeda-inspired group consolidates control in Iraq’s Sunni areas.
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It also may be designed to inflame sectarian tensions, all but demanding a response from the country’s Shiite militias in an effort to launch a sectarian war that could end up redrawing the map of the Middle East.
The photos, some 60 in all, start with rather benign images of loot — ammunition, Humvees, trucks and weapons — captured from Iraqi army bases that were abandoned by fleeing soldiers. It appears that they were taken over the past week in Salahuddin province. Tikrit, the principal city (and former President Saddam Hussein’s hometown) was captured by ISIS on June 12.
The photos go on to show a grim slide show of men described in taunting captions as soldiers caught “trying to flee the battles in civilian clothing.” Bloodied corpses stain the ground in at least five different locations, and several of the photos document firing squads garlanded with the black ISIS flag preparing to kill scores of handcuffed men packed in shallow graves.
“Liquidation of the herds of the Safavid arm,” states one caption, a reference to an Iranian dynasty and, by extension, Shi‘ites. “They are lions with the weak, but in wars they are ostriches,” says another caption laid over a group of terrified, handcuffed men forced to stand with their heads bent toward their knees. It is a message designed to capitalize on Sunni resentment over the hardhanded tactics of the Shi‘ite-dominated government in Baghdad. The carnage goes on for 25 frames-;- in some it looks as if the militants are killing their victims with brand new weapons, possibly the soldiers’ own guns — if they are indeed soldiers.
ISIS’s media wing has long used propaganda to intimidate its opponents and draw recruits, both in Syria and Iraq. The organization, which started as al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2003, expanded into Syria as the conflict took shape there, and eventually changed its name to better reflect its overarching goal: an Islamic caliphate spanning the region and ruled by a radical interpretation of Islamic law. Al-Qaeda has since repudiated the group for its extreme tactics.
Just a few weeks prior to ISIS’s march on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which fell on June 10, the group’s media wing released a similarly gruesome video. Titled The Sound of Swords Clashing, the hourlong video depicts a series of vicious executions of Iraqi soldiers and officers. It went viral in Iraq, according to a new report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and may have been designed to threaten members of the Iraqi armed forces before the militant advance into northern Iraq.
If 1,700 soldiers´-or-Iraqis were indeed killed, the released photos show only a fraction of the dead, raising some skepticism among human-rights investigators. “We’re trying to verify the pics, and I am not convinced they are authentic,” Erin Evers, the Human Rights Watch researcher in Iraq, told the New York Times. “As far as ISIS claiming it has killed 1,700 people and publishing horrific photos to support that claim, it is unfortunately in keeping with their pattern of commission of atrocities, and obviously intended to further fuel sectarian war.” Nor have Iraqi officials confirmed that a massacre took place.
A true documentation of a horrific war crime,´-or-a slickly produced piece of propaganda that amplified scores of dead into thousands, either way the photos will have their intended effect: terror and a call to arms. ISIS alone will never be able to capture all of Iraq, but if the country descends once again into sectarian war, its ultimate goal will be that much closer. “Sectarian civil war is the enabler,” says Jessica Lewis, an ISIS expert at the Institute for the Study of War. “They want to set conditions in Iraq that look like Syria so they can set up an Islamic state.”
On 12 June 2014, the Islamic State killed at least 1,566 Iraqi Air Force cadets in an attack on Camp Speicher in Tikrit. At the time of the attack there were between 4000 and 11000 unarmed cadets in the camp. The Iraqi government blamed the massacre on both ISIS and members from the Arab Socialist Ba ath Party – Iraq Region.
An Iraqi politician, stated "Some of the head officers of the camp ordered the cadets to have a rest for 15 days and to go to their families, with civil clothes. While they were walking in the high road looking for a bus to take them near Baghdad. Being drove by the son Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein s brother, two buses stopped near them with 10 armed men in it. They told them that they were from the tribes of Tikrit, and told them to follow them until they find buses to get them to Baghdad.Instead, several buses with ISIS members in it kidnapped them to Al-Qusour Al-Re asiya region (The Presidential Palaces), where they committed the massacre." Several survivors assured that their head officers in the camp forced them to leave it.
Peter Bouckaert, the Human Rights emergencies -dir-ector, stated "The photos and satellite images from Tikrit provide strong evidence of a horrible war crime that needs further investigation. They and other abusive forces should know that the eyes of Iraqis and the world are watching" The HRW also said that ISIS posted on their websites many videos and photographs showing how they beheaded, shot, choked the victims while they celebrated.
The photos show masked ISIS fighters tying up the cadets and loading them up on trucks, with other photos showing ISIS fighters executing dozens of the cadets, while they re laying down. Some cadets faked their death, covering themselves up with blood and laying down, to escape at night, just as survivor Ali Hussein Kadhim did who told his story to the New York Times
The Iraqi government revealed that 57 members of Arab Socialist Ba ath Party – Iraq Region were a part of the massacre. Although pictures showed that every armed man was from ISIS, The government stated "Without any doubts and suspicion, all of these criminals are from the banned Ba ath Party." The minister of defence, Sa dun al-Dulaimi, stated that the massacre wasn t a sectarian violence. although, The spokesman of the Iraqi Armed Forces, Qasim Atta, stated that there are almost 11,000 cadets and soldiers missing from Camp Speicher, he also stated that thousands were executed in near the Presidential Palaces, al-Bu Agail region and the Badoush prison by sectarian violence. 
On 2 September, more than 100 members of the families of the killed and missing cadets and soldiers broke into the Iraqi Parliament and hit three of the security guards.After a day, a session started in the parliament with the attendance of representatives of the families and Sa dun al-Dulaimi, along with other military officials to discuss the massacre. 
On 16 September, the Kurdish Asayish arrested 4 people suspected to be involved in the massacre in southern Kirkuk. An unnamed security source stated "The operation was executed by relying on intelligence information to arrest them." 
On 18 September, the Iraqi Human Rights ministry stated that as of 17 September, the total of the missing soldiers and cadets was 1095,[ denying the most popular number of 1700 soldiers having been killed. The ministry added "The ministry relied in its statistics on spreading forms on the families of the missing people in Baghdad and the otherProvinces within its quest to document the crimes and violations that the terrorist group of the Islamic State is committing towards our people."[ The Iraqi government ordered to specialize -$-8,600 (that is, 10,000,000 IQD) for the families of the missing cadets.crehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Speicher_massacre