(How) Can a state be accountable for murder? Premise: The fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi has said the world has failed to hold Saudi Arabia to account There are quite a lot of cases when agents of a state can kill (with or without sanction) an individual: a spy, an "undesirable" person, a terrorist in a third country. Using this case as an example, can SA be held accountable for killing the journalist (in 'having a tribunal' sense)? Can a state be prosecuted for killing a foreign spy? What if a country sends a task force to eliminate a terrorist in a 3rd country?
There is no possibility of legally holding a country &quot;to account&quot; for an action. An individual could be legally tried for a crime (murder), and a country could via a political process be made to suffer the consequences if a leader performs some act (it need not be illegal). Germany, Iran and Russia have historically suffered certain consequences of actions held to be &quot;officially sanctioned&quot;, and individuals such as Adolf Eichmann have been specifically punished; Fahad Shabib Albalawi and 4 others were sentanced to death for involvement in Khashoggi's murder. Punitive recourse against a country is always via political / military action. Khashoggi, specifically, was apparently a lawful permanent resident of the US, which is probably sufficient connection to the US for a suit based in the Alien Tort Statute. There have been various suits filed against individuals under this act, some of which succeeded, for example Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876. An individual could be sued under the Alien Tort Statute, but a foreign government enjoys sovereign immunity (the US government has limited its liability on that grounds, but Saudi Arabia has not). His fiance might then sue some individual, but Saudi Arabia itself could not be &quot;held to account&quot;.
There's not any well-defined notion of what a person with a Red Notice is "allowed" to do. The notice doesn't have any legal force of its own. You can read more about Red Notices on Interpol's web site: INTERPOL cannot compel any member country to arrest an individual who is the subject of a Red Notice. Each member country decides for itself what legal value to give a Red Notice within their borders. So it would be up to the US authorities to decide what, if anything, to do about the Red Notice, in compliance with US law. We can only speculate as to why they declined to flag his passport and/or detain him. Without knowing anything about the specific case in question, here are some possibilities: They may have felt there wasn't sufficient evidence against him to justify detaining him. The conduct of which he was accused may not have been a crime under US law. They may have believed the Brazilian arrest warrant was primarily politically motivated. They may have wanted to annoy the Brazilian government, or make a political statement against its actions, by failing to cooperate. They may have decided that it simply wasn't a good use of their funds to pursue the case. They may have been lazy or incompetent or oblivious and simply not known where he was or what he was planning to do. The fact that he was intending to travel to Brazil voluntarily may or may not have been a factor in their inaction.
Like many US legal questions, there is a Congressional Research Service report about this. It is not generally a violation of US law to do things in another country where the only connection with the US is that the offender is a US citizen. However, there are a number of general situations where the US has jurisdiction over federal crimes if either the victim or offender is a US citizen: if a place isn't within the jurisdiction of any country (e.g. Antarctica); a place used by a US government entity (like an embassy or airbase); crimes by American soldiers and those employed by or accompanying the military; etc. These are considered to be within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the US. Other laws apply if they say so. For instance, any US national committing war crimes inside or outside the US can be punished under US law; ditto for treason. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal for a US national to bribe a foreign official anywhere outside the US for business reasons (if it's inside the US, there are more requirements). For instance, you aren't allowed to pay kickbacks to a foreign government's acquisition officer to buy your product. The CRS report has more (it doesn't include the FCPA, but that appears to be an oversight). Note that extraterritorial jurisdiction doesn't just apply if the person is a US national. US laws can also confer it if the victim is a US national, if the offense has a significant US component, if it's directed towards the US, if it's in violation of international law and the offender later turns up in the US, etc. For your scenarios: Dual citizenship doesn't matter. A US citizen is a US citizen, and is required to obey all laws that apply to US citizens, unless those laws explicitly exempt dual citizens. A dual citizen isn't treated differently by the government; as far as the US government is concerned, their US citizenship is all that matters (except for certain specific purposes like security clearances). In Kawakita v. United States, a US-Japanese dual citizen was convicted of treason against the US for aiding Japan in WWII. Depends. Plenty of these laws have no requirement that anything related to the crime actually happen in the US; for sex tourism, the subsection about traveling in foreign commerce for the purposes of engaging in illicit sexual conduct is followed by a subsection about engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. "Travel with the purposes of X" or "with intent to X" means you must have intended to do X at the time you traveled, but most extraterritorial laws don't control travel with intent to X (they cover X directly). Depends on the law. Some laws (like child sex tourism) apply to any permanent resident of the US as well as any citizen. Some apply to anyone, because they're based on a conspiracy started in the US. Others apply just to US nationals; a noncitizen isn't bound by them (for instance, no one but a US national can be charged with treason against the US, for obvious reasons). Still others apply to anyone who later turns up in the US, even if that is literally the only connection between the US and the offense (this is basically reserved for crimes against international law, like genocide).
What factors go into determining whether or not killing targeted non-combatants is considered a war crime? The cynical answer is &quot;it depends on who wins and who judges&quot;. There are various definitions of what constitutes a civilian, all of which are &quot;negative definitions&quot; (i.e. Not a member of an armed force(e.g. an army, navy, etc; actually wielding arms is not required) or &quot;involved in hostilities&quot;, meaning not a partisan, insurgent, or other form of &quot;belligerent&quot;). Civilians should not be targeted by military actions under international law. On the other hand, spies, especially those who's activities cause death, are explicitly not soldiers entitled to Prisoner-of-War status, and can be executed. There are some protections provided for spies, but those generally seem to be geared towards soldiers captured during &quot;non spy&quot; activities with regards to past actions as spies, as opposed to &quot;in the field&quot; spies...and it is unclear to me what that means for an &quot;informant&quot; who presumably gathers intelligence in their day-to-day activities. To what extent an informant is a &quot;spy&quot; is unclear. Espionage consists of the access, generally on behalf of a state (or belligerent party), to information that is held by another and considered as confidential or strategic, in the military, security, or economic field. Identities of personnel is very much confidential and strategic information, so passing that information to the government seems to qualify as espionage. Whether or not this equates to being &quot;involved in hostilities&quot; is unclear. The case could certainly be made that an informant, especially one who does not go out of their way to gather intelligence or receive compensation is a civilian. Likewise, the case could certainly be made that they are a de facto belligerent, being no different in their effective activities than a formal intelligence operative or artillery coordinates finder. Wars are messy; civil wars especially so.
The DA decides The decision to prosecute a crime is vested in the district attorney (a.k.a. the prosecuting attorney, a public official in charge with bringing criminal cases in court). The DA can prosecute someone even if the victim doesn't press charges. It isn't the victim's call. It isn't law enforcement's call (although the DA will never get to make that decision if neither the victim nor law enforcement tell the DA about it). Critically, in U.S. law, unlike most countries with &quot;civil law&quot; legal system in Continental Europe and Latin America and much of Asia and Africa, prosecutors don't have a legal duty to prosecute all crimes of which they are aware. Civil law systems sometimes give vetoes over prosecutions of particular kinds of crimes to victims, but the general rule is that a prosecutor must press all charges that can be proved and that the prosecutor has resources sufficient to prosecute. In the U.S., the decision to bring charges or not is in the absolute discretion of the prosecutor. Also, unless the suspect and the DA reach an express agreement to permanently drop the charges, the DA or a successor to the DA can change their mind at any time until the statute of limitations on the crime expires. In the example in the question, a DA might initially decide not to bring charges, but then change her mind and bring the charge from this incident and a lot of other ones, when the DA learns that the suspect is operating a full fledged criminal enterprise and not just exercising bad judgment on an isolated basis. The DA usually honors a victim's wishes Usually, a DA and law enforcement will honor a victim's wishes, both because it is the harm to the victim that the DA is primarily vindicating, and because a case can be hard to prosecute without the victim's cooperation. Lots of people are pressing to have scarce law enforcement and DA resources applied to their problems. When someone voluntarily withdraws their request to have the DA and law enforcement use those resources, and no one personally involved is unhappy about that, this is normally seen as a win for everyone, and as a way of empowering victims. DAs and victims alike are also well aware that a criminal case can have very severe impacts on the life of the criminal defendant and the criminal defendant's family. Sometimes it can literally ruin a person's life. Other times it presents a major bump in the road to someone who was overall getting on the right track but had a lapse of judgment. When deciding whether to bring charges, DAs routinely weigh whether the harm done by breaking the law justifies the consequences of bringing a criminal case against someone from the point of view of society as a whole in the long run. In this example, the victim got moral vindication, an apology and admission, and presumably, his stuff back. The victim and law enforcement clearly saw this as justice enough if this is really just an isolated incident in a case involving a fairly minor misdemeanor offense. Exceptions to the general rule In the unusual case where a DA brings a criminal case notwithstanding the victim wanting to drop the charges a variety of things can motivate that. Sometimes, for example, in an intrafamily domestic violence or child abuse or elder abuse scenario, the DA may conclude that the victim is asking to drop charges under duress, or figurative &quot;temporary insanity&quot; due to being blinded by love in a way that the victim will later regret. In a variation on this fact pattern, fraud victims often have lawsuits for compensatory damages against fraudsters that will be harder to collect if the fraudster is in prison and may ask to drop charges for that reason. But the DA may want to bring the criminal fraud case anyway, because it is likely that the future income that will used to pay the current victims from their lawsuit will just come from some new fraud perpetrated against someone else. Sometimes, a DA presses charges because even though the victim doesn't care, the DA or law enforcement believes that the criminal is a high risk for being a repeat offender. This is especially true in cases where the collateral consequences of a conviction (e.g. disqualification from possessing a firearm) may help to prevent a future crime. Also, keep in mind that the DA is either an elected official, or a political appointee, or reports to someone who is. Usually, victims who get what they ask for from the DA build up political support. But, sometimes, a criminal case will be popular with the general public to prosecute even if the victim doesn't want that to happen. So, that is another reason that a DA might prosecute a case over the victim's objections. Conclusion Still, the basic thing to keep in mind is that prosecutors bringing charges over the objections of the victims are the rare exception, because prosecutors do care about what victims want, and to some extent see victims as proxies for being their clients, even though their true client is the government or the abstract concept of &quot;the People.&quot; Also, victims who don't want to press charges are themselves pretty rare.
It is not as simple as the witness just making the assertion that they are the killer. They will be subject to grueling cross examination to break their story. If the victim was killed at a specific time, perhaps the prosecution can prove the witness was somewhere else at that time, and therefore lying. (No Opportunity) If the victim was killed with a specific weapon, perhaps the prosecution can prove that only the accused had the weapon, and the witness had no access to it, and therefore lying. (No Means) If the victim was killed in a specific way, perhaps the witness doesn't know any of the details of how the crime happened, and therefore is not credible. (No Knowledge) If the accused's DNA is found at the scene, and their shirt is covered in blood, and the witness has no corroborating evidence against them, then the witness is likely lying. (No Evidence) If the witness claims he is the murderer, the prosecution can inquire as to why he killed the victim. The real murderer had a reason: Perhaps money, power, hatred, passion, etc, that the witness may not be able to provide. (No Motive) Planting doubt in the mind of a jury is an effective defense. But lying about who did what, when, how, and why it is not as easy as you suggest.
This is known as a retroactive or ex post facto law. Such laws are explicitly forbidden by the US Constitution (Wikipedia reference), and are generally frowned on in jurisdictions where the rule of law applies, partly because it is difficult to prove criminal intent when your action was not at the time criminal.
Sure, but Qatar is not in the jurisdiction of the ECHR! For the ECHR to apply in a jurisdiction, Qatar would need to have signed it or be in the EU or at least have been in it. It never has been. In fact, not even Den Haque would have power over Qatar unless they allowed it to - and that court rules on matters of war crimes... Qatar does not guarantee the same rights you might be familiar with from most western countries. In fact, not even all western countries are the same. In America, you can use the Sieg Heil gesture, in Germany, you can end in jail for it.. Same for Propaganda materials.