Does John Demjanjuk ruling theoretically jeopardize members of the US armed forces residing on German soil as parts of a &quot;mass murder machine&quot;? Does this decision/ruling mean that an American soldier can not safely cross German soil due to universal jurisdiction? Practically speaking given the international political dynamics I don't suppose they will realistically ever be so prosecuted or otherwise made so unwelcome but is there anything legally preventing it from happening? How unfathomable would it be for a radical/renegade anti imperialist law student to rise through the ranks of the German prosecutorial or judiciary services and make a big wave by prosecuting American troops for their army's criminal adventures around the world along the lines of Baltasar Garzon in Spain? Reference: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386260/John-Demjanjuk-convicted-Nazi-death-camp-crimes.html Update - This was the answer by user PMF that inspired my question: &quot;The court however ruled that being part of a &quot;mass murder machine&quot; is enough to be held responsible.&quot; https://law.stackexchange.com/a/82676/32669
US troops deployed to Germany would be covered by the Status of Forces Agreement, which governs jurisdiction. Your question also ignores the nature of the prosecution services in Germany, which do not allow a rogue junior official to file charges at a whim. You would have to assume that at least a state government, if not the federal government, actively pushes the case. (And the federal government could probably take the case away from any state which had such ideas.) If you look for precedents of legal jeopardy, look at the case of Anwar Raslan, a Syrian official convicted of torture in Germany. It is also a closer parallel to the Pinochet case. Finally, the principles underlying such prosecutions were established in Germany but not by Germany. I'm talking of the Nuremberg trials. If German courts were to find the US Army to be a criminal organization, then individual members would be at risk. But as a political scenario, that is absurd.
No. Assuming both the Fire Nation and Water Tribes are signatories to the Geneva conventions, the rules only apply to uniformed members of the signatory member nations. Such as the water tribes have uniformed members, Sokka is not (at least not at this time, as its shown that Southern Water Tribe warriors use black and white face paint when in battle and Sokka does don this paint prior to going into key battles. Additionally, the Mechanist is more likely the &quot;pilot&quot; of the balloon and has no uniform that ties him to any Nation's military. Additionally, neither is acting under apparent orders from a higher ranking member of a foreign military. All involved look to be refugees and travelers trying to keep away from the military and would be subject to the Fire Nation Criminal Justice System (In the Fire Nation Criminal Justice System, the people are represented by two separate but equal entities: The military, who capture enemies of the Fire Lord, and the Crematorium who prosecutes them. These are their stories DOING DOING).
Maybe, but we'll probably never know for sure. Officially, of course, he was not punished for his speech. He was punished for selling explosives without a license, which he admitted to. (He was also charged with illegally storing explosives and illegally mailing 'injurious material," but those charges were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea on the first count.) Whether those charges were a pretext to retaliate is probably unknowable. While it's a well-known fact that law enforcement frequently retaliates against people for exercising their right to free speech, this guy's story doesn't sound very credible. There is precedent for a prosecution for distributing Pest Control Report 2000, including the prosecution of white supremacist Leo Felton, a sad-sack loser who used the same material to build a bomb around to incite a "racial holy war" the same time. And just about a month after Ver's conviction, the man who owned the company that manufactured the product was convicted of violating federal explosives and transportation laws. Several months after that, he and his company entered into a consent decree with the Consumer Product Safety Commission ordering them to stop manufacturing Pest Control Report 2000.
There are a number of complexities that come together that make the claim that President Trump violated obligations under the Geneva Convention difficult to justify. By definition, the Blackwater employees were not mercenaries according to the Geneva Convention (United Nations Mercenary Convention). Among other things, the Geneva Convention requires that a mercenary is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict The Blackwater employees would have been considered civilians according to the Geneva Convention. Although civilians can be considered combatants according to the Geneva Convention in International Armed Conflict, by the time of this incident in 2007 the situation in Iraq was no longer considered International Armed Conflict and it's questionable if the Geneva Convention applied. (The status of the conflict changed with the handover of sovereignty on June 28, 2004.) The incident that occurred, often called the Nisour Square massacre, was related to Blackwater employees who were guarding a convoy of U.S. State Department employees. In essence, the Blackwater employees were acting as private security guards, not as active participants in armed conflict. As civilians, the employees could have been charged under Iraqi law or U.S. law for the actions they took that day. However, under the Coalition Provisional Authority, U.S. contractors were not subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction without the permission of the U.S. From a CRS Report for Congress titled Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues: Under CPA Order Number 17, as revised June 27, 2004, contractors shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts... This left U.S. law, specifically the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 (MEJA), as a means to prosecute the Blackwater employees for any potential criminal acts and it is under this law the Blackwater employees were ultimately charged and convicted. MEJA allowed persons who are &quot;employed by or accompanying the armed forces&quot; overseas may be prosecuted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 for any offense that would be punishable by imprisonment for more than one year if committed within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. The Blackwater employees were not charged for &quot;war crimes&quot; under the Geneva Convention but for manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and a weapons violation. Now to the question of President Trump's pardon legally violating the obligations of the Geneva Convention. Assuming that the Geneva Convention applied to the Blackwater employees and their actions at Nisour Square, from a U.S. perspective a treaty cannot alter the President's constitutional powers. The second article of the Constitution of the United States, in Section 2, states: ...he shall have the Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. The law upon which the Blackwater employees were convicted was U.S. law; an offense against the United States and, therefore, a pardon for a conviction under this law is within the President's constitutionally granted powers. In Reid v. Covert, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that treaties cannot alter constitutional powers: It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights -- let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition -- to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government, and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined. There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. The pardon issued by President Trump was legal from a U.S. law perspective. As such, it represents an official action of the United States. This would leave it to the United Nations to determine if the U.S. was in violation of any treaty. Given the difficulty in establishing that the Geneva Convention even applied to the actions of the Blackwater employees it seems a stretch to think that the U.S. would be found in violation.
It’s legal under Ukrainian law for foreign nationals to join their defense forces Indeed, this is so common it may be considered the default position internationally: the US, UK, France, and Australia just to name a few all allow this. Generally, it’s usually legal for a citizen to join the army of a foreign state. It is usually not legal to fight for a non-state actor this is where fighters for ISIS are in trouble. Where issues arise is if they take up arms against the country of their citizenship. That’s called treason and it usually attracts the most severe punishment available: death or life imprisonment typically. So, as long as you aren’t Russian and are not from one of the few countries that prohibits foreign military service, there are no legal issues.
Reading some background on Stefan Molyneux (Wikipedia) would indicate that he is a (Canadian) right-wing provocateur (Merriam-Webster) and there is no legal logic to his claim that anyone involved with the migrant caravan - either as a refugee or a person giving aid - is committing an act of treason. Provocateurs - on the political left or right - seek to incite arguments and/or movements on social or political issues with emotion and not on legal frameworks or logical discussion. Provocateurs use words and phrases that can be identified as Dog-whistles (Wikipedia). Calling out "treason" and accusing one of being a traitor are examples of dog whistles. The legal reasoning against leveling calls of treason against anyone helping the caravan members are many; the migrants are not (from the U.S. Constitution:) levying war against them (the US), or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.... because: • None of the countries of origin of the migrants are currently in armed conflict with the U.S. • None of the migrants - alone or as a whole - are armed to engage the U.S. or are a threat to the U.S. • The refugees are easily identified as economic migrants, political refugees or those fleeing violence (domestic, communal, sectarian). • According to Refugee law (Wikipedia) and US Federal law, migrants have a right to due process at the border. • There is no clear proof of an ulterior motive or funding for the migrants in the the caravans. There could be - now or in the future - Americans or American-based aid groups helping individuals or the group as a whole with necessities with food and safety while they travel or after they arrive at the border. But the fact remains that each migrant - when and if they reach the US border - will be legally assessed individually as a migrant or refugee. The aid they may have received is really no different than what many NGOs provide who help arrange a refugees' processing through legal immigration channels, in some instances in conjunction with a US Government agency or with an arm of the United Nations. Such aid by an American is not treasonous for the legal reasoning above.
There is no systemic process by which convictions of crime in Germany (at all, let alone for misdemeanors) are reported to authorities in Canada. This said, a Canadian charged with a crime in Germany has a right to consular assistance (i.e. to call upon the Canadian embassy for help). And, if the Canadian actually does obtain assistance from the Canadian government in defense of criminal charges and is convicted anyway, obviously, a Canadian government official will know about it. I don't know if Canadian diplomats who provide consular assistance who learn of criminal convictions of Canadians abroad report those convictions to criminal record database record keepers in Canada, although I suspect that they do not.
Any country is free to decide what actions are considered to be crimes, and what crimes are prosecuted depending on whether you perform the action in the country, outside the country, and depending on whether you are a citizen, a resident, both, or neither. They can also decide what are accepted defences in court and which are not. Any other country is free to decide under which circumstances they will ever extradite someone to that first country. Now you have to check the laws of the individual countries.