Since Exposure to Mental Trauma, Especially War Trauma, Causes Personality Changes, Should Deliberate Exposure to Mental Health Trauma of Civilians Be in Itself a War Crime?

Mental trauma is a consequence of war. Here we consider whether the inflicting of such trauma, which could cause personality changes, should be considered a war crime in its own right, especially when it is civilians who are exposed to mental trauma. We make the argument based on a review of the development of personality disorders in persons exposed to mental trauma caused by war, and we make the argument that it is possible to demonstrate both physiological and anatomical changes in the brain of such persons, which could account for the observed behavioural and personality changes. Therefore we argue that deliberate exposure to Mental Health Trauma, for example by deliberate targeting of civilian areas with artillery, should be considered a war crime in its own right irrespective of whether the civilians receive physical trauma or not.

Role of forensic medicine in addressing the war crimes: Perspective from Russia-Ukraine conflict during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The International Criminal Court has recently opened an investigation into the international crimes committed on Ukrainian territory. The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war is a tragic opportunity for a necessary critical and scientific reading of the Rome Statute. In our work, we aim to critically analyse the contents of the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute, with particular attention to the definition and listing of war crimes. Our objective is to assess whether the content of the Rome Statute and the Geneva Convention is useful to provide a correct and complete orientation of the medico-legal work in the context of war. We believe, in fact, that the forensic pathologists, and forensic experts in general, are the only professional figures specialised in providing scientific evidence of crimes compatible with war crimes. Their timely intervention and the standardisation of their work - in association with a review of the deficient content found in the Rome Statute - is essential in order to allow the prosecution of international crimes, already potentially undermined by the slowdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic that is the backdrop to the current conflict.

MEDICAL AND FORENSIC IDENTIFICATION OF PERSONS WHO HAVE BECOME VICTIMS OF WAR CRIMES OF THE RUSSIAN WAR AGAINST UKRAINE.

The relevance of the study is determined by necessity of accurate forensic studies to identify victims of war crimes in Ukraine for the practical use of the most effective measures by law enforcement agencies to establish such persons. The aim of the research is to reveal procedure and opportunities of identification of victims of war crimes, who may be combatants and civilians are according to the results of the analysis of regulations, practices of forensic identification of corpses of unidentified persons. Methodological framework of research are scientific and theoretical methods, which are analysis, synthesis, concretization, generalization, analogy, as well as the empirical method of studying normative sources and special literature, the method of systematic approach in order to form conclusions to reveal ways to solve the problem. Result of the research is conclusion that the standards that are used today in Ukraine and the opportunity of conducting medical and forensic examination to identify unidentified persons who have become victims of war crimes, corresponding to modern European approaches. It is noted that it is impossible to solve the problem of identification only with the help of traditional methods of medical and forensic identification of a person. It is substantiated that the use of modern methods of deoxyribonucleic acid identification by forensic doctors can be promising for ensuring of tasks of the identification of unidentified corpses and fragments of human bodies. It was emphasized that the disadvantage is that today in Ukraine there is no database of deoxyribonucleic acid identification of all or some categories of citizens of Ukraine. It was concluded that it would be effective to approve the concept of the State Target Program to expand the network of deoxyribonucleic acid laboratories and create a National Database of Human Genetic Traits, to do this. The practical value of the work consists in ensuring that forensic doctors perform the tasks of identifying persons of unrecognizable corpses and fragments of human bodies using the modern method of deoxyribonucleic acid identification.

A Scientific Method to the Madness of Unit 731's Human Experimentation and Biological Warfare Program.

The Japanese Imperial Army Unit 731's Biological Warfare (BW) research program committed atrocious crimes against humanity in their pursuit of biological weapons development during the Second World War. Due to an American cover-up, the details behind Unit 731's human experimentation were slow to be revealed. The recent literature discloses the gruesome details of the experiments but characterizes the human trials as crude in nature. Further, there is a lack of clarity as to how human trial results were extrapolated for use in real world missions. Through an examination of testimony from the Soviet Union's Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, this paper argues that Unit 731's inoculation and airborne warfare experiments on prisoners of war were scientifically rigorous. The scientific method is used as the basis against which the scientific rigor of the experiments is tested. The paper reveals that the successes and failures of the human trials were extrapolated to BW missions during the Sino-Japanese war. American researchers' expectations of BW data were fulfilled, thus paving the way for an immunity deal. Ethical standards in medicine before WWII were not well established, but wartime medical practices and experimentation reveal the context in which the pursuit of scientific knowledge has no boundaries.

Characteristics Associated with High Resilience among Aged People Exposed to the Jeju 4·3 Incident.

The purpose of this study was to identify characteristics related to high resilience among older people exposed to the Jeju 4·3 incident. A total of 1,121 aged adults were assigned to low, medium, and high resilience groups, and factors associated with low and high resilience were investigated. High resilience was significantly associated with a low prevalence of depression and high levels of life satisfaction and psychosocial support, as well as with younger age, being a man, higher education level, and current employment. The results deepen our understanding of resilience in the aged people who experienced the early life trauma.

Distinguishing the Effects of Life Threat, Killing Enemy Combatants, and Unjust War Events in U.S. Service Members.

Although previous studies have identified behavioral health risks associated with combat exposure, it is unclear which types of combat events are associated with these risks, particularly regarding contrasts among the risks associated with life-threatening experiences, killing combatants, and exposure to unjust war events, such as killing a noncombatant or being unable to help civilian women and children. In the present study, we examined surveys from 402 soldiers following deployment (i.e., baseline) and again 13 months later (i.e., Year 1). Regression analyses were conducted across a range of behavioral health (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, suicide ideation, anxiety, somatic, insomnia, aggression) and benefit-finding measures, each controlling for two combat event categories while assessing the predictive utility of a third. The results suggested that life-threatening events were associated with poor behavioral health at baseline, relative risk (RR) = 10.00, but not at Year 1, RR = 2.67. At both baseline and Year 1, killing enemy combatants was not associated with behavioral health, RRs = 1.67-3.33, but was positively associated with benefit-finding, RRs = 26.67-40.00. Exposure to unjust war events was associated with a transdiagnostic pattern of behavioral health symptoms at baseline, RR = 40.00, and Year 1, RR = 23.33. Overall, the results suggest unjust war event exposure is particularly injurious, above and beyond exposure to other combat-related events. Future research can build on these findings to develop clearer descriptions of the combat events that might place service members at risk for moral injury and inform the development of assessment and treatment options.

Antígona en Katyn / Antigone in Katyn

Andrzej Wajda recrea los sucesos de la masacre de Katyn, al inicio de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en la que 22 mil polacos fueron masacrados por los soviéticos y luego atribuyeron el crimen a los nazis. El director polaco se vale de la Antígona de Sófocles para adaptarla al escenario de postguerra de la República Popular Polaca bajo el régimen comunista, para relatar la lucha de Agnieszka por poner en la lápida de su hermano asesinado en Katyn la verdadera fecha en que murió, desbaratando el relato falso de los comunistas sobre la responsabilidad por su muerte. Katyn, de Wajda, es el modo cinematográfico de dar palabras e imágenes a ese real decretado como no acontecido.

Andrzej Wajda recreates the events of the Katyn´s massacre at the beginning of the Second World War, in whith 22 thousand polish were killed by the soviets, and then they accused the nazis for the crime.The polish director adapt Sofocles´s Antigona to the postwar scenario, to report Agnieszka´s struggle to sign on the tombstone of her brother killed in Katyn, the real date when he died, disrupting the false tale of the communists about the responsability for his death. Wajda´s Katyn is the cinematographic way of giving words and images to a real that was decreed as not having happen.

Nazi Dentists on Trial: On the Political Complicity of a Long-Neglected Professional Community.

Studies on the complicity of the medical profession in the crimes of the Third Reich are on the rise. This also applies to the question of the extent to which doctors were brought to justice in international trials after World War II. This topic, however, has hardly been considered-let alone systematically investigated-with respect to German dentists. It is precisely this gap that this article will address. First, we quantitatively identify all dentists who were brought to justice in the post-war period. Second, we give a profile of this group. We focus on the following questions: Who among the group was brought to trial, and when? What crimes were they accused of, which sentences were handed down, and how did these sentences affect their future lives? Our study is based primarily on archival sources, which we analyzed with respect to the relevant secondary literature. Contrary to the widely-held assumption that dentists had almost never had been made to stand trial after the end of the war, we identified 48 dentists who were accused in court. The prototypical accused dentist was male, lived in a traditional family model, belonged to the National Socialist Workers' Party (NSDAP) and the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel), and was part of the so-called Kriegsjugendgeneration. The most frequent allegations made against these men were the theft of dental gold of murdered Nazi victims, an accusation unique to dentists; (accessory to) murder or manslaughter; and involvement in the deadly selections made in the concentration camps. In total, eight dentists were executed. Generally speaking, the earlier these proceedings and the sentencing took place, the harsher the sentence was. Many of those who received prison sentences subsequently found their way back into the dental profession.

Navegación e historia de la ciencia: el hundimiento del Gustloff (Derecho de la Guerra) / Navigation and history of science: the sinking of the Gustloff (The Laws of War)

Al inicio de 1945 el terror se apoderó del Tercer Reich cuando el Ejército Rojo comenzó a invadir los territorios orientales de Prusia, Polonia, Curlandia y Memel. Los mandos de la Marina de Guerra alemana (Kriegsmarine) eran conscientes de que la guerra estaba perdida y de que los civiles serían masacrados por las tropas soviéticas y los nativos eslavos en búsqueda de venganza. De ese modo, decidieron destinar todos sus buques disponibles al Mar Báltico para evacuar a más de 2 millones de soldados, heridos, mujeres, niños, ancianos, colaboracionistas y prisioneros en un heroico episodio que sería conocido con el nombre de Operación Hannibal. El buque KdF Wilhelm Gustloff fue trágico testigo de lo que allí sucedía

At the beginning of 1945, terror invaded the Third Reich when the Red Army began to invade the eastern territories of Prussia, Poland, Courland and Memel. The high command of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) were aware that the war was lost and that civilians would be slaughtered by Soviet troops and Slavic natives in search of revenge. Thus, they decided to allocate all their available ships to the Baltic Sea to evacuate more than 2 million soldiers, wounded, women, children, elderly, collaborators and prisoners in a heroic episode that would be known as "Operation Hannibal." The ship KdF Wilhelm Gustloff was a tragic witness to what was happening there

The banality of evil in the occupation of Star Trek's Bajor.

Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele were high-ranking Nazis, two among many who were tasked with implementing the Final Solution. Eichmann's eventual trial evidenced a dull ordinariness that was famously defined as the banality of evil by the political theorist Hannah Arendt who covered the proceedings. Star Trek's Deep Space 9 commences with the Cardassian relinquishment of Bajor. One particular episode ("Duet") focuses on a presumed high-ranking Cardassian labour camp commander who turns out to have been a filing clerk seeking atonement and closure for the deeds he witnessed, on behalf of his race. Yet another episode ("Nothing Human") in Star Trek Voyager highlights the ethical dilemmas that arise when accessing trials and treatments that were obtained immorally by unethical medical experimentation, and this is reminiscent of callous experimentation by Josef Mengele in the Auschwitz death camp. This paper will explore these subjects and will compare the fictional concentration camp commander and the fictional doctor with Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele respectively. Both episodes serve as reminders, cautionary tales lest we allow history to repeat itself and such atrocities to be relived.

Navegación e historia de la ciencia: el incidente Laconia y la guerra total en la mar (Derecho de la Guerra) / Navigation and history of science: the Laconia incident and the total war at sea (The Laws of War)

El 12 de septiembre de 1942 el barco británico Laconia fue hundido en la costa de África occidental por el submarino U Boat 156 al mando del Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein. El Laconia transportaba 1.800 prisioneros de guerra italianos, 80 civiles y 428 soldados británicos y polacos. Tras el desastre, viendo la situación, Hartenstein inició su trabajo cumpliendo con el deber de socorro y desplegando una bandera de la Cruz Roja. A pesar de ello, un bombardero americano B-24 atacó ampliando el desastre. La propaganda británica desplegó la idea de que los submarinos alemanes atacaban sin contemplaciones. La "Orden Laconia" tampoco se cumplió del todo pues los alemanes siguieron socorriendo a pesar de la "letra" de dicha orden. El Jefe de Submarinos, Karl Dönitz, fue procesado en Nüremberg, el testimonio del Almirante Nimitz aclaró muchas cosas. Los muertos quedaron en el Atlántico. Descansen en paz

On September 12, 1942, the British ship Laconia was sunk off the coast of West Africa by the submarine U Boat 156 commanded by Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartenstein. The Laconia carried 1,800 Italian war prisoners, 80 civilians and 428 British and Polish soldiers. After the disaster, seeing the situation, Hartenstein began his work fulfilling the duty of relief and displaying a Red Cross flag. Despite this, an American B-24 bomber attacked thus expanding the disaster. British propaganda displayed the idea that German submarines mercilessly attacked convoys. The "Laconia Order" was not completely fulfilled because the Germans continued their help despite the "letter" of that order. The U-Boat Commander, Karl Dönitz, was prosecuted in Nuremberg, and the testimony of Admiral Nimitz clarified many things. Those who died remain in the Atlantic Ocean. Rest in peace

Pandora's box closed: The Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine and Nazi medical experiments on human beings during World War II.

In the months before and after the final surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945, British aviation medicine specialists were sent to the European continent to learn the progress that German aviation medicine had made since September 1939. For the medical officers at the Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine at Farnborough in Hampshire, the dilemma over whether the medical data from the Nazi aviation medicine experiments at Dachau concentration camp should be exploited presented profound moral and ethical problems. Their deliberations paralleled those of the 1945-46 Nuremberg Trial, which revealed the crimes that were committed under the Nazi regime. At the same time, the British medical establishment debated the morality of publishing the Nazi medical research to serve humanity. This article shows that on the basis of British wartime and post-war research, and determinations that were made by the British Advisory Committee for the Investigation of German Medical War Crimes, by 1948 the RAF IAM had essentially rejected the results of the Nazi aviation medicine experiments on scientific and ethical grounds.

Forensic evidence in atrocity trials: A risky sampling strategy?

In the light of the recent judgments issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), including two acquittals and one very recent condemnation of the accused on all charges, analysing and assessing evidentiary practice before the Court is all the more pressing. This article focuses on one particular type of evidence used by the Prosecution, namely, forensic evidence, to critically review how it has been used so far at the ICC and consider whether the prosecutorial strategy of focusing on a certain sample of crimes is finally paying off.

Violence without a Face: the Analysis of Testimonies of Women Who Were Sexually Assaulted During the War in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

BACKGROUND: This study examined testimonies of women who were sexually assaulted multiple times by multiple unknown offenders. In these testimonial narratives, it is possible to detect specific modalities of traumatic event expression. This expression lacks any spatial, temporal, auditory or emotional determinants of the event. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: These fourteen women (out of 17) were imprisoned and forcefully isolated in detention camps or private houses in the occupied territories of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the war. At the same time, some of these women were raped by the offenders that were previously known to them. The average length of detention was 141 days among the seventeen victims (range of 7 to 395 days), while the average time from the first day of imprisonment to the first day of testimony was 311 days (range of 30 to 889 days). RESULTS: Based on the narrative descriptions of the events acquired from these testimonies, our analysis showed that these expressions differed when the offender was known to the victim, contrasted to the situation when the offender was completely unknown. This finding has a significant implication in victim's testimony at judicial hearings. Specifically, women that were raped by unknown perpetrator(s) were often unable to provide persuasive testimony and their recollection of the events was deemed insufficient for the further prosecution. Testimonies in these cases substantially lacked in vividness and were devoid of visuospatial determinants of the rape event. Consequently, this often resulted in the case's dismissal. CONCLUSION: The unusual and problematic expression of these traumatic memories might indicate that these events were not properly stored in the conceptual form of memory. Ultimately, victims could not make any coherent recollection or reconstruct the cascade of events by using perceptual information. We argue that this could be due to an aberrant mechanism of memory storage and difficulties that emerge on the level of sensory input. This problem needs to be further examined and correspondingly accounted for since it can exert significant influence on judicial outcomes in the domain of sexual assault cases worldwide.