In the context of war, perfidy is a form of deception in which one side promises to act in good faith with the intention of breaking that promise once the unsuspecting enemy is exposed.
Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death is a 2002 documentary by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran and Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi. It documents alleged war crimes committed by National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, a faction of the Northern Alliance under the command of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, against captured Taliban fighters. The Taliban fighters, who had surrendered to Dostum's troops after the November 2001 siege of Kunduz, were transported to Sheberghan prison in sealed containers. Human rights groups estimate that several hundred of them died during and after this transit. The documentary presents testimony from interviewees stating that American military personnel were present at and complicit in some of the alleged war crimes, which became known as the Dasht-i-Leili massacre.
Human rights violations were committed by the warring sides during the second war in Chechnya. Both Russian officials and Chechen rebels have been regularly and repeatedly accused of committing war crimes including kidnapping, torture, murder, hostage taking, looting, rape, decapitation, and assorted other breaches of the law of war. International and humanitarian organizations, including the Council of Europe and Amnesty International, have criticized both sides of the conflict for blatant and sustained violations of international humanitarian law.
War crimes in the Syrian civil war have been numerous and serious. A United Nations report published in August 2014 stated that "the conduct of the warring parties in the Syrian Arab Republic has caused civilians immeasurable suffering". Another UN report released in 2015 stated that the war has been "characterized by a complete lack of adherence to the norms of international law" and that "civilians have borne the brunt of the suffering inflicted by the warring parties". Various countries have prosecuted several war criminals for a limited number of atrocities committed during the Syrian civil war.
Russian war crimes are violations of international criminal law including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide which the official armed and paramilitary forces of Russia have committed or been accused of committing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, as well as the aiding and abetting of crimes by proto-statelets or puppet statelets which are armed and financed by Russia, including the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic. These have included murder, torture, terror, persecution, deportation and forced transfer, enforced disappearance, child abductions, rape, looting, unlawful confinement, inhumane acts, unlawful airstrikes and attacks against civilian objects, use of banned chemical weapons, and wanton destruction.
War crimes in Afghanistan covers the period of conflict from 1979 to the present. Starting with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, 40 years of civil war in various forms has wracked Afghanistan. War crimes have been committed by all sides.
Armenian prisoners of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War are servicemen of the Defense Army of the Republic of Artsakh and the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia, as well as civilians and other detainees, who surrendered or were forcibly captured by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces during and after the conflict in 2020 between Azerbaijan and the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh together with Armenia in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed war crimes, such as deliberate attacks against civilian targets, including on hospitals, medical facilities and on the energy grid; indiscriminate attacks on densely-populated areas; the abduction, torture and murder of civilians; forced deportations; sexual violence; destruction of cultural heritage; and the killing and torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The Bucha massacre was the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war by the Russian Armed Forces during the fight for and occupation of the city of Bucha as part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photographic and video evidence of the massacre emerged on 1 April 2022 after Russian forces withdrew from the city.
Sexual violence in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been committed by Armed Forces of Russia, including the use of mass rape as a weapon of war. According to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the victims of sexual assault by Russian soldiers ranged from 4 years old to over 80 years old.
The torture of Russian soldiers in Mala Rohan was an incident during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine that occurred in the village of Mala Rohan. As documented by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, members of Ukrainian armed forces shot the legs of three captured Russian soldiers and tortured Russian soldiers who were wounded. The incident is likely to have occurred on the evening of March 25, 2022 and was first reported following the publication on social media of a video of unknown authorship between March 27 and March 28. As a case of summary execution and torture of prisoners of war, the incident might qualify as a war crime.
Mala Rohan is a village in Ukraine in Kharkiv Raion, Kharkiv Oblast. It belongs to Vilkhivka rural hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine.
On 29 July 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a building housing Ukrainian prisoners of war in a Russian-operated prison in Molodizhne near Olenivka, Donetsk Oblast, was destroyed, killing 53 to 62 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) and leaving 75 to 130 wounded. The prisoners were mainly soldiers belonging to the Azov regiment who defended the Azovstal complex, the last Ukrainian stronghold in the siege of Mariupol.
In July 2022, video recordings of the torture, castration and murder of a Ukrainian POW in the Pryvillia sanatorium by Russian servicemen were published online. Taking place during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the video caused an international outcry and brought strong condemnation from a number of human rights bodies. Representatives of both Ukraine and the US characterized the event as a war crime.
Yevgeny Anatolyevich Nuzhin was a convicted Russian murderer who enlisted in Wagner Group during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both Ukrainian and Russian/separatist prisoners of war have suffered several forms of abuse, such as mistreatment, exposure to public curiosity, torture, or even execution.
Oleksandr Ihorovych Matsievskyi was a Moldovan-born Ukrainian Ground Forces member and captive executed by Russian soldiers during the Battle of Bakhmut in the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late December 2022. The video of the execution circulated online around 6 March 2023, showing a soldier without weapons, smoking a cigarette, saying "Slava Ukraini" and then being shot with automatic weapons from multiple sides. The 30th Mechanized Brigade initially named Tymofii Shadura as the victim and a video of the shooting was shared on social media. Later reports suggested Matsievskyi as a credible alternative identification, which was subsequently confirmed by the Ukrainian government.
A video depicting the decapitation of a Ukrainian prisoner of war was first published online on 11 April 2023, and then circulated through pro-Russian sources. The video shows men in military uniforms with Russian military insignia and wearing masks cutting off the head of a man in a military uniform with Ukrainian insignia.
Amnesty International stated that both Azerbaijani and Armenian forces committed war crimes during Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, and called on the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan to immediately conduct independent, impartial investigations, identify all those responsible, and bring them to justice. UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that "indiscriminate attacks on populated areas anywhere, including in Stepanakert, Ganja and other localities in and around the immediate Nagorno-Karabakh zone of conflict, were totally unacceptable". Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights recognized that violent conflict affected all sides in the conflict but distinguished "the collateral damage of Azerbaijanis" from "the policy of atrocities such as mutilations and beheadings committed by Azerbaijani forces and their proxies in Artsakh." Azerbaijan started an investigation on war crimes by Azerbaijani servicemen in November and as of 14 December 2020, has arrested four of its servicemen.
