Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime
under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.
The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for
an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve
the person who committed the act from responsibility under international
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes
a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government
official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his
Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under
international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Any person charged with a crime under international law
has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other
inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political,
racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions
are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against
peace or any war crime.
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace,
a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is
a crime under international law.
* Text adopted by the Commission at its second session, in 1950, and submitted to the General Assembly as a part of the Commission's report covering the work of that session. The report, which also contains commentaries on the principles, appears in Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II.