Norway
Practice Relating to Rule 89. Violence to Life
Norway’s Military Penal Code (1902), as amended in 1981, provides:
Anyone who contravenes or is accessory to the contravention of provisions relating to the protection of persons or property laid down in … the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 … [and in] the two additional protocols to these Conventions … is liable to imprisonment.
Norway’s Penal Code (1902), as amended in 2008, states: “Any person is liable to punishment for a war crime who in connection with an armed conflict … kills a protected person.”
The Penal Code further states: “A protected person is a person who does not take, or who no longer takes, active part in hostilities, or who is otherwise protected under international law.”
In its judgment in the
Hans case in 1947, the Court of Appeal found the accused, an officer in the German Security Police, guilty of the execution of Norwegian subjects during the occupation of Norway by Germany. The Court found that the occupying power had no right to execute subjects of occupied territory without a trial by an appropriate tribunal.