Chapter 6 describes how terrorism is punishable under international criminal law. This body of international law holds natural persons – individuals – criminally responsible for the perpetration of international crimes. Although views differ among scholars, as the chapter describes, the better view is that individual acts of terrorism that do not fall within the definitions of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide are not directly criminalized by international law. Particular attention is paid to the relevant caselaw of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Medical personnel are granted special protection under international humanitarian law (IHL). Military medics in an international armed conflict are non-combatants, not civilians, while civilian medical personnel are protected first and foremost as civilians. There is also specific protection afforded to other humanitarian personnel engaged in impartial humanitarian action. Attacking medical personnel (or medical facilities) or attacking humanitarian personnel engaged in their duties during a situation of armed conflict is a war crime, as the chapter explains.

Chapter 8 puts previous chapters to work by defining war crimes – their required precursors and circumstances – asking the reader whether real-life scenarios are, or are not, war crimes. The import of grave breaches is illustrated, including the factual World War II murder of fifty prisoners of war by Nazis, the subject of the motion picture, The Great Escape. When can a mosque be fired on, if ever? Are suicide attacks violations of LOAC? Is hostage-taking ever lawful? What is pillage? And “double-tapping”? On the battlefield, may one feign death? What if an individual volunteers to be a human shield? Are human shields ever lawful? Real-world war crime cases and their outcomes are related. “Disciplinary” war crimes, seldom noted, are, here, as well. Continuing, universal jurisdiction for war crimes turns out to be less than universal, and civilians can commit war crimes just as combatants can. Rape and other gender crimes are covered, here, as well. Four war crime trial records are included in the chapter’s Cases and Materials.

Chapter 13 provides a case study for cross-cultural discourse analysis, by studying war crime apologies performed by representatives of the Japanese and German states. The term ‘war crime Apologise’ (or simply ‘war apology’) refers to a public ritual speech centering on the speech act Apologise, realised by a ratified person (Goffman, 1967) – usually a representative of the state or a state minister – following crimes which were perpetrated during a wartime situation. War Apologise discourse represents a form of political rather than interpersonal Apologise, which can bring about reconciliation, but not necessarily so.Along with illustrating how the unit of discourse can be systematically compared across linguacultures, the chapter also illustrates that cross-cultural pragmatics provides a highly innovative way of engaging in the study of language and politics because it allows us to consider controversial and emotively loaded political phenomena, such as war crime apologies, from a non-ideologised angle.