On February 27, 2018, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the seminal data privacy case of the term, United States v. Microsoft Corp. At issue in the case is whether the warrant provisions of the Stored Communications Act (SCA) apply extraterritorially, such that they compel Microsoft, an electronic service provider to produce private electronic communications stored on servers in Ireland for the United States government. Microsoft argues that the SCA does not apply to electronic communications stored in overseas data centers; the U.S. government begs to differ.

On March 29, 2018, the European Court of Human Rights – Fifth Section (ECtHR or the Court) delivered a decision in the case of Krombach v. France (application no. 67521/14). It declared (unanimously) the application inadmissible. The decision is final. This is the last act in the 36-years-long Krombach/Bamberski story which would lend an excellent script for a good criminal movie. It has had all elements to build a suspense expected from such a movie: young girl, alleged rape, murder (or at least homicide), mysterious circumstances of a death, criminal charges and multiple investigations in two different jurisdictions arising out of the same action, civil litigation, kidnapping across state border, multiple convictions, and international tribunals involved in this case.

On April 6, 2018, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank.

On March 28, 2018, a U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn of the Western District of North Carolina sentenced Milan Trisic to 18 months in prison for his criminal conviction of obtaining a Permanent Resident Card (I-551), also known as a “green card,” by making materially false claims and statements on his initial application for refugee status.

On April 9, 2018, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC or the Court), Fatou Bensouda, filed her request with the President of the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC), Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua, seeking  a ruling on a question of jurisdiction: whether the Court may exercise jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of the Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh.

On March 15, 2018, the European Court of Human Rights – Grand Chamber (Court) delivered a judgment in the case of Nait-Liman v. Switzerland (application no. 51357/07). It held, by a majority (fifteen votes to two), that there had been no violation of Article 6 § 1 (right of access to a court) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR or the Convention). The case concerned the refusal by the Swiss courts to examine Mr Naït-Liman’s civil claim for compensation for the non-pecuniary damage arising from acts of torture allegedly inflicted on him in Tunisia. 

 On March 29, 2018, the Czech Republic extradited Yevgeny Nikulin, an alleged Russian hacker,, who was arrested in Prague in cooperation with the FBI in 2016.

On March 27, 2018, the Angola Attorney General’s office accused Jose Filomeno dos Santos (known as Zenú), the son of Angola’s ex-president, of trying to defraud US $500 million from the country’s sovereign wealth fund (Fundo Soberano De Angola or FSDEA).  The Attorney General also charged Valter Filipe, the former governor of the National bank of Angola, with the fraud.

On April 4, 2018, the Washington College of Law (WCL) hosted a launch of Professor Diane Orentlicher’s new book, Some Kind of Justice: The ICTY’s Impact in Bosnia and Serbia (Oxford U. Press, 496  pages).   Susana SáCouto, director of the WCL Office of War Crimes Research made opening remarks and noted that Professor Diane Orentlicher founded the office.