On 10/2/06, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Speaking of dubious lists, we also have:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_criminals
The list currently contains people belonging to these categories:
- people who were convicted for war crimes
- people who were charged but not convicted
- people who were never charged due to political reasons, but
the consensus is that they were involved in war crimes 4) people whose involvement in war crimes is unclear or a matter of debate.
On the top of the list, it writes that:
"This is a list of formally charged and/or convicted war criminals"
which means 1) and 2). What about people who were formally charged, but later found not guilty? They would be included by the current criteria.
What about people who were convicted for "war crimes" by an unfair mock trial in a country under a dictatorship? Should we list them, too?
It also seems to include people like Gerhard Wagner, who would presumably have been charged with crimes against humanity, rather than war crimes.
Maybe changing it to [[List of people convicted of war crimes]] would be better, even if that meant people who died before a trial/verdict wouldn't be listed.
(The show trial issue is one I doubt would come up too much in practice, incidentally; those things tended to go for charges like treason or anti-whateverist conspiracy than for things like war crimes.)