But the international community must send a "stark warning", via the UN security council, that some of Damascus's actions constituted a "war crime", he said.
Despite the high number of civilian deaths, allegations that sinking the Gustloff constituted a war crime are largely unfounded, because of the presence of weapons and nearly 1,000 military personnel on board.
Amnesty International contended that "unlawful forcible transfer" of Palestinians under Israeli occupation constituted a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and violated the right to a fair trial.
The issue of orders is crucial to determining whether the killings were simply lethal overreaction by young soldiers scared that enemy troops were hidden among the civilians, or whether they constituted a war crime.
In his book Forgotten War, Henry Reynolds notes the clear consensus among military historians: the frontier conflicts between colonists and Indigenous Australians – during which tens of thousands died – constituted a war.
And because the looting of cultural property during World War II was an essential component of the Nazi genocide, it violated international law and, under Nuremberg principles, constituted a war crime and a crime against humanity.
