. NMT03-T1198
Volume III · Page 1198
"The purpose of this Ordinance is to provide for the establishment of military tribunals which shall have power to try and punish persons charged with offenses recognized as crimes in article II of Control Council Law No. 10, including conspiracies to commit any such crimes. * * *." |
| The prosecution also placed the same
interpretation upon paragraph 2, because paragraph 2 of count one of the
indictment charges that the "defendants herein * * * were principals in,
accessories to, ordered, abetted, took a consenting part in, and were connected
with plans and enterprises involving the commission of war crimes and crimes
against humanity." Evidently the drawer of the indictment had before him
paragraph 2 of Control Council Law No. 10 and made its language the basis of
the charging of a conspiracy to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Furthermore, it is apparent that the declared purpose of Ordinance No. 7, as set forth in article I thereof, is part and parcel of the entire ordinance as much as any other article thereof and the other articles of the ordinance, as well as Law No. 10, must be construed and applied in the light of article I. In fact article I is distinctly that portion of Ordinance No. 7 which defines the jurisdiction of the military tribunals authorized by it. The Tribunal should therefore declare that military tribunals as created by Ordinance No. 7 have jurisdiction over "conspiracy to commit" any and all crimes defined in article II of Law No. 10. After all, from a practical standpoint, it can make little difference to any defendant whether the Tribunal finds that such defendant is a member of a conspiracy to commit crimes on the one hand, this being the language of article I of Ordinance No. 7, or on the other hand whether the Tribunal should find he was (a) a principal or (b) an accessory or that he abetted the same or (c) took a consenting part therein or (d) was connected with plans or enterprises involving commission of crimes, these latter descriptions being the language of paragraph 2 of article II of Law No. 10. In most modern English and American jurisprudence, conspiracy pure and simple is not recognized as a separate crime. The only legal importance of finding that any accused person is a party to a conspiracy is to hold the conspirator responsible as an aider and abetter of criminal acts committed by other parties to the conspiracy. If the party knowingly aided and abetted in the execution of the plan and became connected with plans or enterprises involving the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he thereby became a co-conspirator with those who conceived the plan. It makes no difference whether the plan or |
