This article examines the efforts to hold high-level US officials accountable for their alleged role in the torture and other serious abuse of detainees under US control through the principle of universal jurisdiction. First, it sets out what is known about United States detention and interrogation practices during the so-called 'war on terror', and what efforts, if any, have been undertaken in the United States to hold individuals accountable for their role in the torture and serious abuse of detainees. After a preliminary comment on the definition of torture, it examines the factual and legal underpinnings, and adjudicative results of the cases filed in this regard in Germany and France, and the recent efforts undertaken in Spain. It concludes by enquiring about the role and future of universal jurisdiction, particularly in cases of powerful defendants, in closing the impunity gap for serious violations of international law. After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the [Bush] administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account. ç Maj. General Antonio M. Taguba (US-Ret.), led the US Army's official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. 1

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In its judgment issued on 17 January 2005, in Prosecutor v. Vidoje Blagojević and Dragan Jokić, Trial Chamber I, Section A, found that genocide had been committed against the Bosnian Muslim population following the fall of the Srebrenica ‘safe area’ in July 1995. The Trial Chamber's findings that forcible transfer, when combined with other acts, can constitute an underlying act of genocide (namely, causing serious mental harm to members of a group) contributes to a growing body of jurisprudence on genocide. The Trial Chamber found the accused guilty of such serious crimes as complicity in genocide, extermination, persecutions and murder. It determined that the appropriate mode of liability for each was aiding and abetting rather than committing through participation in a joint criminal enterprise, Accordingly the Trial Chamber sentenced Vidoje Blagojević to 18 years' imprisonment and Dragan Jokić to nine years' imprisonment.