Swiss Criminal Code

¹ The pen­alty is a cus­todi­al sen­tence of not less than three years for any per­son who, in con­nec­tion with an armed con­flict:

a.

launches an at­tack al­though he knows or must as­sume that such an at­tack will cause loss of life or in­jury to ci­vil­ians or dam­age to ci­vil­ian ob­jects or wide­spread, long-term and severe dam­age to the nat­ur­al en­vir­on­ment which would be clearly ex­cess­ive in re­la­tion to the con­crete and dir­ect over­all mil­it­ary ad­vant­age an­ti­cip­ated;

b.

uses a per­son pro­tec­ted by in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­it­ari­an law as a hu­man shield in or­der to in­flu­ence mil­it­ary op­er­a­tions;

c.

as a meth­od of war­fare, pil­lages or oth­er­wise un­law­fully ap­pro­pri­ates prop­erty or des­troys or seizes en­emy prop­erty in a way not im­per­at­ively de­man­ded by the ne­ces­sit­ies of war, de­prives ci­vil­ians of ob­jects in­dis­pens­able to their sur­viv­al or im­pedes re­lief sup­plies;

d.

kills or wounds an en­emy com­batant treach­er­ously or after he or she has laid down his or her arms or no longer has a means of de­fence;

e.

mu­til­ates a dead en­emy com­batant;

f.

as the com­mand­er or­ders that no quarter be giv­en or threatens the en­emy that no quarter will be giv­en;

g.

makes im­prop­er use of a flag of truce, of the flag or of the mil­it­ary in­signia and uni­form of the en­emy or of the United Na­tions, or the dis­tinct­ive em­blems un­der in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­it­ari­an law;

h.

as a mem­ber of an oc­cupy­ing power, trans­fers parts of its own ci­vil­ian pop­u­la­tion in­to the ter­rit­ory it is oc­cupy­ing or de­ports all or parts of the pop­u­la­tion of the oc­cu­pied ter­rit­ory with­in or out­side that ter­rit­ory.

² In es­pe­cially ser­i­ous cases, and in par­tic­u­lar where the of­fence af­fects a num­ber of per­sons or the of­fend­er acts in a cruel man­ner, a cus­todi­al sen­tence of life may be im­posed.

³ In less ser­i­ous cases, a cus­todi­al sen­tence of not less than one year may be im­posed.