Swiss Criminal Code

¹ The pen­alty is a cus­todi­al sen­tence of not less than five years for any per­son who, as part of a wide­spread or sys­tem­at­ic at­tack dir­ec­ted against any ci­vil­ian pop­u­la­tion:

a.

in­ten­tion­ally kills an­oth­er per­son;

b.

in­ten­tion­ally kills a num­ber of per­sons or in­ten­tion­ally in­flicts con­di­tions of life cal­cu­lated to bring about the de­struc­tion of all or part of the pop­u­la­tion;

c.

as­sumes and ex­er­cises a right of own­er­ship over a per­son, in par­tic­u­lar in the form of traf­fick­ing in per­sons, sexu­al ex­ploit­a­tion or forced la­bour;

d.

severely de­prives a per­son of his or her liberty in vi­ol­a­tion of the fun­da­ment­al rules of in­ter­na­tion­al law;

e.

and with the in­ten­tion of re­mov­ing a per­son from the pro­tec­tion of the law for a pro­longed peri­od of time:

1.

on be­half of or with the ac­qui­es­cence of a State or polit­ic­al or­gan­isa­tion, de­prives that per­son of his or her liberty, and there­after re­fuses to give in­form­a­tion on his or her fate or where­abouts, or

2.

on be­half of or with the ac­qui­es­cence of a State or polit­ic­al or­gan­isa­tion or in vi­ol­a­tion of a leg­al duty re­fuses to give in­form­a­tion on the fate or where­abouts of the per­son con­cerned;

f.

in­flicts severe pain or suf­fer­ing or ser­i­ous in­jury, wheth­er phys­ic­al or men­tal, on a per­son in his or her cus­tody or un­der his or her con­trol;

g.³⁵⁵

com­mits rape in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 190 para­graph 2 or 3 or an in­de­cent as­sault in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 189 para­graph 2 or 3 of com­par­able sever­ity on a per­son, ab­uses that per­son by com­mit­ting a sexu­al act of com­par­able sever­ity, or forces a per­son in­to pros­ti­tu­tion or to be ster­il­ised or, after she has been for­cibly made preg­nant, con­fines her un­law­fully with the in­tent of af­fect­ing the eth­nic com­pos­i­tion of a pop­u­la­tion;

h.

ex­pels or by oth­er co­er­cive acts dis­places per­sons from an area in which they are law­fully present;

i.

in vi­ol­a­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law and for polit­ic­al, ra­cist, eth­nic, re­li­gious, so­cial or oth­er reas­ons, severely denies or de­prives a group of people of fun­da­ment­al rights in con­nec­tion with an of­fence un­der Title Twelve^bis or Title Twelve^ter or for the pur­pose of the sys­tem­at­ic op­pres­sion or dom­in­a­tion of an eth­nic group;

j.

com­mits any oth­er act of a com­par­able ser­i­ous­ness to the felon­ies men­tioned in this para­graph and thereby causes severe pain or suf­fer­ing or ser­i­ous in­jury, wheth­er phys­ic­al or men­tal, to a per­son.

²In 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.

³In less ser­i­ous cases un­der para­graph 1 let­ters c–j, a cus­todi­al sen­tence of not less than one year may be im­posed.