Re Konow

• Jurisdicción: Uruguay
• Emisor: Correctional Court (Uruguay)
• Número de expediente: Case No. 194

Uruguay, Correctional Court of Montevideo.

Case No. 194

In re Konow.

Neutrality — Enemy Vessels in Neutral Ports — Internment of — Hague Convention No. XIII.

The Facts.—The Tacoma, a German ship, was interned on January 1, 1940, for having performed occasional belligerent services in Uruguayan waters. While so interned she was rendered unfit for navigation by certain acts of sabotage committed by the crew. Some members of the crew were thereupon arrested. The Court of First Instance released them on bail. The Fiscal appealed.

Held: that the appeal must be dismissed. “It was a flouting of the Executive authority which ordered the internment of the Tacoma under Hague Convention No. XIII, to incapacitate the machinery of the vessel without the authority and knowledge of the Government. The ‘internment’ of the vessel created in her captain (Konow) and crew a special ‘status’, or juridical situation, involving absolute obedience to the neutral country for the purpose of safeguarding its neutral rights and duties, preventing them from leaving the waters or territory of its jurisdiction or from undertaking or carrying out any operation not in compliance with the measures ordered by the neutral country with a view to the conservation of the ship. The captain, and by his orders the other accused, in destroying the principal machinery of the vessel and making...