Deneb Accords

In David Weber's science fiction novels set in the Honorverse, the Deneb Accords are the generally accepted rules of war. They were sponsored by the Solarian League at Deneb.

The Deneb Accords are similar to the Geneva Conventions in that they are meant to protect the rights of military personnel in times of war, defending them from abuse and torture. The Accords regulate, among many other things, the exchange of prisoners of war between belligerent parties, the supervision and inspection of POW and internment camps by neutral third parties (usually the Solarian League).

The Accords also forbid the trial of captured enemy military personnel during wartime, except on cases which the defendants were accused of violating their own nations' code of conduct.

A notable provision of the Accords is Section Twenty-Seven which prohibited any trial of enemy personnel in time or war. There are two subsection that are known , Subsection Forty-One and Subsection Forty-Two. Subsection Forty-One provides that the Accords' protections and safeguards would not apply to captured combatants who were also convicted criminals prior to the outbreak of hostilities, allowing the capturing party to treat them as criminals. This was one of the first major amendments to the accords, following the abuse of the Accords by using freed criminals to prosecute wars against the nations which had convicted them. Subsection Forty-Two specifically provided for wartime trials of individuals for alleged violation of local laws (example is the tribunal of captured State Security forces on Hell by the Peeps' own UCC, since Hell had been sovereign territory of the People's Republic of Haven at the time) predating their capture, but prohibited ex post facto trials under the municipal law of whoever captured them.

Subsection Forty-One's most infamous use was to justify Honor Harrington's planned execution by using a trumped-up in absentia death conviction for allegedly destroying an unarmed merchant vessel (actually a Havenite Q-Ship engaged in hostile actions against Manticore).

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