The ink was barely dry on Rumsfeld’s letter of resignation as Secretary of Defense when the human rights organization Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) announced it would file a criminal complaint in Germany against Rumsfeld, Alberto "Abu" Gonzales, and George "Slam Dunk" Tenet for authorizing war crimes in the "War on Terror". This is the group’s second attempt to try Rumsfeld in Germany. The announcement is on CCR’s Web site:
"The complaint is brought on behalf of 12 torture victims – 11 Iraqi citizens who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and one Guantánamo detainee – and is being filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Republican Attorneys’ Association (RAV) and others, all represented by Berlin Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck. The complaint is related to a 2004 complaint that was dismissed, but the new complaint is filed with substantial new evidence, new defendants and plaintiffs, a new German Federal Prosecutor and, most important, under new circumstances that include the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in the U.S. granting officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for war crimes."
The complete complaint can be found here (pdf). Der Spiegel picks up the story and explains why the US group is attempting to bring the charges in a German court of law:
Die Gruppe beruft sich auf das 2002 in Kraft getretene deutsche Völkerstrafgesetzbuch, wonach im Ausland von Ausländern begangene Kriegsverbrechen oder Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit wegen des so genannten Weltrechtsprinzips auch hierzulande verfolgt werden können.
While the chances for success here are remote, I have to ask as well: why stop at Rumsfeld? Just two weeks ago Vice President Cheney said on national radio that the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed was "a no-brainer", and Ron Suskind points out in his book The One Percent Solution that President Bush personally ordered the torture of a mentally deranged detainee. Bush and Cheney are certainly guilty of war crimes under both the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremburg Principles. Blogger Matthew Yglesias provides a game argument for why President Bush should NOT be charged with war crimes.
She Refused to Torture
More publicity needs to be given to the case of Spc. Alyssa Peterson, an Arabic-speaking interrogator in Iraq, who killed herself after objecting to the torture of Iraqi detainees. Here is the report from the Arizona Republic:
"A Flagstaff soldier who in 2003 became the third woman to die in Iraq killed herself two weeks after objecting to the interrogation techniques being used on Iraqi prisoners, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."
"She objected to interrogation techniques after the first session, the documents show, and after the second session she told her supervisor that she "could not carry out" the interrogation methods that were being used and asked to be reassigned. "
Add this brave American woman’s name to the long list of victims of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture policy.
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It should be pointed out again that going after the torturers themselves often bears a certain resemblance to pettiness. The real scandal is the open endorsement of torture by those at the top of the hierarchy. Normally every banana republic dictator like Milosevic would do anything to avoid being blemished like that. So going after the criminals in the White House is also something we can do to help abolish torture in less fortunate places than Germany, Turkey and Russia and the like.