War Crimes Charges Against Rumsfeld Filed in Germany

A US human rights group has filed war crime charges against Donald Rumsfeld and eight other senior US officials for the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, Reuters reports:

"German law in this area is leading the world," Peter Weiss, vice
president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR),
a human rights group, was quoted as saying in Frankfurter Rundschau
newspaper’s Tuesday edition.

According to the group, German law allows war criminals to  be investigated wherever they may be living.

The documention was provided to the Frankfurter Rundschau, which published additional information this evening on its Web site ahead of a press conference tomorrow. Here is an excerpt from the legal brief filed by CCR’s attorneys in Frankfurt:

Namens und in Vollmacht meiner Mandanten erstatte ich Strafanzeige
wegen sämtlicher in Betracht kommender Straftatbestände, namentlich
wegen Kriegsverbrechen gegen Personen sowie wegen gefährlicher
Körperverletzung und Verstoßes gegen die UN-Folterkonvention gegen
folgende US-amerikanische Staatsbürger

1. den
Verteidigungsminister der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, Donald H.
Rumsfeld, 2. den ehemaligen Direktor der Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), George Tenet, 3. den Generalleutnant Ricardo S. Sanchez,
Heidelberg, Deutschland, 4. den Generalmajor Walter Wojdakowski, 5. die
Brigadegeneralin Janis Karpinski, 6. den Oberstleutnant Jerry L.
Phillabaum, 7. den Oberst Thomas Pappas, 8. den Oberstleutnant Stephen
L. Jordan, 9. den Generalmajor Geoffrey Miller, 10. den
Unterstaatssekretär für Nachrichtendienste im
USVerteidigungsministerium, Stephen Cambone, sowie gegen alle weiteren
namentlich benannten und nicht benannten Beteiligten an den nachfolgend
geschilderten Straftaten.

The complaint is over 100 pages long and has detailed charges against each of the officials.  The basic thrust is that the systematic abuse was offical policy eminating from the office of the Secretary of Defense, but only a few token officers have been prosecuted for these serious human rights violations.  CCR had success earlier this year when the US Supreme Court agreed to hear its objections to the consitutionality of holding but not charging prisoners at the US base in Guantanamo Bay.