Human Rights Groups to Attempt to Have Rumsfeld Tried for War Crimes

[Time for change]

I was so glad to see this article. It looks like the Bush administration may have begun do dig its own grave with the signing of the Military Commissions Act:

The Nation – November 20th, 2006 issue
War Criminals Beware
By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith

On November 14 a group of lawyers and other experts will come before the German federal prosecutor and ask him to open a criminal investigation targeting Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and other key Bush Administration figures for war crimes.... The complaint will present new evidence showing responsibility for torture and prisoner abuse at the highest levels of the chain of command.... The Rumsfeld action was announced at a conference in New York City in late October titled "Is Universal Jurisdiction an Effective Tool?" The doctrine allows domestic courts to prosecute international crimes regardless of where the crime was committed, the nationality of the perpetrator or the nationality of the victim. It is reserved for only the most heinous offenses: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture.... The conference was sponsored by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which is bringing the case against Rumsfeld, and by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a network of 141 national human rights organizations founded in 1922.

An earlier case against Rumsfeld was brought two years ago in Germany by CCR… As the case was being considered, a security conference loomed in Munich. Rumsfeld, who could have been served papers or even arrested, refused to attend unless the case was dismissed. It was dismissed February 10; Rumsfeld flew to Germany the next day. The reason the prosecutor gave for the dismissal was that there was "no reason to believe that the accused would not be prosecuted in the United States"....

The case will draw on a powerful new argument. The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which the President promoted and recently signed into law, provides retroactive immunity for civilians who violated the War Crimes Act, including officials of the Bush Administration. Such an attempt to provide immunity for their crimes, it will be argued, is in itself evidence of an effort to block prosecution of those crimes....

Wolfgang Kaleck, a German human rights lawyer who is bringing the case in cooperation with CCR, FIDH and other groups, told the conference in New York that he is often asked, Do you really expect Rumsfeld to be arrested for war crimes? His answer is that he doesn't expect it immediately. "But we make it possible that someday Rumsfeld will be arrested," he says… "New norms are being constituted to deal with the reality on the ground," he said. "Later those norms become real, practical, enforceable law."...

Antoine Bernard, FIDH executive director, says... "now fear is not just on the side of the victims but also of the torturers." And that, supporters argue, will have a deterrent effect on government officials who contemplate using torture.