Today is the 60th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. A quick Google search failed to find anyone remembering that hallmark date today. They are all previous articles. And I don’t like to celebrate anyone’s anniversary either before or after. Therefore I had to write this diary, to remember the Birth of International Law.
I was tipped by Pagina 12, who reproduced an article written by Ernesto Ekaizer, and originally published in El Pais Semanal of Spain.
The translation is mine and so is the responsibility for the atrocities I committed on it.
…”November 20th is the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the first Nuremberg Trials against top Nazis, for crimes against humanity. The trials certified the birth of International Law. Just as it’s advances on the last decade, with the leadership of the Spanish and Great Britain’s judicial system, as it’s essence (the Geneva Convention and the UN’s Convention Against Torture, among others,) are threatened by the war against terrorism promoted by the Bush administration.
It is the morning of November 20th, 1945 in Nuremberg. The clock has marked 10 am. The courtroom is uneasy. The twenty-one accused make their entrance. Hermann Goering exhibits some papers and wants to make a statement. The tribunal rejects his request. Robert Jackson, the American chief prosecutor had the word, and will spend all day with his presentation.
Essentially his message is “”We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. Our conduct must shoe such impartiality and integrity, so that posterity will praise this trial for having fulfilled Humanity’s aspiration that justice was done”
Sixty years have passed. Reed Brody, from Human Rights Watch, is in Dakar, Senegal. This week he collaborated with the detention of former Chad’s dictator (1982-1990), Hissene Habre due to an international order for his detention by the Belgium Justice so he can be extradited to Belgium.
“Habre sidestepped justice for 15 years. On Tuesday I saw how they brought him arrested to the court. It seems, and I say it seems because one is never knows what will happen when it comes to Universal Jurisdiction, that justice finally pounced on him” explained Brody from Dakar. The tribunal delayed the decision on extradition until the 22nd
Eric David, professor of International Law at Free University of Brussels, questioned during the 80’s if Nuremberg was a Damocles’ sword held over the head of every dictator and torturer, or is it a frozen product buried in the freezer of the legislative apparatus, of the states”. His answer: “The Law of Nuremberg is a bit of both things. According to him, it is a dormant right. Or, a ghost right
This Ghost Right traveled Europe and Africa and took shape in the tribunals of Rwanda and Yugoslavia in the 90’s. A process that culminated in the creation of International Criminal Court in 1998.
In the midst of this process, in 1996, a strong, unexpected wind begins to blow from southern Europe. Spanish justice led by Judge Baltasar Garzon, began to investigate the crimes the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina and of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
“The Nuremberg Doctrine inspired our experience with Pinochet” remembers Joan Garcet who presented the first complain against the former Chilean dictator in July 1996. The strife between criminal and humanist impulses will continue to be permanent. The Nuremberg Doctrine continues to be one of the rational instruments to confront them. The significant date was October 16th, 1998, the day when Judge Baltasar Garzon presented the international order for the arrest of Pinochet. On March 24th 1999, the British Parliament, in order to to determine if the former dictator could face a trial for extradition voted that Pinochet nor any other former head of state could invoke immunity against the crime of torture.
That sentence has weight in the US now. Scott Horton, president of the American Bar Association believes it is so: Jackson’s poisoned chalice seems to be in the lips of Bush, who has removed the country from the traditional respect for International Law, and ignores it’s obligations with the Geneva Convention and the Convention Against Torture. It is the Nuremberg Ghost. Why are president Bush and VP Cheney threatening to veto McCain’s Senate Amendment that prohibits torture? They want to guarantee immunity in case of a future legal prosecution, explained Horton.
Meanwhile Brody said from Senegal:” I’m an American who goes through the world trying to take dictators and torturers to justice. Today my hardest job is to be an American. Why? Because in the world’s eyes I represent a double standard and Judicial imperialism.
Carlos Castaneda, the prosecutor of the first demand against the crimes of the argentine dictatorship and later against the crimes committed by the Chilean one, warns from California against the dangers of hurricane Bush against International Law. The Nuremberg Doctrine, after the World Trade Center and in the context of the War Against Terror, has more weight than ever. International crimes are such, even if internal laws which authorize abuses such as Guantanamo’s, Chechnya or Abu Gharib.
What about Bush and Cheney aids that helped design the War Against Terror? British lawyer Philippe Sands said that: “the Convention Against Torture also criminalizes those persons who are accomplices. The US on the other hand, sentenced Joseph Altstotter and other lawyers who collaborated in drafting Nazi laws and decrees for Hitler, for their participation in an organized system of cruelty.
President Bush might be able to hide in his Crawford’s ranch, but he cannot run. Time will most likely pass by, but humanity will always be waiting for the right time. We will ambush him, we will pounce on him and hopefully we will shackle him. And if not, he will fear that one day, US law might change. He will dream about it or even have nightmares of it. In the meantime we will be waiting patiently and steadyly until that day arrives.