Because Germany allows universal jurisdiction, a complaint against Donald Rumsfeld for torturous abuse of detainees will be lodged there Tuesday by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The Center represents a Saudi detained in Guantanamo Bay and eleven Iraqis held in Baghdad. Rumsfeld, it charges, personally approved torturous treatment. Prosecution is also sought against Alberto Gonzales (whose role in detainee abuse alone should have prevented his confirmation) and George Tenet.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is a group of lawyers which litigates in such areas as international human rights, government misconduct, and corporate accountability. Last week the Center’s president, Michael Ratner, received a prize from the Democratic Lawyers of Germany and the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy for his pioneering work on international human rights.
It’s about time for German prosecutors to act. In 2004, the Center for Constitutional Rights had made a similar request for prosecution, but German prosecutors dropped the case, given assurances that the U.S. military would deal with it. As long ago as late September 2001, German intelligence agents, according to a report leaked to Stern magazine, personally witnessed detainee abuse at a secret U.S. prison in Europe.
The leaked report asserts the German agents saw US interrogators beat a 70-year-old terror suspect with a rifle butt, requiring the man to receive 20 stitches, and that they viewed documents that were smeared with blood. This information was reportedly turned over to German federal prosecutors. If the leaked report is true, it contradicts the official German position that the German government did not learn of alleged secret US prisons in Europe until media reports surfaced in 2005.
Currently Germany is conducting five formal investigations related to Iraq and detainees. Gonzales, in Berlin last month, defended American policies on the “rights” afforded detainees by military commissions. He whined at the lack of assistance from European allies despite calls for the close of Guantanamo Bay.
Rumsfeld’s investigations sound more like damage control. Condoleeza Rice once met with human rights activists who pled for a 9/11-style commission to investigate detainee abuse. She assured them that “major investigations” were going on to “fully understand the scope and nature” of the abuse.
Some critics say Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department is doing its best to stop potentially incriminating information from coming out, that it’s deflecting Congress’s inquiries and shielding higher-ups from investigation. Documents obtained by NEWSWEEK also suggest that Rumsfeld’s aides are trying hard to contain the scandal, even within the Pentagon. Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith, who is in charge of setting policy on prisoners and detainees in occupied Iraq, has banned any discussion of the still-classified report on Abu Ghraib written by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, which has circulated around the world. Shortly after the Taguba report leaked in early May, Feith subordinates sent an “urgent” e-mail around the Pentagon warning officials not to read the report, even though it was on Fox News.
The Taguba report was issued March 2004. In May of 2004 Pres. Bush publicly apologized for the abuse. At the same time, he insisted on keeping Rumsfeld in his cabinet, regardless of calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation.
Read the Taguba report here (.pdf). General Taguba found a multitude of specific cases of torture and abuse and suggested changes which would force actions to be consistent with the Geneva Conventions. His first recommendation:
Immediately deploy to the Iraq Theater an integrated multi-discipline Mobile Training Team (MTT) comprised of subject matter experts in internment/resettlement operations, international and operational law, information technology, facility management, interrogation and intelligence gathering techniques, chaplains, Arab cultural awareness, and medical practices as it pertains to I/R activities. This team needs to oversee and conduct comprehensive training in all aspects of detainee and confinement operations.
Taguba criticized B. G. Karpinski for an unwillingness to accept that many of the problems were caused by her poor leadership at the prison. As we know, Gen. Karpinski was made the scapegoat — demoted for dereliction of duty. In August 2005, Karpinski told of a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld authorizing a short list of cruel and degrading interrogation techniques. Karpinski’s testimony is sure to be heard again.
The National Lawyers Guild will be joining the Center for Constitutional Rights in seeking a criminal investigation against Rumsfeld from a German prosecutor. The Guild’s president, Marjorie Cohn, wrote in more detail here about the war crimes case.
Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be liable for war crimes committed by his inferiors if he knew or should have known they would be committed and did nothing to stop or prevent them.
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Although Bush has immunized his team from prosecution in the International Criminal Court, they could be tried in any country under the well-established principle of universal jurisdiction.
Seymour Hersh was the keynote speaker at an ACLU conference in June 2004 in beautiful San Francisco.
“What we had was a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president — hold on — by this administration anyway. … The only way to look at this is as war crimes. …
[He] said some of the most heinous actions by American soldiers had yet to be disclosed by the government…. the undisclosed evidence includes videos of young male prisoners being sodomized.
“I’m not saying it’s there yet. It’s not there yet, but that’s where it has to go.” Hersh said at the time.
The wait is over. The time is now. The place is Germany. I hope it’ll be at Nuremberg.
