I find it frustrating that no one is ever held accountable for huge crimes but people get nailed to the wall for petty drug crimes and the like. I think anyone who ordered the torture of anyone for any reason should be prosecuted. Under certain circumstances, perhaps a pardon might be appropriate, but what isn’t acceptable is just refusing to hold people to account for their actions. If I kidnapped my neighbor and subjected him to rectal feeding in my basement, I should expect to spend the rest of my life in prison, and rightfully so. But there is really no hope for justice in this case. At best, we’ll see this:
The chances of a U.S. court re-opening civil or criminal charges against U.S. officials involved with the CIA program are slim. The agency and the Justice Department have conducted their own investigations into the CIA’s program and only low-level military officials and one CIA contractor has been prosecuted.
But European courts may be a different story. Some human-rights groups are now seeking to petition European courts to renew efforts to prosecute Bush administration officials under the principle of universal jurisdiction. That principle was established in 1998, when a Spanish court indicted Augosto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, for his role in the murder and torture of many of his political opposition. When Pinochet was traveling through the U.K. in 1998, he was arrested by order of the Spanish court. (U.K. officials released him back to Chile two years later.)
“After reviewing this report, we will give consideration to reopening petitions or filing new petitions in European courts under the principles of universal jurisdiction,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group that has represented Guantanamo detainees including Majid Khan and Abu Zubaydah, two detainees who went through the CIA’s black-site prisons.
It would at least be something if Bush administration officials were afraid to travel abroad lest they get treated like Augusto Pinochet.
Let it be so.