I saw this at Common Dreams. Hopefully it will open a discussion on international law and politics.
by Haider Rizvi
NEW YORK – Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. secretary of defense, is facing criminal charges in France for ordering the torture of prisoners in Iraq and at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Last week, some of the world’s leading human rights law groups filed a complaint before a French court charging Rumsfeld with authorizing and ordering torture.
The complaint was registered at the office of the prosecutor of the Court of First Instance in Paris when Rumsfeld was in the city for a talk sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine.
“We will not rest until those U.S. officials involved in torture are brought to justice,†said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit human rights law firm in the United States.
In filing the complaint against Rumsfeld, Ratner’s group received full support from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the French League for Human Rights, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
“Rumsfeld must understand that he has no place to hide,†Ratner added in a statement after filing the complaint. “A torturer is an enemy of all humankind.â€Â
The charges against Rumsfeld were brought under the 1984 Convention against Torture, ratified by both the United States and France, which has been used in France in previous torture cases.
The criminal complaint states that because of the failure of authorities in the United States and Iraq to launch any independent investigation, it is the legal obligation of states such as France to take up the case.
Ratner and his colleagues in France’s legal community contend that Rumsfeld and other top U.S. officials are subject to criminal trial because there is sufficient evidence to prove that they had authorized the torture of prisoners held on suspicion of involvement in terrorist acts.
“France is under the obligation to investigate and prosecute Rumsfeld,†said FIDH president Souhayr Belhassen. “It has no choice but to open an investigation.â€Â
Arguing that French courts are obligated under the Convention against Torture to prosecute individuals responsible for torture if they are present on French territory, Belhassen said he hoped the fight against impunity will “not be sacrificed in the name of politics.â€Â
Rumsfeld’s presence on French territory gives French courts jurisdiction to prosecute him for having ordered and authorized torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in Guantanamo, the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and elsewhere, lawyers who filed complaint said.
Rumsfeld, who stepped down from his position a year ago, can no longer claim immunity as a high-level statesman or as a former statesman, they added, because international law does not recognize such immunity in the case of international crimes including torture.
Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who served as commander of Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, submitted written testimony to the Paris prosecutor for the plaintiffs’ case detailing Rumsfeld’s relationship to the abuse of detainees.
“We want to combat impunity and therefore demand a judicial investigation and a criminal prosecution wherever there is jurisdiction over the torture incidents,†said ECCHR General Secretary Wolfgang Kaleck.
This is the fifth time Rumsfeld has been charged with direct involvement in torture stemming from his role in the Bush administration’s global response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and other parts of the United States.
Two previous criminal complaints were filed in Germany under its universal jurisdiction statute, which allows Germany to prosecute serious international crimes regardless of where they occurred or the nationality of the perpetrators or victims.
The first case was filed in 2004 by CCR, FIDH, and Kaleck, who is an attorney in Berlin. That case was dismissed in February 2005 in response to official pressure from the United States, in particular from the Pentagon, the plaintiffs said.
The second case was filed last fall by the same groups as well as dozens of national and international human rights groups, Nobel Peace Prize winners, and the former UN special rapporteur on torture.
The 2006 complaint was presented on behalf of 12 Iraqi citizens who had been held and abused in Abu Ghraib and one Saudi citizen still held at Guantanamo. That case was dismissed in April, though an appeal is expected this week.
Rumsfeld is also facing similar charges in two other cases filed against him in Argentina and Sweden.
© 2007 One World
To go along with this, here’s an excerpt from Steve McIntosh’s new book, Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution at this link: http://www.integralworldgovernment.org/integral_world_government.htm
© 2007 Published by Paragon House
For further excerpts, interviews and more, go to this link: http://www.stevemcintosh.com
From Chapter 5, Integral Politics:
The type of global governance envisioned by the integral worldview would consist of a federation of nations united under a constitution of laws guided by the insights and principles of integral philosophy. An integral world federation would be instituted to provide democratic oversight of the global economy, protect the world’s environment, establish a universal bill of human rights, preserve cultural diversity, and bring an eventual end to war, disease, and poverty. And even with limited jurisdiction (leaving national legal systems mostly in place), an integral world federation would provide for a system of global justice which would reduce the incentives for terrorism. Such a federation would not need to encompass the globe in one step. It would have to begin with a union of the E.U. and U.S., with other developed nations such as Australia and Japan joining at the beginning. Gradually, other countries could join the federation, but no country would be forced to join, with membership in the federation requiring a supermajority vote of a country’s population. An integral global authority would gradually encompass the world through evolutionary methods. National boundaries and local economies would be protected, and full membership in the federation would be granted only to countries that have achieved requisite degrees of freedom and democracy. Just as the E.U. has been gradually expanding, encouraging the political, economic and cultural evolution of those nations that aspire to join, so too could a world federation be gradually enlarged.
The benefits of effective global governance would be abundant. Democratic control of the global economy would produce greater fairness for individuals and fragile local cultures while at the same time producing greater overall prosperity. An integral world federation would have the authority to protect human rights and the world’s environment, inaugurating the kinds of safeguards that are currently impossible in a world of competing nation-states. It will almost always be morally illegitimate for one sovereign country to attack or dominate another sovereign country, regardless of the context. But a democratically controlled global federation will have the moral and political authority to be legitimately coercive over individual offenders (rather than entire countries) when it comes to preventing the destruction of people’s lives or the environment.
Btw everyone should read Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak. The book’s website is here. I hope something good comes out of Rumsfeld getting charged.
Whoops, that second link is here.
So while it seems McIntosh’s integral world government is a long way off, what might be some practical steps to enforce global justice right now against the war crimes of Rumsfeld? Exactly those that are being taken in the original post. Granted they might even get convictions which wouldn’t carry enforcement weight in the US, meaning Rumsfeld won’t serve any time in a French jail. But it has significant social impact on the world political stage for such countries to stand up to the big bully US. This will set the stage for future US Presidents and Congresses, when more enlightened (integral?) people start taking office and initiating legally binding, international legal agreements such that Administration officials like Rumsfeld could and would be tried in such tribunals and punished accordingly.