THE WISDOM FUND: News & Views
November 30, 2004
Deutesche Welle

Rumsfeld Sued for Alleged War Crimes

Rumsfeld has not felt a need to take the blame for Abu Ghraib

Alleging responsibility for war crimes and torture at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, a human rights group has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US officials.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association said they and five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US soldiers were seeking a probe by German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers.

They said they had chosen Germany because of its Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in 2002, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity.

It also makes military or civilian commanders who fail to prevent their subordinates from committing such acts liable.

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[Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the report ignored the Bush administration's failure to disclose the location of the burial site. "That is a clear violation of Articles 15 and 16 of the First Geneva Convention,"--"U.S. Defends Burying Iraqi Troops Alive," San Francisco Chronicle, July 1992]

[What went mostly unreported was that the Rambouillet accord had a secret Annex B, which Madeleine Albright's delegation had inserted on the last day. This demanded the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia, a country with bitter memories of the Nazi occupation. As the Foreign Office minister Lord Gilbert later conceded to a Commons' defense select committee, Annex B was planted deliberately to provoke rejection by the government in Belgrade. As the first bombs fell, the elected parliament in Belgrade, which included some of Milosevic's fiercest opponents, voted overwhelmingly to reject it.

Equally revealing was a chapter dealing exclusively with the Kosovo economy. This called for a "free-market economy" and the privatization of all government assets.--"Winning and Losing in Yugoslavia," The Wisdom Fund, June 6, 1999]

"Bush's Outrage Rings Hollow," The Independent, March 25, 2003

Julian Borger, "U.S. Undermines International Criminal Court," The Guardian, June 13, 2003

Julian Borger, "U.S. Military in Torture Scandal," The Guardian, April 30, 2004

Tony Kevin, "Fallujah: All the Makings of a War Crime", Sydney Morning Herald, November 6, 2004

"US Marine claims unit killed Iraqi civilians," AFP, December 8, 2004

R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen, "New Papers Suggest Detainee Abuse Was Widespread," Washington Post, December 21, 2004

Tom Stephens, "A Chronology of US War Crimes & Torture, 1975-2005," CounterPunch, May 13, 2005

[In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, . . . included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.--Jan Crawford Greenburg et al, "Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'", April 9, 2008, ABC News]

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