12-6-06, 12:00 p.m.
Berlin. A number of human-rights organizations are filing complaints against the former US Defense Secretary.
Several human rights organizations, including the FIDH (Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme) and the American-based Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a complaint in Germany. This legal procedure became possible in 2002, when the country adopted a law of universal competence.*
The complaint accuses top civil and military leaders of the US administration of war crimes committed in Iraq and in Guantanamo.
Among those accused, are former Secretary of the Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, ousted by the President following the midterm-elections which were disastrous for the Republican Party.
Several well-known public figures are backing this procedure, such as Aldolfo Perez Esquirel and Martin Almada, both of whom are Nobel Peace prize laureates, or Theo van Boven, formerly a special reporter for the United Nations on the subject of torture.
The legal action is carried out on behalf of eleven Iraqis who were victims of very serious crimes in the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison (sexual abuse, beatings, food and sleep deprivation, use of blindfolds).
Another plaintiff in this affair is a Saudi Arabian citizen who was detained at Guantanamo, and who endured torture “with the specific consent of Rumsfeld and under Major General Miller’s supervision”, according to the FIDH and other human rights organizations.
“Rumsfeld’s resignation last week means that he can no longer hide behind his immunity as Secretary of State or as a government authority,” according to the FIDH and related organizations.
Top-ranking American leaders must therefore answer to German courts to charges of having possibly “ordered, abetted or incited the perpetration of war crimes, or at the very least for not having prevented them”.
By virtue of the Code on crimes against International Human Rights which was adopted by Berlin in 2002, the German state prosecutor can push charges against war criminals, regardless of where the defendant or the plaintiff are living, and regardless of the place where the crime was committed or the nationality of the persons involved.
From l’Humanite
-- Translated by Laura Wheeler. Translator’s note: “The universality principle is based on the assumption that some crimes are so universally condemned that the perpetrators are the enemies of all people. Therefore, any nation which has custody of the perpetrators may punish them according to its law applicable to such offences ... Israel or any other nation ... may undertake to vindicate the interest of all nations by seeking to punish the perpetrators of such crimes”.
