Outgoing Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking US officials face war crime charges in Germany, reports Tamam Ahmed Jama Announcing the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld following the Republican Party's heavy poll losses in the United States mid-term elections earlier this month, George W Bush described the Defence Secretary as "a patriot who served our country with honour and distinction." Within a week of his resignation, a criminal complaint was filed against Rumsfeld and other top US officials, charging them with war crimes. "Our clients -- people who were the victims of horrific abuse and torture -- have not yet seen justice," Bill Goodman, legal director of the New York- based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents many of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "The United States government has not only been unwilling to investigate and prosecute its high-ranking officials for the torture that they authorised and supervised, but it even attempted to immunise Americans from such prosecutions through the passage of the Military Commissions Act 2006." From Afghanistan to Iraq to the US military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, American military and high-ranking civilian officials have committed war crimes against detainees in the context of the "war on terror", the complaint alleges. It states that Rumsfeld should be investigated for direct responsibility in sanctioning war crimes by authorising "harsh interrogation techniques" constituting breaches of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was previously chief White House legal counsel, and former CIA director George Tenet are also charged in the same complaint. It is alleged that Tenet, who resigned in 2004, was responsible for unlawful transfer, unlawful detention and torture of prisoners that took place during the time he was the director of the CIA, which had been operating a network of secret prisons where terrorism suspects were held and subjected to aggressive interrogation methods widely accepted as amounting to torture. The Military Commissions Act 2006, a controversial new statute that came into effect last month, grants blanket immunity from prosecution for war crimes for prisoner treatment prior to the end of 2005. Critics have pointed that the date was conveniently after the worst prisoner abuses were committed at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. The US has not ratified the 1998 Rome Statute which created the ICC and therefore does not recognise the jurisdiction of the Hague court -- the world's first permanent international war crimes court which came into force in 2002. The present complaint was filed under the Code of Crimes against International Law (CCAIL), a unique piece of legislation enacted by the German parliament in 2002. The CCAIL grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving grave violations of international humanitarian law such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. This gives German federal prosecutors the capacity to investigate and prosecute such crimes, regardless of where they took place and who the defendants and the plaintiffs are. "[Given] the fact that Iraq has no authority to prosecute Americans and that the US refused to join the International Criminal Court, German courts are the last resort to obtain justice for victims of abuse," Goodman said. The complaint is brought on behalf of 12 torture victims, a Saudi national detained at Guantanamo Bay and 11 Iraqis who were held at the Abu Ghraib prison. The Iraqis say they were the victims of gruesome abuse, including electric shock, severe beatings, forced nudity, sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures. The Saudi citizen, Mohammed Al-Qahtani, was among the first captives to arrive at Guantanamo Bay in early 2002. Al-Qahtani was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques known as the "First Special Interrogation Plan", allegedly authorised by and implemented under the supervision of Rumsfeld and the former commander of Guantanamo Bay, and later Abu Ghraib, Major General Geoffrey Miller, who is also charged with war crimes in the present complaint. The aggressive interrogation methods employed to extract information from Al-Qahtani included 50 days of severe sleep deprivation, a daily regimen of 20-hour interrogations, sexual humiliation and prolonged stress positions. "None of these plaintiffs -- and the hundreds of other detainees subjected to similar abuses -- have seen justice, and none of those who authorised these techniques at the top of the chain of command have been held liable for it," the complaint states. It has recently been reported that Al-Qahtani may not face trial because of what was done to him before he made a confession incriminating himself and other detainees. "The techniques made some detainees unprosecutable," Mark Fallon, special agent in charge of the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2004, said in a recent interview. "It would provide the defence counsel a tremendous advantage at trial to sway the presiding officer and members, [and] it would have disclosed those techniques to the public." US authorities have consistently denied any torture of detainees in American custody, but have defended harsh interrogation techniques, saying that they were a vital tool in the war on terror. The case to investigate and eventually prosecute senior US officials for war crimes has received unprecedented support. It has been endorsed by high profile individuals including Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980, Theo van Boven, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and a whole host of national and international associations --including the National Lawyers Guild in the US and the group, European Democratic Lawyers. A similar complaint was filed against Rumsfeld in 2004, but was later dropped, for political reasons, according to the CCR. The lawyers' group says that it is confident of a favourable outcome this time around because it has more evidence now than it had in 2004 and Rumsfeld has no longer diplomatic immunity to shield him from prosecution. The CCR is challenging the compatibility with international law of the Military Commissions Act 2006 in a separate case submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
