Berkeley City Council urges war crimes prosecution

After an emotional, rancorous debate over torture and academic freedom, Berkeley's City Council passed a measure late Monday night imploring the United States to prosecute Berkeley resident and former White House official John Yoo for war crimes. Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the legal memos justifying torture during the interrogation of terrorism suspects when he served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Bush administration in 2001-03. "John Yoo took a material involvement in the deaths and torture of untold numbers of people," said Councilman Max Anderson, choking back tears during the council's debate. "The broken bodies, the broken spirits, the broken trust he wrought with his actions - that's why they call these crimes against humanity." Yoo could not be reached for comment Tuesday. The council stopped short of passing the full original measure, put forth by the Peace and Justice Commission, which called for the city to urge UC Berkeley to rearrange its class schedule so no student would be required to take a course from Yoo. "I don't think we should be dictating course policy to the university," Councilman Laurie Capitelli said. Yoo teaches constitutional and international law at Boalt, but he won't be in Berkeley much longer. He was appointed in September to be a visiting professor at Chapman University in Orange County, serving from January to May 2009. Monday's debate drew several dozen activists clad in black hoods and orange jumpsuits, UC Berkeley students, Nazi Germany war survivors and other Berkeley residents, most of whom thought the council should have taken a stronger stance against Yoo. "If you want to live in a world where people are tortured, then we already live in it," Stephanie Tang, an activist with the anti-war group World Can't Wait, told the council. "But we can change it, if we demand that it changes." Anderson, who represents South Berkeley, wept as he recalled torture he had witnessed as a soldier during the Vietnam War. His arguments against the city scaling back the measure drew a standing ovation. "To water this thing down is an abdication of our responsibility as a city and as a community," he said. "John Yoo led us down a path we're just now trying to find our way back from, and this is one step." The city will send a letter to the incoming U.S. attorney general and the U.S. attorney for Northern California asking that they prosecute Yoo for war crimes. The measure updates a March 2007 initiative asking the United States to prosecute former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Yoo and other officials. The city also plans to ask UC Berkeley to fire Yoo if he's convicted. Yoo has never been charged with war crimes, and the arguments Yoo used to justify torture were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Councilman Gordon Wozniak abstained from two of the three votes on the issue, calling the measure a "slippery slope." "I have some problems assuming John Yoo is guilty before he's tried," he said. "I think everyone in Berkeley is against torture, but this is a slippery slope. I think we have to respect academic freedom, even if it's for people whose opinions we don't agree with."