Rumsfeld faces renewed war crimes charges

A US-based civil rights group asked German prosecutors to take legal action against former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) lodged a complaint with the German federal prosecutor urging investigations of Rumsfeld, who resigned last week, and other former US officials over alleged abuses in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. Under a law enacted by Germany when the International Criminal Court (ICC) was created in 2002, the federal prosecutor can investigate and prosecute war crimes regardless of where they are committed or the nationality of the perpetrators. The prosecutor dismissed a similar case brought by the CCR in 2004. The case provoked an angry response from the Pentagon, and Rumsfeld himself was reportedly upset. Rumsfeld's spokesman at the time, Lawrence DiRita, called the case a "a big, big problem." US officials made clear the case could adversely impact US-German relations, and Rumsfeld indicated he would not attend a major security conference in Munich, where he was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, unless Germany disposed of the case. The day before the conference, a German prosecutor announced he would not pursue the matter, saying there was no indication that US authorities and courts would not deal with allegations in the complaint. But the CCR, backed by other civil rights groups, said new evidence, including signed memos, had now strengthened its case. The plaintiffs argue that circumstances have changed in two important ways. Rumsfeld's resignation, they say, means that the former Defense Secretary will lose the legal immunity usually accorded high government officials. Moreover, the plaintiffs argue that the German prosecutor's reasoning for rejecting the previous case–that US authorities were dealing with the issue–has been proven wrong. "The utter and complete failure of US authorities to take any action to investigate high-level involvement in the torture program could not be clearer," says CCR president Michael Ratner. He also notes that the Military Commissions Act, a law passed by Congress earlier this year, effectively blocks prosecution in the US of those involved in detention and interrogation abuses of foreigners held abroad in US custody going to back to Sept. 11, 2001. As a result, Ratner contends, the legal arguments underlying the German prosecutor's previous inaction no longer hold up. The plaintiffs added that former US Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, a defendant in the earlier complaint as the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was now providing testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs. Karpinski, who was relieved of her command and demoted to the rank of colonel last year, said her superiors had encouraged cruel treatment. In order to conceal what was going on at Abu Ghraib, those in charge of the prison had increased the scale of the abuses "incrementally over time," Col. Karpinski said at a news conference alongside the lawyers backing the case. "When I look back at it now, when I see the footage, when I see the Iraqi people, I see a loss of hope in their faces. I see desperation in their faces, and I know that we in many ways contributed to this situation," Karpinski said. The complaint is on behalf of 11 Iraqi citizens who were held at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and one detainee at the US Guantánamo Bay base in Cuba. The CCR says they were victims of beatings, sleep and food deprivation, hooding and sexual abuse. Joining the CCR in the suit is the Republican Attorneys Association and other groups and attorneys. "None of these plaintiffs–and the hundreds of other detainees subjected to similar abuses–has seen justice," the 220-page complaint said, "and none of those who authorized these techniques at the top of the chain of command have been held liable for it, or even seriously and independently investigated." Gita Gutierez, a US lawyer for a Saudi Guantánamo inmate named in the suit, Mohammed al Qahtani, said her client had been the victim of illegal mental and physical abuse and torture and that Rumsfeld bore ultimate responsibility for this. Qahtani has never been charged with a crime. He was subjected to isolation for 160 days, 20-hour interrogations, deprived of sleep for 48 days, forbidden to pray unless he cooperated with interrogators and was sexually assaulted by a female soldier, Gutierez said. Besides Rumsfeld, the action names the US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, the former CIA director George Tenet, the former commander of all US forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, and eight others. It alleges they ordered, aided or failed to prevent war crimes. A case could not be brought with the ICC because the US was not a member, the CCR said; neither could it be pursued through the United Nations, because the US has power of veto. Wolfgang Kaleck, the German attorney leading the attempted litigation, said the suit's backers would appeal if prosecutors refuse to take up the case, and raised the prospect of further attempts in other European countries. The Pentagon and the German federal prosecutor's office declined to comment, saying they had not yet received the suit. Lawyers for the groups said they did not expect that Rumsfeld will be locked up in a German jail. "I don't expect he'll go to jail. I think he should go to jail," CCR's Peter Weiss said. "As far as I'm concerned–and my colleagues agree–I would be satisfied if he spent the rest of his life in shame." Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Tenet and Sanchez, the other defendants in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Others named in the filing are Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantánamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski; and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib.