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Rumsfeld Faces War Crimes Trial in Germany
Former Secretary of Defense Field Marshal Donald von Rumsfeld is going to face war crimes charges in Germany. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Republican Attorneys' Association (RAV) and others, all represented by Berlin Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, will file papers tomorrow on behalf of 12 people who claim to have been tortured at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. This is related to a similar case that was dismissed in 2004 because German courts believed the American system could deal with it. That no longer seems to be the case.
To many, this seems like kicking a man when he is down, and the field marshal is so far down he will never get up again. He becomes the second American leader, after Robert McNamara, to lose a war that didn’t need fighting and to destroy his president’s hopes in the process. All the same, the man needs a good kicking.
According to the CCR,
The complaint alleges that the defendants ‘ordered’ war crimes, ‘aided or abetted’ war crimes, or ‘failed, as civilian superiors or military commanders, to prevent their commission by subordinates, or to punish their subordinates,’ actions that are explicitly criminalized by German law. The US administration has treated hundreds if not thousands of detainees in a coercive manner, in accordance with ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ ordered by Secretary Rumsfeld himself that legally constitute torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, in blatant violation of the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1984 Convention Against Torture and the 1977 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – to all of which the United States is a party. Under international humanitarian treaty and customary law, and as re-stated in German law, these acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment constitute war crimes.
Bill Maher joked on his program Friday it’s really serious when the Germans charge a man with war crimes. This is quite unfair to present day Germans, but it does explain why Germany claims universal jurisdiction in such cases – anything less would be a failure of modern German culture to come to grips with its past. So in 2004, a case was brought against Mr. Rumsfeld, but under pressure from the White House, it was dropped. The prosecutor’s office at the time said, “there are no indications that the authorities and courts of the United States of America are refraining, or would refrain, from penal measures as regards the violations described in the complaint.” The Military Commissions Act of 2006 immunizes all American officials under American law, suggesting that this is no longer true.
One shouldn’t expect to see the field marshal in a glass booth a la Eichmann any time soon, however. Not because the complaint is invalid but because there is no way the US government would ever let a former secretary of defense find himself in a court room to answer such charges. War crimes trials are for leaders of small countries or for individuals who served regimes that don’t exist anymore. Field Marshal Donald von Rumsfeld falls into neither class -- a technicality perhaps, but a significant one.
© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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