News Break: Germans to try Rumsfeld et al for War Crimes? Berkeley City Council Backs Measure

According to a report by the German magazine Der Spiegel, Berlin-based lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck has filed a lawsuit against 14 people, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. It is a 384-page document (full text: part one | part two), currently in a holding pattern in Germany's federal prosecutor's office, and it says these US leaders, according to Der Spiegel, "violated both international law and the United Nations Convention Against Torture in Abu Ghraib prison and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp."

Jurisdiction in international law has long been vexing, and Kalek is apparently basing his lawsuit on the 2002 Code of Crimes Against International Law, under which, according to the Der Spiegel report, "Germany's chief prosecutor is entitled to prosecute individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes--irrespective of the location of the defendant or plaintiff, the place where the crime was carried out or the nationality of the persons involved."

Reportedly, German authorities are not pleased with the action. In diplomatic terms, this is bad news for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who of late has been working to improve her country's relationship with the US.

Kalek, from Ulrike Demmer's Der Spiegel report, "We're not so arrogant as to think we can put Rumsfeld behind bars on the first attempt." Kalek goes on to say, "Rumsfeld should know he will be held responsible for his acts even though he is currently on safe territory."

In the US, the Berkeley, Calif. city council last month passed a resolution in support of Kalek's lawsuit. Additionally, while some have been convicted in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, a significant amount of work by legal scholars has traced the paper trail to the upper echelons of the administration, notably in an exhaustive tome entitled The Torture Papers.

Comments

[rip]

Yale University's Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, released a report about human rights abuses inside the Iran, detailing the Mykonos killings in Berlin in 1992. The report details this gangland style execution on German soil was ordered at the highest levels of the Iranian state - and that two of the killers are probably even now residing safely inside Iran. Meanwhile, Der Speigel declined to report on the story in consideration of possible hurt feelings of Muslims in Germany.

[PeterR]

To read this, one would think that the NY Inquirer is actually reporting new information on this 2 year old story. In fact, the report contains no new news on the subject at all and the editor made no attempt to clarify the German Courts decision, and whether der Spiegel/anti American Wolfgang Kaleck was right. A casual reader is left to surmise that the sloppy reporting is an indictment of either ignorance of fact - or wishful thinking.

[bruce]

berkeley city council actually passed 2 resolutions last month. the other was defending the right to get blow jobs in phone booths. the resolution said that they had a right to privacy. 9-0 with 2 abstensions.

[zippy]

care to guess where the two abstainers were?

[bruce]

execrising their newfound freedom of privacy in a phone booth ?

[George]

One of the terrorists that Wolfgang Kaleck is defending was filmed cutting off the heads of 20 Kurds in 1999. No doubt, he was an innocient bystander arrested by the Americans. This Kaleck is a communist, more importantly a joke.

[joesephus]

"Fake, but accurate". This type of reporting is a long standing ploy of anti American publishers. Nothing more than another "turd floating in the punchbowl". Enlightening, isn't it?

[joesephus]

"Fake, but accurate". This type of reporting is a long standing ploy of anti American publishers. Nothing more than another "turd floating in the punchbowl". Enlightening, isn't it?

[josephus]

Germans to try Rumsfeld et al for War Crimes? Well, er, no they're not. but hey, whats wrong with a little lie to get you to read this?? are lies bad?? We here at nyi don't think so.

[Ron]

A rather pathetic and transparent example of an editor staging information so as to be most damaging to an administration he doesn't like. Downplaying & omitting the full context shows wanting hyperbole over fact. In trying to paint it as an example of administration dishonesty, the NYInquirer instead reveals its own. You are out of your league here......better to stick with masturbation stories.

[Beatrice]

The only place around here with a thickening plot is the masturbation section.

[Dnebiviza]

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