, Lawyers defending detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will file a law suit in Germany on Tuesday against outgoing US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his alleged role in sanctioning torture.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) “will file a criminal complaint against former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld in a German Court,” the group said in a statement at the weekend.
The complaint requests the German Federal Prosecutor open an investigation and, ultimately, a criminal prosecution that will look into the responsibility of high-ranking US officials for authorizing war crimes in the context of the war on terror.
Former White House counsel and current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former director of the Central Intelligence George Tenet, and other high-ranking US officials are also charged in the complaint.
Former White House officials face investigation
The complaint will be brought on behalf of 12 victims — 11 Iraqi citizens who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and one Guantanamo detainee — and is being filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights, the Republican Attorneys' Association and others, all represented by Berlin Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck.
“The complaint is related to a 2004 complaint that was dismissed, but the new complaint is filed with substantial new evidence, new defendants and plaintiffs, a new German Federal Prosecutor and, most important, under new circumstances,” the center said in a statement.
It said “that include the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in the US granting officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for war crimes.”
Rumsfeld resigned on Wednesday in the wake of a congressional election, in which Republicans lost control of the US Congress. Though Rumsfeld had offered his resignation to the president twice, before and after a prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Bush stood by him up to the elections even as calls for his resignation mounted, including among Republicans.
Military resentment with Rumsfeld boiled over earlier this year into a public revolt by a string of retired former commanders who called for his resignation. But Rumsfeld, a consummate bureaucratic infighter, survived that challenge.
War crimes allegations to be heard in German court
The complaint that will be filed in Germany Tuesday 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, according to officials involved in the case.
They insist that the administration of George W. Bush has treated hundreds if not thousands of detainees in a coercive manner, in accordance with “harsh interrogation techniques” ordered by Rumsfeld in violation of international accords to which the United States is a party.
Under international law, which has been carried over into German law, these acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment constitute war crimes, the officials said.
The complaint will be filed under the Code of Crimes against International Law (CCIL), enacted by Germany in compliance with the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court in 2002, which Germany ratified. The United States, meanwhile, has refused to join the ICC.
Second move by CCR to prosecute Rumsfeld
The move to prosecute Rumsfeld is the second attempt by the New York-based CCR to bring a case against him in Germany.
Almost exactly two years ago, the CCR and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association along with five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US soldiers sought a probe in November 2004 by German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers, including Rumsfeld.
However. even though German law requires German prosecutors to investigate allegations of war crimes even if they are not committed by Germans or in Germans, German Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm said after almost three months of delibrations that US authorities bore the initial responsibility to do so.
Whether the same applies to the case brought on Tuesday remians to be seen.
Rumsfeld cancels NATO visit, meeting with Jung
In the light of his resignation, Rumsfeld has decided not to attend a NATO summit in Riga with President George W. Bush later this month, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday.
“It's the president's summit,” Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said, adding that Rumsfeld made the decision not to go.
Ruff corrected his earlier statement that Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England would go in Rumsfeld's place. “Who it will be from DoD (Department of Defense) is to be determined,” he said.
Rumsfeld, who resigned under fire last week, also has dropped from his schedule a pre-summit meeting in Washington with German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, Ruff said.
Rumsfeld will remain in his post until his successor, former CIA chief Robert Gates, is confirmed by the Senate, as expected.
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