Wednesday, November 16, 2005



A warning for America's torturers

Philippe Sands, international law expert and author of Lawless World, has a simple warning for members of the Bush Administration involved in crafting or implementing America's policies of rendition, torture, and black prisons: don't travel. Because if they do, they may find themselves in the same situation as former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet - arrested in a foreign country, awaiting extradition to Spain or some other country with universal jurisdiction for war crimes, on charges of complicity in crimes of torture. Henry Kissinger is already in this situation, and both Donald Rumsfeld and Lt General Ricardo Sanchez are under investigation in Germany. But as the truth about these policies comes out, the net will widen - to include policymakers in the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA and State Department, as well as the field commanders and soldiers who carried out the orders, the CIA operatives who abducted the victims, and the pilots who flew the planes. If their name is in any document, or if they can be identified in any other way, they will face the risk of arrest, extradition, trial and punishment, for the rest of their lives. America may refuse to clean up its own act; the next administration (or the one after that) may refuse to investigate and try these criminals. But the world will not forget, and if America refuses to do its duty in prosecuting those responsible for torture, we will do it for them.

4 comments:

Just wait until they are out of government. Until then we will kiss their asses like we do with any leader of a nation.

Posted by Genius : 11/17/2005 07:37:00 AM

I hate to be a cynic, but here is what is actually going to happen: The Bush administration will go, there will be a huge scandal over this Iraq war that will see the compliant US media turn like jackels on the now out of power and powerless Bushites, and many senior officials of this administration tried and/or let off with a slap with a wet bus ticket (but the scandal will have destroyed their credibility and the last vestiges of credibility of the United States with it).
One poor bugger middling official will carry the can for them all and get a gigantic sentence as a catharis for the Amercan conscience.

As part of the above process, whatever administration is running Washington will bully the rest of the world into promising not to prosecute the likes of Rumsfeld and co, on the basis that the US will react in a very hostile manner to such an unfriendly act as arresting Rummy and on the basis of US sovereign immunity - the irony of which will be completely lost to right wing bloggers.

Posted by Anonymous : 11/17/2005 09:11:00 AM

Couldn't have said it better myself Anon.

Posted by Anonymous : 11/19/2005 10:04:00 AM

You have to be revolted by the sick irony of an ostensibly Christian president being the commander in chief of a government agency that crucifies people.

Pontius Pilate, thy spirit lives, because I'd pay money that Bush will wash his hands of this.

This really is evil.

Posted by Muerk : 11/24/2005 06:10:00 PM