and Investigated
By Bob Dart
05/26/05
"<http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/11742549.htm>Cox
News" - -
WASHINGTON - Amnesty International USA urged foreign
governments Wednesday to use international law to
investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other alleged
American "architects of torture" at Abu Ghraib,
Guantanamo Bay and other prisons
where detainees suspected of ties to terrorist groups
have been interrogated.
"If those investigations support prosecution, the
governments should arrest any official who enters
their territory and begin legal proceedings
against them," said William Shulz, executive director
of the U.S. branch of the international human rights
agency.
In its annual report on "The State of the World's
Human Rights," Amnesty International said the U.S.
Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "has become
the gulag of our times" and accused U.S. officials of
flaunting international law in their treatment of
detainees.
There is no statute of limitations on crimes such as
torture, Shulz said.
So for years to come, the director warned, "the
apparent high-level architects of torture should think
twice before planning their next vacation to places
like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may
find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet
famously did in London in 1998."
Gen. Pinochet, a former dictator of Chile, was
arrested on an international warrant issued by a
Spanish judge while Pinochet was in England
receiving medical treatment.
Charged with torturing Spanish citizens in Chile, he
was held under house arrest in England for more than a
year but eventually returned to his
homeland and escaped an international trial.
If the United States "continues to shirk its
responsibility" of investigating allegations of abuse
to the top of the chain of command, Shulz said,
foreign governments should uphold their obligations
under international law by investigating all senior
U.S. officials involved.
Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary,
called the charges "unsupported by the facts."
The well-publicized abuses of detainees have been a
"stain on the image of the United States abroad," he
conceded, but the exposures only reinforced
the administration's commitment to human rights.
"We hold people accountable when there is abuse," he
said.
Amnesty International's demand for international
action came as a private activist group that spans the
ideological spectrum called for President Bush and
Congress to appoint an independent, bipartisan panel,
modeled after the Sept. 11 commission, to investigate
the "various allegations of abuse of terrorist
suspects."
The group calling for appointment of such a commission
ranged from former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., American
Conservative Union Chairman David Keene and
former Rep. Mickey Edwards, R-Okla., on the right to
Thomas Pickering, the former U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations, and Morton Halperin of the
Center for American Progress on the left.
Pickering said his conversations during recent
international travels confirmed the damage that
prisoner abuse charges have done to the nation,
disheartening our allies and giving ammunition to our
enemies.
But others on the panel said they were not as
concerned about foreign reaction as with domestic
values.
"We should be opposed to this (torture) because of who
we are -- not what they think," said Keene.
In issuing the Amnesty International report, Shulz
specifically named those he regarded as potential
"high-level torture architects."
In addition to Rumsfeld and Gonzales, they included
former CIA Director George Tenet; Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, the former commander of U.S. forces
in Iraq; Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander of the
Joint Task Force Guantanamo; and Douglas Feith, the
under secretary of defense for policy.
Shulz said the Geneva Conventions and the Convention
Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading
Treatment legally bind the countries
that have signed them to exercise "universal
jurisdiction" on people suspected of violations.
Certain crimes, including torture, amount to offenses
against all of humanity so all countries have a
responsibility to investigate and prosecute people
responsible for such crimes, he said.
source:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8956.htm
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