35 Countries Denied Arms Aid
US retaliates over war crime immunity demand
By Bill Vann
5 July 2003
In a further bid to place US officials and military personnel beyond the
reach of war crimes prosecution, the Bush administration cut off
military aid to about 35 countries that failed to meet a June 30
deadline for signing bilateral immunity agreements.
Washington had demanded such deals with all the countries that have
signed on to the International Criminal Court (ICC), using the threat of
the aid cutoff to impose its will on foreign powers that are considered
US allies. At least 90 have reportedly resisted the US
blackmail effort. The Bush administration claims that 51 nations have
signed immunity agreements, seven of them "secretly."
The administration also issued "waivers" for the 19 members of NATO as
well as US-designated "major non-NATO allies," including Argentina,
Australia, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, New Zealand, South
Korea and the Philippines. Also exempted was Taiwan.
The American Servicemen's Protection Act of 2002, a measure passed by
Congress, mandated the aid cutoff. The measure includes what some have
dubbed the "Hague invasion clause," a section that authorizes the US
military to use "every possible means" to free any US citizen jailed on
the orders of the ICC, which is based in The Hague.
The US action only underscores in the crudest possible fashion that the
only form of international justice Washington will permit is that of the
victor against the vanquished, of the major imperialist powers against
the impoverished and oppressed nations.
This principle is already incorporated in the treaty governing the ICC's
jurisdiction, which allows any country to try its own citizens if they
are accused of war crimes and reserves ICC proceedings for those cases
in which a defendant's country is unwilling or unable to do so. Even if
a US official or military officer were accused of war crimes before the
tribunal, the case would immediately be referred to the American courts.
Washington's belligerent attitude toward the international court is
bound up with the unilateral foreign and military policy elaborated by
the Bush administration. It refuses to recognize any international law
or treaty that even suggests a limitation on the US "right" to carry out
military actions, occupations and repression anywhere on the face of the
planet.
The aid cutoff is only Washington's latest attack on the ICC, which was
established by the 1998 Statute of Rome and was inaugurated in March of
this year. While the Clinton administration signed the treaty creating
the court, it failed to seek its ratification. The Bush administration
took the virtually unprecedented diplomatic action of rescinding the
signature.
The total amount of military aid withdrawn is only $47 million. This
relatively small sum reflects the fact that most of the aid money for
this year has already been disbursed. The real impact will come next
year if either the affected governments do not capitulate, or Washington
fails to rescind its sanctions. For example, Colombia, where the US is
deeply involved in a counterinsurgency war that includes the deployment
of US military advisors, saw just $5 million withheld. But it faces a
potential loss of $130 million beginning next year. Far more money is
funneled into the Colombian security forces through other programs.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer insisted that the Bush
administration had no intention of compromising. "This is a reflection
of the United States priorities to protect the men and women in our
military."
Actually, the immunity deals sought by Washington protect not only
uniformed soldiers and government officials, but all US citizens as well
as foreign contractors working for the Pentagon or other US agencies.
Presumably, any American mercenary engaged in war crimes in another
country would be immune from prosecution, as would any foreign mercenary
working under the direction of US military or intelligence.
South Africa, where Bush is scheduled to visit Tuesday, was among the
nations punished for not signing an immunity agreement. Other countries
losing aid include Brazil, and several countries seeking NATO membership
such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia and Slovenia.
As a region, Latin America was among the hardest hit by the aid cutoff.
In addition to Brazil and Colombia, Washington imposed sanctions on
Belize, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. In
the Caribbean, it also halted aid to Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados,
Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.
In Ecuador, Carlos Vallejo, the chairman of the parliamentary
international affairs committee, declared that Ecuador should retaliate
by demanding the US withdraw its forces from the Manta air base.
Venezuela's government said the US action did not affect it, as it has
long since stopped receiving military aid from Washington, which has
been involved in military coup attempts against the government of
President Hugo Chavez.
In Uruguay, Foreign Minister Didier Opertti said that the "United States
has the Pinochet syndrome," referring to the former Chilean dictator who
was held in Britain in 1998-99 on an ultimately unsuccessful extradition
request from Spain to try him for the disappearance and killing of its
citizens in Chile.
The Brazilian government said simply that any immunity agreement with
the US would be contrary "to the letter and spirit of the Statute of
Rome [which created the ICC] and would strike against the juridical
equality of states."
For its part, the right-wing regime of Alvaro Uribe expressed confidence
that it would work out an arrangement with its sponsor in Washington. A
senior State Department official, Philip Chicola, echoed this view,
declaring, "I believe we are nearing an understanding... Let's be clear,
the government of this country is our friend, ally and partner."
The US government has shown itself increasingly sensitive to even the
remotest possibility that its personnel could be subjected to
international justice. These concerns, which border on paranoia, erupted
last month with the threat by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to
boycott NATO meetings in Brussels and withhold money from the alliance
in retaliation for an indictment brought against Gen. Tommy Franks, the
commander of US forces in Iraq, on behalf of 19 Iraqi victims of the US
invasion.
The Belgian government had already amended the law criticized by
Washington, allowing it to dismiss cases it deemed politically motivated
or transfer them to courts in the defendant's home country. It had also
dismissed the case brought against Franks. This was not enough, however,
as the US demanded that the Belgian government make it impossible for
any charges to be brought in the first place.
Bowing to US pressure, the Belgian government agreed to amend the law
once again, limiting its jurisdiction to cases in which Belgian citizens
or residents are directly involved. It promised other legal guarantees
that would prevent US personnel from being indicted.
The tirade over the Belgian case was clearly aimed at a world audience.
The Bush administration was reiterating that it will not tolerate any
such pursuit of those accused of war crimes, unless it is doing the
pursuing for its own geopolitical interests.
During the same weeks that it was browbeating the Belgians, Washington
pushed through a vote on the United Nations Security Council to
extending the exemption of all military personnel serving in UN
peacekeeping operations from prosecution by the ICC.
Significantly, in drafting their original law, the Belgians cited the
decision of a US federal court as the precedent. It was the Demjanjuk
decision on Israel's request for the extradition of John Demjanjuk,
accused of being the Ukrainian death camp guard known as Treblinka's
"Ivan the Terrible," for prosecution in Israel. He was convicted,
sentenced to death and subsequently acquitted on appeal based on claims
that, though he was a camp guard, he was not the one identified in the
original indictment.
The US court decision read: "The universality principle is based on the
assumption that some crimes are so universally condemned that the
perpetrators are the enemies of all peoples. Therefore, any nation which
has custody of the perpetrators may punish them according to its law
applicable to such offenses... Israel or any other nation...may
undertake to vindicate the interest of all nations by seeking to punish
the perpetrators of such crimes."
Washington recognizes no such "universality principle" today, and is
quite conscious that its use of overwhelming military force to invade
and occupy Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries will inevitably involve
it in actions that are universally recognized as war crimes.
It is also worth noting that the US provocations over Belgium and the
ICC coincide with the decision of the Mexican authorities to extradite
former Argentine navy captain Ricardo Miguel Cavallo to Spain to face
charges of crimes against humanity.
Cavallo, one of the chief torturers at the Argentine Navy's notorious
Superior School of Mechanics torture center is charged with several
murders, and 227 forced disappearances, including those of 16 pregnant
women who are presumed to have been murdered after their babies were
born and taken from them. He is also charged in 21 cases of torture.
He will be the first figure of a Latin American military dictatorship to
be tried in a third country after being arrested in a second country
where he faced no legal charges. (Cavallo was a wealthy businessman in
Mexico, apparently as a result of his expropriating the property of his
victims. While there, he was appointed as the head of the national
vehicle registry under the previous government of Ernesto Zedillo.) The
judge who sought the extradition, Baltasar Garzon, was the one who
attempted to compel Britain to do the same thing with Pinochet.
Clearly, the US exerted what pressure it could to block the extradition
of Pinochet, and, in the case of Cavallo, is undoubtedly doing the same.
With the ongoing campaign of repression and massacres in Iraq, it cannot
easily accept such precedents.
In Spain, the state prosecutor of Jose Maria Aznar's rightist
government-one of the Bush administration's most prominent European
allies in the war on Iraq-has joined with the defense attorneys for the
captured torturer, insisting that he be freed on the grounds that the
Spanish courts have no jurisdiction to try the case.
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