Rumsfeld faces suit in Germany over alleged war crimes
FRANKFURT: Emboldened by his resignation last week, lawyers on Tuesday asked a German prosecutor to investigate Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on allegations of war crimes, stemming from the treatment of prisoners held in military jails in Iraq and Cuba.
The 220-page lawsuit, filed with the German federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe, names 11 other current and former American officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whom it claims either ordered the torture of prisoners or drafted laws that legitimated its use.
The suit, filed by civil-rights legal groups on behalf of 12 detainees - 11 Iraqis and a Saudi - asserts that they were subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, withholding of food, and sexual humiliation.
"Even if we never put Rumsfeld on trial in a German court, he will be harassed and publicly stamped as a torturer," said Wolfgang Kaleck, a Berlin attorney who filed the complaint, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, an American group, and other legal organizations.
Kaleck acknowledged that Germany would be reluctant to prosecute top U.S. officials. But he described a protracted legal procedure, during which he claimed that Rumsfeld might encounter trouble traveling to Germany or other European Union countries. Lawyers, he said, were also prepared to file complaints in Spain, Belgium, Argentina, and other countries.
For Rumsfeld, who is soon to lose the legal protection of his cabinet post, the prospect of foreign lawsuits could be a lingering irritant, should he decide to travel overseas as a private citizen, legal experts said.
A spokeswoman for the Pentagon, Cynthia Smith, declined to comment on the lawsuit because she had not seen it. The Pentagon denies torturing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad or in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The German prosecutor's office confirmed that it had received the document and said that it would begin reviewing it.
This is the second time lawyers have asked German prosecutors to investigate Rumsfeld. Prosecutors turned down a request in February 2005, saying that German courts should not assert jurisdiction in a case that would be better handled by prosecutors in the United States.
The lawyers contend that almost two years later, the United States has done little to investigate the role of senior Bush administration officials in the treatment of prisoners who are suspected terrorists.
Moreover, they contend, the Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress, will make it more difficult to prosecute U.S. officials at home for alleged violations of the Geneva Conventions. The act also provides retroactive immunity dating to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"We've had two years of complete inaction by the Bush administration," said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, which is supporting the case. "They've been very good at prosecuting lower-level officials, but done nothing to investigate high-level officials."
The lawsuit is ambitious, naming not just Rumsfeld and Gonzales, but also John Yoo and Jay Bybee, two former Justice Department lawyers who helped draft the Bush administration's legal arguments for treatment of suspected terrorists. It also names Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the military's former commander in Iraq. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who commanded Abu Ghraib and was punished for the abuses there, has offered to testify.
While the first lawsuit focused on Abu Ghraib, this one includes as a plaintiff Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi who is believed by many to be the "20th hijacker." A lawyer for Qahtani, who is being held in Guantánamo, said he was subjected to abuse, authorized by Rumsfeld.
The lawyers said they chose to file the suit in Germany for legal and political reasons. German law has the principle of universal jurisdiction, under which courts are entitled to prosecute people for war crimes, regardless of where they live or where the crimes were committed.
Germany, despite its opposition to the war in Iraq, also has a web of connections to the U.S. military. Several military officials implicated in the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib were stationed at U.S. bases in Germany; some returned to Germany after their tours in Iraq.
American air bases in Germany are used for military flights to and from Iraq. The German Parliament is investigating whether some of those flights included transfers of suspected terrorists to secret prisons - the so-called rendition program run by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Grupos de derechos humanos, en representación de 12 personas que estuvieron detenidas en Abu Ghraib y Guantánamo, presentaron sendas demandas por crímenes de guerra contra Donald Rumsfeld, el saliente Secretario de Defensa de los Estados Unidos, y varios otros funcionarios estadounidenses de la administración de George W. Bush en un tribunal alemán.

La demanda había sido interpuesta en el 2004 ante la misma corte pero fue rechazada porque el tribunal consideró que en los Estados Unidos había las leyes necesarias para tratar con ese tipo de delitos. Sin embargo, ante los cambios introducidos en la legislación estadounidense por la Ley de Comisiones Militares del 2006, la cual niega a los “combatientes ilegales” el derecho de interponer demandas ante las cortes estadounidenses y además modifica el Acta de Crímenes de Guerra de 1996, otorgando inmunidad retroactiva a cualquier funcionario que hubiese violado la versión original.

Ante las nuevas circunstancias los demandantes no tienen ningún recurso legal bajo la ley estadounidense y por lo tanto las razones dadas por la corte alemana para rechazar el caso ya no aplican.

Entre las personas acusadas se encuentran:
* George Tenet, ex director de la CIA acusado de crímenes de secuestro (rendición extraordinaria) y tortura.
* Stephen Cambone, Subsecretario de Defensa a cargo de recoger información de inteligencia, acusado de autorizar métodos de interrogación prohibidos por la Convención de Ginebra.
* Teniente General Ricardo Sánchez, quién fue el oficial de mas alto rango en Iraq cuando los casos de tortura en Abu Ghraib ocurrieron y no hizo nada para prevenir los abusos.
* General Walter Wojdakowski, quien autorizó el uso de perros para la interrogación de prisioneros y se negó a proporcionar información a la Cruz Roja información sobre los abusos.
* Mayor General Geoffrey Millar, comandante de Guantánamo cuando las quejas de abusos en esa base se presentaron, y quien después fue transferido para dirigir los programas de interrogación de prisioneros en Abu Ghraib.
* Coronel Thomas Pappas, a cargo de la prisión de Abu Ghraib, acusado de negligencia frente a los abusos y de fomentarlos activamente.
* Procurador General Alberto Gonzáles, quién envió el famoso ''“memo de tortura”'' proporcionando una opinión según la cual el Departamento de Justicia de los Estados Unidos no estaba sujeto a las convenciones de Ginebra y otras leyes y tratados internacionales, creando por lo tanto una cultura de despreocupación por los derechos humanos básicos en el trato de prisioneros.
* Asistente del Procurador General Jay Bybee, quien firmó el famoso ''“memo de tortura”'' pero fue exonerado por un juez estadounidense porque nunca lo leyó.
* Diputado Asistente del Procurador General John Yoo, quién escribió el ''“memo de tortura”'' y afirmó que el presidente de los Estados Unidos está por encima de la ley.
* William James Haynes, Consejero General del Departamento de Defensa quién argumentó que era legal el uso de perros como una técnica de interrogación en Guantánamo. Práctica que fue luego exportada a Iraq por el comandante de Guantánamo Geoffrey Miller.
* David Addington, Jefe de Personal de la Vicepresidencia, proponente de las ideas expresadas en el memo y defensor del punto de vista de los poderes extraordinarios del presidente en tiempos de guerra.


El presidente del grupo que presentó la demanda, el Centro para los Derechos Constitucionales de Nueva York, Michael Ratner, afirmó que ''"una de las metas era decir que un torturador es alguien a quien no puede otorgársele un refugio seguro"''. El abogado agregó que no podían interponer el recurso ante la Corte Penal Internacional pues EUA no pertenece a la misma, ni ante las Naciones Unidas, pues ese país tiene el poder de vetar cualquier investigación, dada su calidad de miembro permanente del Consejo de Seguridad