Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 8. April 2005 / Time Line April 8, 2005
Version 3.004/08/2005
Coop Radio: Gail Davidson & Leuren Moret: Are Bush & Co.
War Criminals?
http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/peaceinspaceorg/2005/04/coop_radio_gail.html
When: Monday April 11, 2005 at Noon – 1 PM Pacific Time
Where: Coop Radio: CFRO 102.7 FM Vancouver, B.C.
LISTEN LIVE: http://www.coopradio.org
Host: Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, Med
GUESTS: Gail Davidson is Co-Chair of Lawyers Against the War (LAW)
is an international group of lawyers and others who:support the use
of national and international law to settle disputes, prosecute
offenders, and protect human rights; and,oppose the illegal use of
force between states, in particular the illegal US-led use of force
against Afghanistan and Iraq; and,support the rule of law and
adherence to international law. LAW is affiliated with: Lawyers
Against the War in the United Kingdom, Lawyers for Peace in the
Netherlands and the Transnational Foundation for Peace and
Future Research (TFF), based in Sweden. LAW members reside in:
Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Kenya, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Syria, the United Kingdom
and the United States.
http://www.lawyersagainstthewar.org/
Leuren Moret was an Expert Witness at the International Criminal
Tribunal For Afghanistan At Tokyo. She is an independent scientist
and international expert on radiation and public health issues. She
is on the organizing committee of the World Committee on Radiation
Risk, an organization of independent radiation specialists,
including members of the Radiation Committee in the EU parliament,
the European Committee on Radiation Risk. She is an environmental
commissioner for the City of Berkeley. Ms. Moret earned her BS in
geology at U.C. Davis in 1968 and her MA in Near Eastern studies
from U.C. Berkeley in 1978. She has completed all but her
dissertation for a PhD in the geosciences at U.C. Davis. She has
traveled and conducted scientific research in 42 countries. She
wrote a scientific report on depleted uranium for the United
Nations sub commission investigating the illegality of depleted
uranium munitions. Marian Falk, a former Manhattan Project
scientist and retired insider at the Livermore Lab, who is an
expert on radioactive fallout and rainout, has trained her on
radiation issues.
Leuren Moret Testimony:
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-ICT13dec03.htm
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan:
Statement of Judges on December 14, 2003 The Third Session of the
Trial FACT-FINDINGS:
The Defendant Mr. George Walker Bush, President of the United
States is:
1) Guilty for crime of aggression
2) Guilty for war crimes in regard to military attacks against
civilians, including indiscriminate bombings, use of cluster bombs,
daisy cutter bombs, use of depleted uranium weaponry; guilty for
war crimes in regard to attacks against civilian objects; guilty
for war crimes in regard to treatments of prisoners of war and
civil detainees including abuses against prisoners of war in
Qara-i-Jhangi, inhuman and degrading treatments against prisoner of
war in transfer to Guantanamo Military Base, inhuman and degrading
treatments of prisoner of war as well as civil detainees in
Guantanamo Base, while charges of war crimes in terms with transfer
of prisoners of war and civil detainees in containers as well as
inhuman and degrading treatments in Sheberghan Prison Camp have not
been proved beyond reasonable doubt to a point that the Defendant
himself committed such crimes.
3) Guilty for crimes against humanity in regard to refugees, use of
depleted uranium weaponry, and inobservance of legal duty to
announce the noxious effects of depleted uranium weaponry as well
as negligence of safety measures for US military personnel.
http://afghan-tribunal.3005.net/english/2nd3rdjudgement.htm
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan
http://afghan-tribunal.3005.net/english/
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=9324
Are Bush & Co. War Criminals?
By Charlie Smith
Publish Date: 7-Apr-2005
Georgia Straight
Some lawyers claim the U.S. is guilty of crimes against
humanity
Serving tea in her kitchen in her home on Vancouver's West Side,
Gail Davidson seems more like a friendly neighbour than a wild-eyed
revolutionary. Davidson, a grandmother, laughs easily, enjoys
gardening, and speaks with a remarkable absence of egotism. In this
setting, it’s hard to comprehend that she is a key figure in
an international campaign to hold U.S. President George W. Bush
accountable for committing war crimes. But that has become her
central preoccupation.
Davidson, cochair of an international group called Lawyers Against
the War (LAW), says she is the only person in the world who has
ever laid criminal charges against Bush. On November 30, 2004,
Davidson walked into Vancouver Provincial Court and convinced a
justice of the peace to accept seven Criminal Code charges against
Bush while he was visiting Canada. She brought evidence to support
her contention that Bush should be held criminally responsible for
counselling, aiding, and abetting torture at the Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq and at a U.S. military jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Each
offence carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
On December 6, Provincial Court Judge William Kitchen ruled in an
in-camera hearing that those charges were a “nullity”.
In law, this means they never occurred even though they had been
approved. Kitchen permitted Davidson to reveal outside the
courtroom that his decision was based on Bush’s
“diplomatic immunity”.
LAW cochair Michael Mandel, a law professor at Osgoode Hall law
school at York University, claimed in a December 6 news release
that Kitchen’s decision was “irregular in procedure and
wrong in substance”. However, Michael Byers, a UBC expert in
global politics and international law, told the Georgia Straight
that a sitting head of state always has diplomatic immunity.
Davidson told the Straight that she has a “personal
commitment” to ensure that Bush, U.S. Vice-President Dick
Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and others are
eventually held accountable. “They have obviously committed a
wide range of international crimes of the most serious
nature,” Davidson said. “So I can't see how members of
the United Nations such as Canada can avoid prosecution of those
people and still maintain the integrity of their own legal
systems.”
Davidson is one of dozens of lawyers in different countries who are
pursuing Bush and other top U.S. officials through the courts and
at citizens’ tribunals. On the same day that Davidson filed
her private prosecution against Bush in Vancouver, the New
York–based Center for Constitutional Rights laid war-crimes
charges in Germany against Rumsfeld and nine other U.S. military
and civilian personnel. LAW joined this action.
In February, a German court threw out the case, rejecting
CCR’s contention that the U.S. is unwilling to prosecute its
own senior officials.
CCR president Michael Ratner described the ruling in a news release
as “a purely political decision” to enable Rumsfeld to
attend a security conference in Germany. Wolfgang Kaleck, a German
human-rights lawyer who handled the case for CCR, e-mailed the
Straight on April 5 saying he is appealing the ruling.
In addition, CCR has launched civil suits for military detainees
against Bush and other top officials in U.S. courts. The U.S.
Supreme Court ruled last June that U.S. courts may review
detentions of foreigners at Guantanamo Bay. Last month, U.S.
officials revealed that at least 108 people have died in U.S.
custody in Iraq and Afghanistan; 26 are confirmed or suspected
criminal homicides.
CCR is also representing Maher Arar in his lawsuit against former
U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft. Arar, a Syrian-Canadian,
alleged that in September 2002, U.S. officials yanked him off a
plane during a stopover at JFK Airport in New York. Arar claimed he
was driven to Maine, put on a plane to Jordan in the Middle East,
and driven to Syria, where he was tortured for a year in a tiny
cell. Arar has denied any connection to al-Qaeda.
U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road
From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (HarperCollins, 2004), reported that Bush
signed a decree creating an unacknowledged “special-access
program”. Over a three-year period, Hersh wrote, suspected
terrorists were transported under this program to secret prisons in
allied countries for harsh interrogations. Hersh’s sources
claimed that these interrogation techniques were introduced into
the Abu Ghraib prison.
Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights
First, a New York–based group, filed a 77-page civil suit
against Rumsfeld on behalf of eight military detainees in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The plaintiffs allege that Rumsfeld “formulated,
approved, directed or ratified the torture or other cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment…as part of a policy, pattern or
practice”.
Hina Shamsi, a New York lawyer with Human Rights First, told the
Straight that a great deal of work went into preparing this case.
Lawyers worked with human-rights and humanitarian organizations in
Iraq and Afghanistan to identify people who had been mistreated in
U.S. detention centres. Then the clients had to be interviewed.
The civil complaint alleges that, among others, Arkan M. Ali, a
26-year-old Iraqi, “suffered severe beatings to the point of
unconsciousness, stabbing and mutilation, isolation while naked and
hooded in a coffin-like box, prolonged sleep deprivation enforced
by beatings, deprivation of adequate food and water, mock execution
and death threats”.
The same lawsuit alleges that another Iraqi plaintiff, Sherzad
Kamal Khalid, 34, was also subjected to torture, including sexual
abuse involving assaults and threats of anal rape. A third,
high-school student Ali H., was allegedly dragged from one location
to another after surgery, forcefully ripping away the dressing and
exposing him to infection. Mehboob Ahmad, a 35-year-old Afghanistan
citizen, was allegedly beaten, suspended from the ceiling to cause
pain, and intimidated by a vicious dog.
The case centres on Rumsfeld’s decision to personally sign
off on “unlawful” interrogation techniques in December
2002. According to the civil complaint, Rumsfeld “expressly
permitted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and
tolerated or authorized torture”.
The so-called December Rumsfeld Techniques included the use of
“stress positions”, 20-hour interrogations, the removal
of clothing, and playing upon a detainee’s phobias to induce
stress—none of which are permitted in U.S. army manuals.
On January 15, 2003, Rumsfeld rescinded his blanket authorization.
The following April, he personally approved 24 techniques, which
included “sleep adjustment”, “dietary
adjustment”, and the display of false flags during
interrogation to trick detainees. Rumsfeld allegedly ensured that
harsher techniques could be used with his personal authorization.
The civil complaint doesn’t mention the special-access
program.
“Although there has been other lawsuits filed on behalf of
detainees for abuse suffered in U.S. detention facilities, none of
those have focused on the policy-making role of a top U.S.
official,” Shamsi said. “What we have done here is
connect the dots. We connect the creation of interrogation policies
and the beginning of abuse in Afghanistan with the migration of
those policies to Iraq.”
The plaintiffs’ 17-member legal team includes retired U.S.
rear admiral John Huston and retired U.S. brigadier-general James
Cullen, who are both lawyers. By press time, Rumsfeld had not filed
a response. The ACLU also filed civil suits last month against
three senior military officials beneath Rumsfeld, including
Lieut.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of U.S. military
forces in Iraq. The U.S. Department of Defense issued a news
release last month “vigorously” disputing the
plaintiffs’ allegations in all four cases against U.S.
officials: “No policies or procedures approved by the
Secretary of Defense were intended as, or could conceivably have
been interpreted as, a policy of abuse or condoning
abuse.”
UBC’s Byers said that this type of human-rights litigation in
national courts usually has little chance of success. “This
is a way of attracting media attention for the entirely noble
purpose of informing the public, and achieving change as a result
of public opinion,” he said.
The recent lawsuits did not target Bush, who enjoys extra
protection under the U.S. Constitution as that country’s
commander-in-chief. On December 21, 2004, the ACLU released a
Federal Bureau of Investigation e-mail suggesting that Bush issued
an executive order allowing interrogators to use military dogs and
permit “sensory deprivation through the use of
hoods”.
Meanwhile, citizens’ tribunals have issued their own rulings,
according to a recent LAW newsletter. Following two days of
hearings at the London School of Economics in November 2003, a
panel of eight international law professors decided there was
“sufficient evidence” for the International Criminal
Court prosecutor to investigate senior U.K. officials for crimes
against humanity committed in Iraq.
On December 12, 2004, a citizens’ tribunal comprising judges
from Korea, Japan, and Indonesia concluded that British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi
Jun’ichiro, and Philippines President Gloria Arroyo
“could be appropriately prosecuted”. The tribunal found
Bush guilty of “torture and maltreatment of Iraqi
detainees”.
“They came to the conclusion that Bush and the other people
indicted were guilty of a variety of crimes, number one, of course,
waging a war of aggression against Afghanistan,” Davidson
said. “Also, they were guilty of using weapons that were
prohibited by the laws of war. Some of the weapons that they cited
in their judgment were the use of depleted uranium, use of fuel-air
explosives such as daisy cutters, cluster bombs, and antipersonnel
mines.”
In a January 2005 article in Energy Bulletin, Dr. Chris Busby, the
U.K. representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk,
claimed that thousands of children all over the world will die from
the use of depleted uranium in modern weapons. He noted that
radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear-reactor accident reached
Wales.
Last October, the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet
published an epidemiological study that estimated anywhere between
8,000 and 194,000 Iraqis have died because of the war. The leader
of the study, Dr. Les Roberts, made a “conservative”
estimate of 100,000 war-related deaths, according to a BBC report.
Iraq Body Count, a British nongovernmental group that tabulates
media reports of civilian deaths in Iraq, stated that its number
approached 20,000 on the second-year anniversary of the
invasion.
Iraqi lawyers have demanded that Bush and Blair be charged as war
criminals. According to a March 23 story on www.islam-online.net/,
Fallujah bar association chairman Kamal Hamdoun claimed that U.S.
attacks on his city “are a blatant violation of the Geneva
Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which ban
the killing of the wounded, captives and civilians”.
The Nuremburg Tribunal that prosecuted Nazi leaders described a war
of aggression as the “supreme international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole”. LAW cochair Mandel, author of
How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage
and Crimes Against Humanity (UBC Press, 2004), claimed in his book
that the U.S. bore ultimate responsibility for all war-related
deaths in Iraq, including those caused by suicide bombers.
“Every death was a crime for which the leaders of the
invading coalition were personally, criminally responsible,”
Mandel wrote. “When General [Vince] Brooks said the soldiers
at the Karbala checkpoint were exercising their ‘inherent
right to self-defense’ he was talking nonsense: an aggressor
has no right to self-defense. If you break into someone’s
house and hold them at gunpoint and they try to kill you but you
kill them first, they’re guilty of nothing and you’re
guilty of murder.”
Human Rights Watch alleged in a 2004 report, The Road to Abu
Ghraib, that the Bush administration has “effectively sought
to re-write the Geneva Conventions of 1949 to eviscerate their most
important protections”. Those include freedom from
humiliating and degrading treatment, as well as from torture.
“The Pentagon and the Justice Department developed the
breathtaking legal argument that the president, as
commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was not bound by U.S. or
international laws prohibiting torture when acting to protect
national security, and that such laws might even be
unconstitutional if they hampered the war on terror,” it
stated.
U.S. law professor John Yoo, a former Bush administration Justice
Department lawyer, wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street
Journal last year claiming that the war with al-Qaeda is not
governed by the Geneva Conventions for two reasons: al-Qaeda is not
a state, and its members violate the laws of war by targeting
civilians. “While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to
protection under the conventions (since Afghanistan signed the
treaties), they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of
combat for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible
command structure, and obeying the laws of war,” Yoo
wrote.
Charles Gittings, a Washington state computer programmer, has filed
three “amicus curaie” (friend of the courts) briefs in
U.S. courts opposing this legal interpretation. During a recent
visit to Vancouver, Gittings told the Straight that he thinks the
Bush administration deliberately set out to do an end run around
the Geneva Conventions following the September 11 attacks. He cited
a November 13, 2001, presidential military order, which gave
Rumsfeld wide latitude in dealing with detainees.
Gittings has alleged that the treatment of detainees violates a
1996 U.S. federal statute banning war crimes. The law carries the
death penalty. When Gittings was asked what his goal is in pursuing
these cases, he replied: “George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, and everybody down the line in prison,
serving probably life sentences for their crimes,
actually.”
The ACLU and other groups have urged U.S. Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales to appoint an outside special counsel to investigate.
Gonzales, as the former White House counsel, wrote a memo in
January 2002 advising Bush that the Geneva Conventions didn’t
apply to enemy combatants in Afghanistan.
Gail Davidson isn’t holding out much hope that Bush
administration officials will ever be punished in the United
States, but she doesn’t rule out the possibility of it
occurring elsewhere. She said there is certainly enough latitude
under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act to
prosecute senior Bush administration officials if they visit Canada
after leaving office. However, charges under this act must be
approved by the attorney general of Canada, Irwin Cotler.
“I think we still have a great reluctance to see our kings
decrowned and prosecuted,” Davidson said. “How many
years after the Magna Carta are we? That was 1215. And we still
aren’t absolutely comfortable with somebody crying that the
king is naked.”
According to the Canada’s War Crimes Program annual report,
the policy is unequivocal: “Canada will not be a safe haven
for persons involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity or
other reprehensible acts.”
The annual report states that 2,608 persons complicit in war crimes
or crimes against humanity have been prevented from entering
Canada. Another 325 were deported.
So far, none of them have been high-ranking officials in the Bush
administration.
04/08/2005
CONTRACTS from the United States Department of Defense
Northrop Grumman Information Technology Inc., is being awarded a
$48,000,000 indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract to
provide for Target Exploitation Development and Support. The effort
will include making changes to improve performance and be more
responsive to operational needs; upgrade the current suite of
applications with new versions of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf and
newly developed Government-Off-The-Shelf software; support
integration testing with various operating environments Department
of Defense Intelligence Information System, Theater Battle
Management Core Systems, Joint Digital Intelligence Support System,
Global Command and Control System-Joint (GCCS-J), GCCS-Maritime,
GCCS Integrated Intelligence and Imagery, GCCS-Air Force (GCC-AF),
etc., and respond to user mission needs concerning the
initialization, operation, and management of the supported suite of
applications. The location of performance is Northrop Grumman
Defense, Bellevue, N.Y. No funds have been obligated. This work
will be complete by February 2011. Solicitation began August 2004
and negotiations were completed December 2004. The Air Force
Research Laboratory, Rome, N.Y., is the contracting activity
(FA8750-05-D-0037).
DynPort Vaccine Co., Frederick, Md., was awarded on April 6, 2005,
a $2,600,000 increment as part of a $19,621,828 cost-plus-fixed-fee
contract for Development of Plasma-Derived Human
Butyrylcholinesterase. Work will be performed in Los Angeles,
Calif. (54 percent), Frederick, Md. (37 percent), Charlotte, Va. (6
percent), and Richmond, Va. (3 percent), and is expected to be
completed by May 1, 2007. Contract funds will not expire at the end
of the current fiscal year. There were four bids solicited on Dec.
17, 2004, and three bids were received. The U.S. Army Space and
Missile Defense Command, Frederick, Md., is the contracting
activity (W9113M-05-C-0131).
04/08/2005
U.S. Establishing Limited Defense Against Long-Range
Missiles
Documents & Texts from the Washington File
U.S. Embassy, London
08 April 2005
The director of the Missile Defense Agency says the United States
is in the process of establishing a limited ability to defend
against long-range ballistic missiles.
Air Force Lieutenant General Henry Obering told the Senate Armed
Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee April 7 that the missile
defense program is “on the right track to deliver
multi-layered, integrated [defensive] capabilities to counter
current and emerging ballistic missile threats.”
Even though two recent flight tests produced a disappointing
result, he said “they were not, by any measure, serious
[technical] setbacks.” Despite these aborted tests, Obering
said agency officials still have confidence in “the
system’s basic design, its hit-to-kill effectiveness, and in
its inherent operational capability.”
Missile defense tests are gradually increasing in their degree of
complexity, the agency director said. “Missile defense
testing has evolved,” he said, “and will continue to
evolve based on results.” This evolving approach requires
continual testing and system improvements, Obering added.
The official said two more long-range interceptor tests would be
conducted in 2005. Obering made his comments during a hearing on
the Defense Department’s Fiscal Year 2006 budget request for
missile defenses. The $7.8 billion request for fiscal year 2006 is
about $1 billion less than fiscal year 2005; some of the additional
funding would be used to continue the upgrade of the radar station
in Thule, Greenland.
Reviewing accomplishments of the past year, Obering pointed to the
installation of six silo-based ground interceptors in Alaska and
another two in California. He also pointed to the now-completed
upgrade of the Cobra Dane radar in Alaska and the modification of
six Aegis ships for long-range surveillance and tracking support.
Another 10 interceptors are planned for Alaska by the end of this
year.
The missile defense system’s sensor program is also on track,
according to Obering. The powerful sea-based X-band radar will be
in place in Adak, Alaska, by December, he said, and the early
warning radar at the British Royal Air Force base in Fylingdales,
United Kingdom, will be ready by early next year so that it can
detect potential threats from the Middle East. Another
forward-based X-band radar will be deployed in 2007.
The United States is working with a range of allies on the missile
defense program, including Australia, Denmark, Japan, Israel, the
United Kingdom and Russia. “We are intent on continuing
U.S.-Russian collaboration and are now working on the development
of software that will be used to support the ongoing U.S.-Russian
Theater Missile Defense exercise program,” Obering said.
“A proposal for target missiles and radar cooperation is
being discussed within the U.S.-Russian Federation Missile Defense
Working Group,” he added.
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