From PressTV:
Full details from the Foreign Policy Journal:
Kuala Lumpur — It’s official; George W Bush is a war criminal.
In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Fri) found guilty of war crimes.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.
The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
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From Mathaba.Net:
KUALA LUMPUR, 12 April 2012 The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal will be hearing the second charge of Crime of Torture and War Crimes against former U.S. President George W. Bush and his associates namely Richard Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, former Defence Secretary, Alberto Gonzales, then Counsel to President Bush, David Addington, then General Counsel to the Vice-President, William Haynes II, then General Counsel to Secretary of Defense, Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and John Choon Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General. The charge reads as follows:
The Accused persons had committed the Crime of Torture and War Crimes, in that:
The Accused persons had wilfully participated in the formulation of executive orders and directives to exclude the applicability of all international conventions and laws, namely the Convention against Torture 1984, Geneva Convention III 1949, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter in relation to the war launched by the U.S. and others in Afghanistan (in 2001) and in Iraq (in March 2003); Additionally, and/or on the basis and in furtherance thereof, the Accused persons authorised, or connived in, the commission of acts of torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment against victims in violation of international law, treaties and conventions including the Convention against Torture 1984 and the Geneva Conventions, including Geneva Convention III 1949.
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The trial in Kuala Lumpur of Bush and Blair for war crimes will go on despite absence of response from both leaders.
From the New Straits Times:
The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal on Saturday will try former United States president George W. Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair on a charge of committing crimes against peace during the Iraq War.
Bush and seven top US officials who served under him will also face a separate charge of crimes of torture and war crimes at the tribunal.
Read more.
On November 19-22, 2011, the trial of George W. Bush (former U.S. President) and Anthony L. Blair (former British Prime Minister) will be held in Kuala Lumpur. This is the first time that war crimes charges will be heard against the two former heads of state in compliance with proper legal process.
Read more at Mathaba.net.
From the Huffington Post:
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Colin Powell during his tenure as secretary of state, tells ABC News that former vice president Dick Cheney “fears being tried as a war criminal.”
The suggestion from Wilkerson coincides with the release of Cheney’s new book, In My Time, which came out on Tuesday.
Wilkerson signaled to Democracy Now! that he believes Bush administration officials should be held accountable when it comes to matters such as the authorization of warrantless wiretapping and the use of harsh interrogation techniques for terror suspects.
“And I’d be willing to testify, and I’d be willing to take any punishment I’m due,” he said. “And I think that explains the aggressiveness, to a large extent, of the Cheney attack and of the words like ‘exploding heads all over Washington.’ This is a book written out of fear, fear that one day someone will ‘Pinochet’ Dick Cheney.’
For more and to see a video of Wilkerson speaking with Democracy Now!, click here.
Antiwar Radio interviews Francis A. Boyle
Antiwar Radio‘s Scott Horton once again interviews Professor Boyle. In this interview, Professor Boyle discusses how in 2004 the FBI and CIA tried to make him an informant to betray his Arab and Muslim legal clients; how his refusal landed him on several terrorism watch lists; the list of five thousand Arabs, Muslims and their sympathizers that the FBI interrogated and attempted to “turn;” the US government’s habit of (and plans regarding) rounding up entire groups of Americans –- Constitution notwithstanding — to send off to prison camps during crises; and why we already live in a police state, which could very well transform into a military dictatorship should there be one more major terrorist attack.
As reported by the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge is allowing an Army veteran who says he was imprisoned unjustly and tortured by the U.S. military in Iraq to sue former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld personally for damages.
The veteran’s identity is withheld in court filings, but he worked for an American contracting company as a translator for the Marines in the volatile Anbar province before being detained for nine months at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility near the Baghdad airport dedicated to holding “high-value” detainees.
The government says he was suspected of helping get classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces enter Iraq. But he was never charged with a crime and says he never broke the law.
Read the full article here.
Translated text of a recent interview with Thiago Barrozo.
Click here for the original.
The decision of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants against Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi, his son Saif al-Islam and the country’s intelligence chief, Abdullah Al Sanussi, raised the spirits of the White House and received immediate support from the U.S. government. Stretching the strong rejection of the public to the damage and costs of a new battlefront, the United States have wagered on international bodies to fight the war that, according to President Barack Obama, does not exist.
The strategy, however, can turn into a bomerangue. The statement is the Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Francis Boyle. In January 2010, Boyle filed a request to the ICC investigation against former President George W. Bush, former President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, charged with defending a policy crimes against humanity. “The strengthening of the authority of the ICC could become a ghost to haunt the White House, as the Obama administration has the same policy of forced disappearance and torture of the Bush administration,” Boyle said in an interview with the Ladies Friends.
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From the IPA’s press release yesterday concerning Obama administration support of ICC arrest warrants for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
The Washington Times editorialized Tuesday: The Obama administration is backing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. It is a dangerous precedent for the United States to rush to affirm the jurisdiction of this relatively new international body, particularly with a president whose counterterrorism strategy has made his name synonymous with ‘targeted killing.’ On Monday, ICC judges granted warrants for Col. Gadhafi, his son Seif al-Islam and regime intelligence chief Abdullah Sanussi. …
“In 2010, American law professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, filed a complaint with the ICC prosecutor against Mr. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales for ‘their criminal policy and practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ perpetrated upon about 100 human beings.’ The dirty little secret is that renditions have continued — and some sources say increased — under the Obama administration. This, combined with the questionable legality of drone strikes under international law, could come back to haunt the White House if the ICC continues to expand its authority.”
[Note: Obama, at his news conference today, made reference to the ICC case and repeated allegations of the Gadhafi regime using rape as a weapon. BBC reports: "Donatella Rovera from Amnesty International, who has spent three months in the country, said the organization did not have evidence of cases of rape so far."]
