Lawyers for four former detainees of Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison said last night they planned to ask a German prosecutor to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials for war crimes under a German law adopted in conjunction with the International Criminal Court.
The four Iraqis contend U.S. authorities have failed to review whether superiors bear criminal responsibility for the abuse at the prison that was disclosed this year. Several U.S. investigations of the scandal have cited failures of leadership in general terms, but so far, only low-ranking soldiers have been charged or convicted.
"There's been no serious investigation of the chain of command or the higher-ups in the torture scandal in the United States," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York advocacy group that brought the complaint on behalf of the Iraqis. "They all pull punches."
The Defense Department declined to comment on the complaint, which officials there said they hadn't seen. A spokesman said the Pentagon takes abuse allegations seriously.
"Thus far, there have been eight major inquiries based on more than 950 interviews and 15,000 pages of information," said a spokesman, Lt. Col. John Skinner. Criminal investigations remain under way "to ensure those who've engaged in misconduct are held accountable," he said, but the abuse "was not the result of U.S. policy."
As a practical matter, the complaint is unlikely to prompt any immediate repercussions for U.S. officials. Legal, political and diplomatic factors could lead German prosecutors to dismiss the matter outright or defer to U.S. authorities. Lawyers for the Iraqis argue the complaint could help pressure the U.S. to look further up the chain of command, something some Democratic lawmakers and other critics within the U.S. also have urged.
Besides Mr. Rumsfeld, the complaint, to be presented to the German federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe, names George Tenet, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone; Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who recently was reassigned to the Pentagon from Iraq; Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski, the former commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade; and Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum, a former commander of that brigade's 320th M.P. Battalion. Several others named are U.S. military officers based in Germany: Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Col. Thomas Pappas and Lt. Col. Stephen Jordan.
Wolfgang Kaleck, a Berlin lawyer representing the Iraqis, said the German law extends to German courts' jurisdiction for war crimes, including torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, committed anywhere when an affected country fails to take action itself. Under command-responsibility doctrines dating to the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II, senior officials can be held responsible for failing to adequately supervise subordinates or prevent misconduct, even if they didn't specifically order the acts.
Page A6
|
To
send us your comments, questions, and suggestions click
here |