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Four
Iraqi victims of the Abu Ghraib torture also filed the complaint
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BERLIN,
November 30 (IslamOnline.net) - A US advocacy group will file war crimes
charges in Germany on Tuesday, November 30, against US Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials involved in the Abu Ghraib
torture scandal.
“German
law in this area is leading the world,” Peter Weiss, vice president of
the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a human
rights group, was quoted as saying in Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper's
Tuesday edition.
Those
to be named in the criminal complaint to be filed at Germany's Federal
Prosecutors Office by the group and four Iraqi victims include Rumsfeld,
CCR said on its website.
Former
Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet and former top US
commander in Iraq Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and eight other
officials are also named in the case.
The
Washington Post said Saturday, June 12, that Sanchez, gave
free reign to US officers in charge of Abu Ghraib
prison to adopt various torture and abuse tactics used at the U.S.
detention center in Guantanamo.
The
American New Yorker magazine also disclosed on May 16 that the
torture at Abu Ghraib was
Okayed by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Historic
Effort
The
US advocacy group called it a historic effort to hold high-ranking US
officials accountable for “brutal acts of torture including the widely
publicized abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib.”
The
four Iraqis were “victims of gruesome crimes including severe
beatings, sleep and food deprivation, hooding and sexual abuse.”
The
group called in an online petition on supporters for filing the criminal
complaint to write the German prosecutor in support of the
investigation.
“It
is critical that he hear from as many people as possible so he feels
worldwide pressure to pursue the case,” read the petition.
The
group said that under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction suspected
war criminals may be prosecuted irrespective of where they are located.
The
US came under heavy fire after the Abu Ghraib scandal was first revealed
by the American press and after major General Antonio Taguba said in a
report that he found evidence of "sadistic,
blatant and wanton criminal abuse" at the notorious
prison.
Cases
of abuse that were reported include a detainee who was shoved to the
ground before a soldier stepped on his head; a man was forced to stand
naked while a female interrogator made fun of his genitals, and a woman
who was repeatedly kicked by a military police guard.
Guantanamo
Petitions
CCR
is moving towards another effort to organize attorneys to file habeas
corpus petitions in the Washington federal court on behalf of the
detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
The
first five were filed on July 2, 2004. CCR currently represents 53
individuals who have been held at Guantanamo for over two years.
Responding
to the Supreme Court's historic decision on the rule of law in
Guantanamo Bay, CCR is spearheading the effort to get detainees their
day in court; the legal community is stepping up to provide the
detainees with the basic right to challenge their detention, the group
said on its website.
Amnesty
International condemned
in May last year US breaches of international law in Guantanamo under
the cloak of its so-called global war on terror.
The
New York-based Human Rights Watch had called on the Bush administration
to promptly investigate and address charges
of torture of the Guantanamo detainees or risk criminal
prosecution.
Also
in January last year, Amnesty asked Washington to resolve the "legal
limbo" of the detainees, slamming its continuing
defiance of international law.
The
accusations shed a light on the US record of human rights.
The
US and its allies were reported to have been running a wanton
global network of detention camps allowing the U.S.
to fly so-called terror suspects to other countries where they are
tortured for information.
