Tortured Detainees Want Rumsfeld Tried For War Crimes

November 11th, 2006

Germany - A group of former detainees in the U.S. war on terror will ask German prosecutors next week to indict former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials for torture and other war crimes, a lawyer for the group said today.

Eleven Iraqis who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and other U.S.-run facilities in Iraq and a Saudi detainee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will file a criminal complaint on Nov. 14, said Michael Rattner of the Center for Constitutionals Rights.

"I don't think there's any doubt anymore that Rumsfeld and these guys authorized torture," Rattner said in a telephone interview. "I don't think that these facts are in issue." He said the criminal complaint will ask the German Federal Prosecutor to begin an investigation into what role Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other high-ranking U.S. officials had in torture and other prisoner abuses and to eventually charge them as war criminals.

Air Force Major Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, declined comment. "We have not seen the lawsuit itself" and "have nothing to provide," he said in a telephone interview.

Photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees sparked worldwide outrage when they were made public in April 2004. Rumsfeld and other members of President George W. Bush's administration said in congressional hearings in 2004 that prisoner abuses were confined largely to a group of soldiers on the night shift during a few months at Abu Ghraib prison.

The Guantanamo detainee is Abdullah Hamid al-Qahtani, who U.S. officials have said was to be the 20th Sept. 11 hijacker. Rattner said Al-Qahtani kept a "log of his torture" that includes weeks of sleep deprivation and being chained to the floor.

'Universal Jurisdiction' The suit will allege that the administration officials ordered, assisted or failed to prevent war crimes. German law provides "universal jurisdiction," allowing for prosecution of war crimes committed anywhere, said Rattner, who is in Berlin preparing to file case. "German law is very favorable." Former Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff David Addington, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and Colonel Thomas Pappas, the former top intelligence official in Iraq, will also be named in the suit, Rattner said.

He said about a dozen rights groups and individuals are joining the case, including the International Federation of Human Rights, the International Peace Bureau, a German lawyers' group and 1980 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina.

Karpinski's Role Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who commanded military police units at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, will take part in a news conference when the suit is filed next week, Rattner said.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights charged in a Nov. 2004 lawsuit in Germany that Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture of U.S. detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo by approving illegal interrogation techniques.

German prosecutors dropped the suit in February 2005, saying U.S. authorities were still investigating the charges. Rumsfeld refused to visit a security conference in Munich that month until the case was dropped, according to Rattner.

Offered to Resign Rumsfeld twice in 2004 offered his resignation over the prison abuses, he said in a CNN television interview last year. Rumsfeld resigned Nov. 8 and will be replaced by former CIA Director Robert Gates.

Now that Rumsfeld has resigned he no longer has the type of immunity typically given to heads of state and high-ranking government officials, Rattner said.

Since the Military Commissions Act signed by Bush last month gives immunity to U.S. officials in connection with detainee interrogations, the "German courts no longer have the excuse of saying these cases are going to be prosecuted in U.S. courts," Rattner said.