Germans Asked To Prosecute Rumsfeld

Time Magazine is reporting that court papers will be filed in a German court next week, asking Germany's top prosecutor to investigate and file criminal charges against Donald Rumsfeld for his role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo. The plaintiffs filing the court papers are 11 Iraqi ex-prisoners of Abu Ghraib, and a Saudi that was held and tortured at Guantanamo.

The plaintiffs are asking for the charges in Germany because German law has something called "universal juristiction", which allows them to prosecute war crimes no matter where they occur.

The plaintiffs said if charges are brought, one of their star witnesses would be Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who at one time was in charge of all the military prisons in Iraq. Karpinski has attached her written statement to the court papers to be filed. She says, "It was clear the knowledge and responsibility [for what happened at Abu Ghraib] goes all the way to the top of the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."

The plaintiffs are also naming some other American civilian and military officials. They are:

Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorney General

George Tenet, former CIA Director

Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence

Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney General

John Yoo, former Assistant Attorney General

William James Haynes II, General Counsel for the Department of Defense

David S. Addington, Cheney's Chief of Staff

General Ricardo Sanchez, former top Army official in Iraq

General Geoffery Miller, former commander at Guantanamo

Major General Walter Wojdakowski, senior Iraq commander

Colonel Thomas Pappas, former head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib


Personally, I don't like the idea of a foreign court trying Americans. However, I do believe that many, if not all, of these men are guilty of war crimes. If we were truly a country that cared about human rights, we would deal with this problem ourselves.