Free Republic

Universal jurisdiction refers to the power of a state to legislate, adjudicate, and punish any individual for war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide committed outside its borders, even when those crimes were not committed against that country or its citizens, and even if the accused is not its citizen. The idea is that anyone who commits such atrocious, internationally condemned crimes will not be able to find shelter or hide from judgment anywhere on the globe. Human rights organizations all over the world have been instrumental in the implementation of universal jurisdiction. This has contributed to the entry of...

Captured enemy combatants presented a problem for the United States from the very beginning of the war. Since the world had not in previous wars dealt with enemies such as these, legal ground had not been firmly established. To his credit President Bush did everything he could to determine the appropriate legal methods and practices that his administration could use. Guantanamo was chosen specifically as a result of seeking an appropriate solution to the problem of housing captured enemy. When those methods were later questioned President Bush cooperated with Congress and the courts to address legal points and get them...

"Here's what I think of the atom bombs. I think if you dropped an atom bomb fifteen miles offshore and you said, "The next one's coming and hitting you," then I would think it's okay. To drop it on a city, and kill a hundred thousand people. Yeah. I think that's criminal."

A follow-up to Wednesday night’s Kinsleyan gaffe: He’s sorry, he’s just not sure why he’s sorry. The closest we get to an explanation is that the decision to drop the bomb was “complicated,” but of course that’s why Cliff May brought it up — to draw a parallel with the decision to waterboard terrorists. The moral calculus about how far to go in roughing up jihadis to save how many lives is difficult, as was the calculus about how many lives would be saved in the long run by incinerating Japanese kids in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war....

It comes at about the 5:50 mark. Cliff May asks Stewart whether Truman's use of the atomic bomb was a war crime, Stewart ruminates and then responds with an unequivocal "yes." He's certainly not the only American who would take that view, but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse. Stewart repeats the charge...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- then the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -- was briefed on CIA interrogation techniques including waterboarding when they were begun in 2002. She was among the “Big Eight” present at the briefings -- the Senate and House leaders and chairmen and ranking members on both intelligence committees. Condemning the disclosure of the Justice Department legal opinions that detail the interrogation methods and the reasons they were legal at the time, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mi) wrote in the Wall Street Journal that, “It was not necessary to release details of the...

Remember that sections 8 and 6(b) of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively insulated government officials from liability for many of the violations of the War Crimes Act they might have committed during the period prior to 2006. Moreover, as Marty [Lederman, a Georgetown law professor and Balkinization blogger] has pointed out, there’s a strong argument that a later Justice Department would not prosecute people who reasonably relied on legal advice from a previous Justice Department. Perhaps the Justice Department could argue that the officials’ reliance was unreasonable, but that might be difficult to show.

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices. "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to...

Conyers to hold hearings on 'torture' memos By Jared Allen Posted: 04/21/09 06:07 PM [ET] House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) on Tuesday announced that he will soon hold hearings on the Bush administration’s legal memos justifying the use of numerous enhanced interrogation techniques. Conyers and other Democrats have labeled as torture the techniques explained in the memos, which provide a legal framework for the use of controversial interrogation practices such as waterboarding. President Obama recently declassified the memos written by Bush administration lawyers, which also detail for the first time a number of additional interrogation techniques approved for...

Obama not ruling out interrogation prosecutions 16 mins ago WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama Tuesday refused to close the door on prosecuting authors of Bush-era legal rationales for terror suspect interrogations, after offering immunity to CIA operatives involved. Obama made a distinction between the agents who carried out harsh interrogations permitted by the White House after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the legal officials which justified such methods. "With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters...

President Holds Open Door For Prosecutions of Bush Officials For Interrogation Policies, Truth Commission President Obama suggested today that it remained a possibility that the Justice Department might bring charges against officials of the Bush administration who devised harsh interrogation policies that some see as torture. He also suggested that if there is any sort of investigation into these past policies and practices, he would be more inclined to support an independent commission outside the typical congressional hearing process. Both statements represented breaks from previous White House statements on the matter. While the Bush-era memos providing legal justifications for enhanced...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials..."

Spanish prosecutors will seek criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales and five high-ranking Bush administration officials for sanctioning torture at Guantánamo. Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. Their decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday before the Spanish central criminal court, the Audencia Nacional, in Madrid. But the decision is likely to raise concerns with the human-rights community on...

It isn’t quite true these days that, to cite that over-quoted Monty Python sketch, “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” Case in point: Phillipe Sands, a British lawyer with Cherie Blair’s London firm. Last year, he published a book claiming that when the Bush administration came to an end, six of the president’s top-level advisors would face charges in international court. Sure enough, now Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon wants to charge those six senior policy advisors with “giving legal cover” to alleged torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. How will Obama respond?...

HANOI, Vietnam -- Sen. John McCain paid a quiet visit to the "Hanoi Hilton" prison where he was held for more than five years during the Vietnam War on Wednesday, making a few deadpan remarks as he made his way through dark corridors and past musty cells. McCain allowed reporters to follow him while he escorted Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina through the prison. -snip-

BAT AYIN, West Bank (AP) — An ax-wielding Palestinian militant went on a rampage Thursday in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, killing an Israeli 13-year-old and wounding a 7-year-old boy before fleeing the area. The attack posed an important test for Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has promised a firm hand against militants and expressed skepticism about prospects for peace. Government spokesman Mark Regev called it a "senseless act of brutality against innocents." Police and military units were searching for the attacker, according to police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld and army officials. Army forces were operating in...

If you wanted to find a single story that summed up everything wrong about the politics of the Arab and Islamic world, it is this little item from the New York Times about the Arab summit meeting in Doha, Qatar. As the Times puts it, the Arabs are divided about everything … except their support for Sudan’s Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the architect of a campaign of rape and murder in Darfur that earned him an indictment from the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. There may be a warrant for al-Bashir’s arrest sitting in...

In one of his last moves before leaving office March 13, then-Navy Secretary Donald Winter quietly awarded 19-term Democratic congressman John Murtha (Pa.) with the service's highest civilian honor. Citing Murtha's "courageous leadership, vision, and loyalty to the men and women of the Department of the Navy," Winter presented the influential chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's defense panel with the Navy's Distinguished Public Service Award, an honor bestowed in "those extraordinary cases where individuals have demonstrated exceptionally outstanding service of substantial and long term benefit to the Navy, Marine Corps, or the Department of the Navy as a whole,"...

The British Paper, The Guardian has committed the equivalent of an Journalistic pogrom. They published a report from a secret, unidentified woman who took a five day trip to Israel and Gaza and supposedly came up with examples of Israeli War Crimes. All the examples are without witnesses proof or context. They even have some convincing footage, in fact it is just as convincing as the Mohamed al Dura video. The British press is famous for spreading rumors of Israel Massacres, they fell for the Jenin hoax hook, line and sinker, they also fell for the disproved "attack" on the...

PARIS — Every time Radovan Karadzic, the onetime Bosnian Serb leader, appears in court on war crimes charges, he has hammered on one recurring claim: a senior American official pledged that he would never be standing there. The official, Richard C. Holbrooke, now a special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Obama administration, has repeatedly denied promising Mr. Karadzic immunity from prosecution in exchange for abandoning power after the Bosnian war......