Posted on 05/27/2005 2:31:20 PM PDT by Dog
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 26 (OneWorld) - Rights watchdog Amnesty International urged foreign governments Wednesday to investigate and prosecute President George W. Bush much as they once did former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
''If the United States permits the architects of torture policy to get off scot-free, then other nations should step into the breach,'' William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement launching Amnesty's annual report.
Bush is among a dozen former or current U.S. officials who should be probed by foreign governments because Washington has failed to conduct ''a genuinely independent and comprehensive investigation'' of torture allegations against U.S. troops, commanders, and their civilian overseers, Schulz said.
Others on the Amnesty list of potential targets for investigation and prosecution include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief George Tenet.
''If the U.S. government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal,'' Schulz said.
''If those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them,'' he added. ''The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.''
Torture and other grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions amount to crimes against humanity and therefore all states have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute people responsible for them, Amnesty said in its 308-page report.
The U.S. government had yet to respond to the Amnesty report Wednesday but Rumsfeld and others on the Amnesty list have strongly denied that they condoned torture or did anything wrong.
Military officials and administration spokespersons have repeatedly and strenuously denied any policy promoting or tolerating torture and have said that allegations of abuses have resulted in dozens of investigations and a number of prosecutions and disciplinary actions.
Some 125 such cases have been filed, Amnesty acknowledged, but it said they have involved only soldiers and their superiors in the field and have yet to trace lines of responsibility back to Washington. Characterizing this as a refusal to investigate, Schulz said it amounted, in effect, to ''tolerance'' for torture and mistreatment and warned that it would destroy U.S. credibility when Washington assails human rights violations by other governments, like those in Syria or Egypt.
''It is the height of hypocrisy for the U.S. government itself to use the very torture techniques that it routinely condemns in other countries,'' Schulz said. ''When the U.S. government then calls upon foreign leaders to bring to justice those who commit or authorize human rights violations in their own countries, why should those foreign leaders listen?''
Amnesty's demand dovetails with a lawsuit by Human Rights First and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleging that Rumsfeld and others authorized torture-like interrogation techniques by U.S. troops at U.S bases in Afghanistan, Cuba, and Iraq.
It also buttresses a campaign by non-governmental organizations demanding a full-scale independent probe of the prisoner abuse scandals modeled on the 9/11 Commission. That effort has brought together rights advocates of a liberal as well as conservative stripe, former Republican lawmakers, and retired military officers.
The call for foreign governments to take action also coincided with the release by the ACLU Wednesday of documents that it said revealed that prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained that guards mistreated the Koran and in one incident, flushed a copy of the Muslim holy book down a toilet.
The ACLU said it obtained the documents under court order from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that they also provided accounts of beatings, sexual assaults, and hunger strikes.
The revelations follow Newsweek's recent retraction of a report saying that government investigators had corroborated almost identical incidents involving the Koran. The magazine ultimately withdrew its story saying a confidential government source no longer could be confirmed.
While Schulz singled out the United States as what he called ''a leading purveyor and practitioner'' of torture, Amnesty's report surveyed 149 countries and found that for the most part, 2004 had been a bleak year for human rights everywhere.
Amnesty also highlighted:
-- Darfur, where it said the Sudanese government generated a human rights catastrophe and the international community did too little too late to address the crisis, betraying hundreds of thousands of people.
-- Haiti, where it said individuals responsible for serious human rights violations were allowed to regain positions of power.
-- The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where it bemoaned the lack of an effective response to the systematic rape of tens of thousands of women, children, and babies.
-- Afghanistan, which it said slipped into a downward spiral of lawlessness and instability despite the holding of elections.
-- Reports that Russian soldiers had tortured, raped, and sexually abused Chechen women with impunity.
-- Zimbabwe, where it said the government manipulated food shortages for political reasons.
''The betrayal of human rights by governments was accompanied by increasingly horrific acts of terrorism as armed groups stooped to new levels of brutality,'' Amnesty added.
Yep. A good tactic would be to have a Whitehouse aide contact these AI types and let them know that the President would like to listen to their concerns, and offer to fly them to visit the President. Their swelled heads would start to hurt a little when they were delivered to President MUGABE in Zimbabwe. I would be fun to watch them try to talk their way out of HIS hospitality.
Yes, yes, yes, already, you can speak out! That doesn't mean you run crying when someone confronts you about the SUBSTANCE of what you're talking about!
If the US is such a horrible place civil-rights-wise, I can't understand why Amnesty's director (or whatever) wasn't packing up for someplace like Haiti, which he seems to think is so much better. I'm sure if asked that he'd pout about being free to speak his mind but as usual he would be missing the point--can't he notice that he can walk the streets freely, speak him mind on national television, and there are no repurcussions? Does he think he'd get away with that in the less-criminal nations he seems to think are around, like Zimbabwe?
sure if and when Castro, Mugabe, Gaddafi, Muburak, Assad Jr., the whole Chinese government, Saddam Hussein, the Mullahs of Iran, the whole Sudanese government are brought up on similar charges
Arrest the enemy. He is the enemy. And anyone who donates to this organization is the enemy.
William Shultz partial vitae
Dr. Schulz has served on the boards of People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Communitarian Network and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, among others. He is currently a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and the Board of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
The USA takes so much Crap from these types, It makes me sick.
If the world hates us so much, why are they trying to be like us. Maybe they are jealous of the fact we live so good.
We have done , and given so much to these A**holes, and they spit on us at every chance.
US OUT OF UN..............
They might as well be cannibals. Trying to eat the very man who is liberating millions in our time. Good-bye Amnesty International. You can't find the fruit for the jungle.
They complain about Guantanamo and say nothing about castro's stalinist dictatorship on the rest of the island?? And speaking of stalinist dictatorships, what about kim mentally-ill and his real gulags?
The old masturbators from the faraway hills...
Seen the unrated version of Team America?
Amazing right? Same island where Castro has slaughtered 10s of thousands and not a mention of him..What a joke they are..Traitor in the highest order..Why the hell do we put us with this and why the hell are there so many people out there like him who despise their own while praising those who want to kill them ?World's gone mad.
Amnesty International will make such senseless demands as long as a Muslim is the chief of this organization. Irene Khan, is a Muslim woman with ties to Pakistan/Afghanistan. Most of the prisoners at Gitmo are Pakistani/Afghani. And most of the Pakistanis/Afghanis are Muslim. Now we can easily make the connection for the reason why AI is demanding arrest of Bush, can't we? Sadly, Westerners fall for the crap "islam is peaceful". Then again, I wonder why 9/11 has happened if this cult is infact peaceful.
Speaking of hypocrisy
Have the filed any complaints or investigations on Saddam ?
Or the UN
Or how about those that were taking bribes in the OFF??
Did something happen on 911???
Oh yeah, those murdering SOB Ragheads killed 2300 AMERICANS............
It make me so mad that it hardly ever get talked about it by the Media.
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