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<http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/138319/1/4536>
Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg
Prosecutor
By Aaron Glantz
OneWorld.net
Friday 25 August 2006
San Francisco - A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at
Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with
Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi
officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more
than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried
for starting "aggressive" wars-Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush
for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme
international crime," the 87-year-old Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home
in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the
carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed
force without the permission of the UN Security Council.
Ferenccz said that after Nuremberg the international community
realized that every war results in violations by both sides, meaning the
primary objective should be preventing any war from occurring in the first
place.
He said the atrocities of the Iraq war-from the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal and the massacre of dozens of civilians by U.S. forces in
Haditha to the high number of civilian casualties caused by insurgent car
bombs-were highly predictable at the start of the war.
"Every war will lead to attacks on civilians," he said. "Crimes
against humanity, destruction beyond the needs of military necessity, rape
of civilians, plunder-that always happens in wartime. So my answer
personally, after working for 60 years on this problem and [as someone] who
hates to see all these young people get killed no matter what their
nationality, is that you've got to stop using warfare as a means of settling
your disputes."
Ferenccz believes the most important development toward that end
would be the effective implementation of the International Criminal Court
(ICC), which is located in the Hague, Netherlands.
The court was established in 2002 and has been ratified by more
than 100 countries. It is currently being used to adjudicate cases stemming
from conflict in Darfur, Sudan and civil wars in Uganda and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
But on May 6, 2002-less than a year before the invasion of
Iraq-the Bush administration withdrew the United States' signature on the
treaty and began pressuring other countries to approve bilateral agreements
requiring them not to surrender U.S. nationals to the ICC.
Three months later, George W. Bush signed a new law prohibiting
any U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court. The law went so
far as to include a provision authorizing the president to "use all means
necessary and appropriate," including a military invasion of the
Netherlands, to free U.S. personnel detained or imprisoned by the ICC.
That's too bad, according to Ferenccz. If the United States
showed more of an interest in building an international justice system, they
could have put Saddam Hussein on trial for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
"The United Nations authorized the first Gulf War and authorized
all nations to take whatever steps necessary to keep peace in the area," he
said. "They could have stretched that a bit by seizing the person for
causing the harm. Of course, they didn't do that and ever since then I've
been bemoaning the fact that we didn't have an International Criminal Court
at that time."
Ferenccz is glad that Saddam Hussein is now on trial.
This week, the Iraqi government began to try the former dictator
for crimes connected to his ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurds.
According to Human Rights Watch, which has done extensive on-the-ground
documentation, Saddam's Ba'athist regime deliberately and systematically
killed at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds over a
six-month period in 1988.
Kurdish authorities put the number even higher, saying 182,000
Kurdish civilians were killed in a matter of months.
Everyone agrees innumerable villages were bombed and some were
gassed. The surviving residents were rounded up, taken to detention centers,
and eventually executed at remote sites, sometimes by being stripped and
shot in the back so they would fall naked into trenches.
In his defense, Saddam Hussein has disputed the extent of the
killings and maintained they were justified because he was fighting a
counter-insurgency operation against Kurdish separatists allied with Iran.
When asked to enter a plea, the former president said "that would require
volumes of books."
Ferenccz said whatever Saddam's reasons, nothing can justify the
mass killing of innocents.
"The offenses attributable to ex-President Hussein since he came
to power range from the supreme international crime of aggression to a wide
variety of crimes against humanity," he wrote after Saddam was ousted in
2003. "A fair trial will achieve many goals. The victims would find some
satisfaction in knowing that their victimizer was called to account and
could no longer be immune from punishment for his evil deeds. Wounds can
begin to heal. The historical facts can be confirmed beyond doubt. Similar
crimes by other dictators might be discouraged or deterred in future. The
process of justice through law, on which the safety of humankind depends,
would be reinforced."
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