NY Times - 12 Detainees Sue Rumsfeld in Germany, Citing Abuse

12 Detainees Sue Rumsfeld in Germany, Citing Abuse

By [1]MARK LANDLER

NY Times

FRANKFURT, Nov. 14 -- A week after President Bush announced that
Defense Secretary [2]Donald H. Rumsfeld would resign, lawyers asked a
German prosecutor to investigate Mr. Rumsfeld and other American
officials for suspected war crimes stemming from the treatment of
prisoners in military jails in [3]Iraq and Cuba.

The lawsuit filed in Karlsruhe on Tuesday cites 11 other current and
former American officials, including Attorney General [4]Alberto R.
Gonzales, who it says helped formulate legal reasoning legitimizing
the use of torture.

The suit, filed by civil-rights legal groups on behalf of 12 detainees
-- 11 Iraqis and a Saudi -- asserts that they were subjected to
beatings, sleep deprivation, withholding of food and sexual
humiliation.

With lawyers all but admitting they do not expect to see Mr. Rumsfeld
hauled before a German court, the suit is as much about politics as it
is about law. They hope to make an example of the man who helped
engineer the war policy in Iraq, hounding him into private life with
suits filed in other countries if [5]Germany does not pursue the case.

"Even if we never put Rumsfeld on trial in a German court, he will be
harassed and publicly stamped as a torturer," said Wolfgang Kaleck, a
Berlin lawyer who filed the complaint along with the Center for
Constitutional Rights, an American group, and other legal
organizations.

Mr. Kaleck acknowledged that Germany would be reluctant to prosecute
top American officials. But he described a protracted legal procedure,
during which he said Mr. Rumsfeld might encounter trouble traveling to
Germany or other [6]European Union countries. The lawyers picked
Germany in part because German law has the principle of universal
jurisdiction, under which courts are entitled to prosecute people for
war crimes regardless of where the crimes were committed.

The Pentagon is in the process of reviewing the filing, said a
spokeswoman, Cynthia O. Smith. "We have no reason to believe the suit
has merit," she said, adding that the allegations of abuse at the Abu
Ghraib prison in Baghdad and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had been
reviewed by Congress and the courts.

The German prosecutor's office confirmed it had received the document
and said it would begin reviewing it.

This is the second time lawyers have asked German prosecutors to
investigate Mr. Rumsfeld in connection with accusations of war crimes.
Prosecutors turned down a request in February 2005, saying the case
would be better handled by United States prosecutors.

The lawyers contend that almost two years later, the United States has
done nothing to investigate the role of senior Bush administration
officials in the treatment of prisoners who are suspected terrorists.

Moreover, they contend, the Military Commissions Act, passed in
September, will make it harder to prosecute American officials at home
if charged with violating the Geneva Conventions because it is
intended to provide retroactive immunity dating to the Sept. 11
attacks.

"We've had two years of complete inaction by the Bush administration,"
said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of [7]Human Rights Watch,
which has expressed support for the case. "They've been very good at
prosecuting lower-level officials, but done nothing to investigate
high-level officials."

Among the others charged in the suit are John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee,
two former Justice department lawyers who were integral in drafting
the administration's legal arguments for treatment of suspected
terrorists. It also cites [8]George J. Tenet, the former director of
the [9]Central Intelligence Agency.

Janis L. Karpinski, who as a brigadier general commanded the military
police unit at Abu Ghraib and was relieved of her command and demoted
to colonel after the abuses came to light, has offered to testify. Ms.
Karpinski, who was a defendant in the first lawsuit and has since left
the Army Reserve, traveled to Berlin to offer to stand as a witness.

While the first lawsuit focused on Abu Ghraib, this one includes as a
plaintiff Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was arrested in Afghanistan
months after American officials said he tried to meet some of the
Sept. 11 hijackers. A lawyer for Mr. Qahtani, who is being held at
Guantánamo Bay, says he was subjected to abuse authorized by Mr.
Rumsfeld.

The lawyers said they also chose to file the suit in Germany for
practical reasons. Several military officials implicated in the
mistreatment at Abu Ghraib returned to bases in Germany and, if still
here, could testify.

The lawsuit comes at an awkward time for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who
has been trying to improve German-American relations.

Prosecuting high-level officials for war crimes in foreign countries
has a patchy record, legal experts say. A Spanish judge was unable to
win the extradition of Gen. [10]Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean
dictator, to face trial for crimes against humanity. But General
Pinochet was held in London, and upon return to Chile, he found
himself under legal siege.

[11]Henry A. Kissinger, a former secretary of state, has been sought
for questioning by overseas courts about involvement with Latin
American dictatorships in the 1970s.

"If I were Rumsfeld's travel agent, I would advise him to choose some
other part of `old Europe,' " said Detlev F. Vagts, emeritus professor
of international law at [12]Harvard Law School, referring to Mr.
Rumsfeld's now famous poke at two wayward American allies, Germany and
France. "There is some danger out there."

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