US increasingly in the dock as game changes
Calls for American officials who have allegedly committed human rights abuse crimes, especially during the days of the Bush administration, to be prosecuted gained new momentum last week when a major Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on accountability for United States torture was released. For the first time in history international legal action for such crimes against Americans might be at hand.
The HRW-report calls for the White House to institute prosecutions against officials being accused of these crimes and for other countries to do it if the Obama-administration continues to fail act.
The report says the US should "reaffirm the primacy of the rule of law" by pursuing war crime prosecutions.
Under the headline “Getting Away with Torture; The Bush administration and mistreatment of detainees” the 107-page report presents substantial information warranting criminal investigations of former president Bush and senior administration officials, including former vice-president Dick Cheney, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA director George Tenet, for ordering practices such as “waterboarding,” the use of secret CIA prisons, and the transfer of detainees to countries where they were tortured.
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The report further recommends that if the White House does not take the necessary steps towards prosecution, other countries should.
President Obama has thus far dismissed the war crimes accusations as a thing of the past not warranting accountability. People other than torture victims think otherwise, all supported by the new HRW-report, which claims that the Obama administration is 'failing to act on evidence."
The HWR- report comes on top of 26 White House and military officials facing trials in Iran for terrorism, the United Nations Human Rights Commission again rebuking the United States, this time for illegally executing a foreign national in Texas, and Human Rights Alert calling on Congress to impeach a senior Department of Justice official for covering up the abuses.
It will not be as easy as in the past for the Americans to dismiss Iran's recent decision to prosecute United States officials now that HRW through the report and accompanying statements, called on foreign governments to prosecute George W Bush and many of his senior officials for war crimes if it continues failing to investigate the growing body of evidence against the former president over the use of torture.
In a media statement released with the report the HRW states, "There are solid grounds to investigate Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Tenet for authorising torture and war crimes," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
"President Obama has treated torture as an unfortunate policy choice rather than a crime. His decision to end abusive interrogation practices will remain easily reversible unless the legal prohibition against torture is clearly reestablished."
If the US government does not pursue credible criminal investigations, other countries should prosecute US officials involved in crimes against detainees in accordance with international law, stated Human Rights Watch.
"The US has a legal obligation to investigate these crimes," Roth said.
"If the US doesn't act on them, other countries should."
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has to date been a strategic and political tool in the hands of America and its NATO-allies to the extent that its integrity is under serious threat. It looks as if the game just might have changed.

Mister Wong
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