U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 Carries the Death Penalty...**must read** [View All]

[G_j]

On today's Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/30/1333214

Thursday, June 30th, 2005

Fmr. NY Congressmember Holtzman Calls For President Bush and His Senior Staff To Be Held Accountable for Abu Ghraib Torture


In a newly-published article in The Nation former New York Congressmember Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the committee that voted to impeach Richard Nixon calls on the public and the press to demand President Bush and his senior White House staff be held accountable for the torture of Abu Ghraib and be prosecuted under the 1996 War Crime Act.

In the last few months, mainstream human rights groups have been calling for top U.S officials in the Bush administration to be held accountable for the torture and abuse of military prisoners at U.S detention centers around the world. In April, Human Rights Watch demanded that a special prosecutor be named to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and other top officials for possible war crimes related to the abuse. Last month, Amnesty International issued a damning report blasting the Bush administration for ignoring international law and mistreating detainees. The group criticized the Bush administration for failing to carry out a full and independent investigation of the torture at Abu Ghraib and for failing to hold any senior officials accountable.

Well, The Nation magazine is publishing an article in its July 18th issue titled "Torture and Accountability." ** http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050718&s=holtzman In the article, the author, former Congressmember Elizabeth Holtzman, writes that there is precedent to hold U.S officials accountable for wrongdoing. She points to public pressure that forced Congress to end the Vietnam war, relentless press coverage of the Watergate scandal which ultimately lead to Nixon's resignation and public demands that led to the independent 9/11 commission.

<snip>

And it seems to me that with the terrible scandal, Abu Ghraib, that we need -- we can’t, as they tried in Watergate to do, cut off the investigation at the small fry, at the lowest level. You have to look, and the international law precedence and American law requires it, you look up the chain of command. What I discovered by accident was that -- this is not a concern that I have alone -- President Bush's White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, himself, who is now the Attorney General of the United States, wrote a memo in January 2002 to President Bush saying one of the reasons we need to opt out of the Geneva Conventions wasn't just because they didn't like the Geneva Conventions because they don't like treaties, but he said, we have to worry about prosecutions under the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996. That, it turns out, is a federal statute that applies to any U.S. national, military or civilian, high or low, who violates the Geneva Conventions in certain ways. In other words, who engages in murder, torture, or inhuman treatment. And it's not just those who engage in it, it's those who order it or those who, knowing about it, fail to take steps to stop it. That means higher-ups.

<snip>

And basically, what it does, it makes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions a federal crime. Got it? Just like kidnapping or interstate burglary or child pornography, it is a federal crime. And the other thing, that's interesting is that it carries the death penalty. If death results from torture or inhuman treatment, then there is a death penalty, and that means there's no statute of limitations. That means that if any high level official violates the War Crimes Act, and somebody died, they can be prosecuted. They are subject to prosecution for the rest of their lives.

<snip>