Declaration on the legal necessity to halt the proceedings against POW President Saddam Hussain.

The BRussells Tribunal

...The 1945 Nuremberg Charter states clearly: "To initiate a war of aggression ..is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." The UN Charter and its Definition of Aggression (GA Res. 3314) reinforce this rule. Since the invasion under the Nuremberg and UN Charters was utterly illegal, all that followed from it is illegal, from Mr. Bremer's laws to the new constitution to the trial of Mr. Hussain. For the reasons set out above, the current judicial proceedings against Mr. Hussain should be halted. The provisions of Geneva Convention III relating to Protecting Powers and POWs should be implemented regarding Mr. Hussain and all similarly situated persons of the government in place at the time of the invasion of Iraq who are detained in Iraq. All persons involved with the proceedings must be fully protected. To all those who respect international legality: Please raise your voice against the constant breaking of international rules governing Mr. Saddam Hussain's trial....

continua / continued

We are the war criminals now

The Evidence
excerpted from the book
In the Name of Democracy
American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond
edited by Jeremy Brecher, Jill Cutler, and Brendan Smith

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Opening statement of Justice Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1945
The ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law.

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John Bolton, Under Secretary of State, nominated 2005 for American ambassador to the United Nations
It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so-because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States.

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The devastation associated with World War II led to the recognition of a new category of international crimes, crimes against humanity, which involved acts of violence against a persecuted group in either war or peacetime. The Nuremberg Charter defined these acts as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated." The definition of crimes against humanity has since been expanded to include rape and torture.

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War crimes have several characteristics that make them different from other crimes. War criminals are subject to universal jurisdiction, meaning that they can be tried not just in their own country but anywhere in the world. War crimes are likely to be the acts of high government officials, and such officials are likely to be in a position to prevent the courts of their own country from bringing them to justice. While international law prefers that each country deal with its own war criminals, international tribunals and the courts of other nations have been given authority to try war crimes cases where national courts fail to act.

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Justice Robert Jackson proclaimed at Nuremberg
"No grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."

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The military technology the United States is using in Iraq, such as cluster bombs and depleted uranium, may be illegal in itself. Under Article 85 of the Geneva Conventions it is a war crime to launch "an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population in the knowledge that such an attack will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians." A UN weapons commission described cluster bombs as "weapons of indiscriminate effects." A reporter for the Mirror (United Kingdom)" wrote from a hospital in Hillah, "Among the 168 patients I counted, not one was being treated for bullet wounds. All of them, men, women, children, bore the wounds of bomb shrapnel. It peppered their bodies. Blackened their skin. Smashed heads. Tore limbs. A doctor reported that 'All the injuries you see were caused by duster bombs'. . . The majority of the victims were children who died because they were outside."

The third set of questions has to do with the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody. This has been a huge but unresolved issue since it was first indelibly engraved in the public mind by the photos from Abu Ghraib prison. Cascading disclosures have revealed that torture and other forms of prisoner abuse have been endemic not only in Iraq but in Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and many other U.S. operations around the world.

CULPABILITY

One of the most important principles established at Nuremberg is that individuals are responsible for their own actions, even if they were obeying orders, and that those in a position to give orders are responsible for the actions of those under them. "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity" is "a crime under international law." Furthermore, "the fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him of responsibility under international law."

In those few instances where the Bush administration has admitted that wrongdoing may have occurred in connection with Iraq and the war on terror, it has consistently blamed low-level personnel and denied its own responsibility. But there are growing indications that, from the initial manipulation of evidence to justify the attack on Iraq to the latest cover-up of memos justifying torture, highest levels of the Bush administration have been involved.

... As International Herald Tribune columnist William Pfaff wrote, "Proposals to authorize torture were circulating even before there was anyone to torture. Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration made it known that the United States was no longer bound by international treaties, or by American law and established U.S. military standards concerning torture and the treatment of prisoners." In January 2002, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised the president that if he "simply declared 'detainees' in Afghanistan outside the protection of the Geneva conventions, the 1996 U.S. War Crimes Act-which carries a possible death penalty for Geneva violations-would not apply." Later a legal task force from the Department of Defense concluded that the president, as commander in chief, had the authority "to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security." As Pfaff observed, "Subsequent legal memos to civilian officials in the White House and Pentagon dwelt in morbid detail on permitted torture techniques, for practical purposes concluding that anything was permitted that did not (deliberately) kill the victim."

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The United States has promoted war crimes prosecutions starting with the Nuremberg trials after World War II and continuing to the recent trials in Rwanda, the current trials of Slobodan Milosevik, and the impending trial of Saddam Hussein. These trials have all emphasized the accountability of top officials for acts committed under their authority. Is there any reason the same standard should not be applied to the top officials in the Bush administration?

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The Bush administration's security doctrine, as articulated in the 2002, National Security Strategy, declared a war on terror "of uncertain duration." It enunciated a doctrine of preventive war in which "the United States will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed." It "will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively." As Senator Robert Byrd commented, "Under this strategy, the President lays claim to an expansive power to use our military to strike other nations first, even if we have not been threatened or provoked."

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Bob Herbert, "It's Called Torture," New York Times, February 28, 2005
"As a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? ... Where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?"

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CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNALS
PRINCIPLE VI: (a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned in (i).

PRINCIPLE VII: Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

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Nuremberg Ban on Preventive War
Preventive war is unequivocally illegal. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg rejected Germany's argument that it had been compelled to attack Norway and Denmark in self-defense to prevent a future Allied invasion." The Tribunal concluded that these attacks violated customary law limits on self-defense and instead constituted wars of aggression whose prohibition was demanded by the conscience of the world. As the Tribunal stated:
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Nuremberg's condemnation of preventive war was incorporated into the U.N. Charter, affirmed by the General Assembly,' and accepted by the Security Council.

In 1978, the U.S. mobilized the Security Council to condemn Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and overthrow of the violently repressive Khmer Rouge regime, terming it a breach of the Charter and an act of aggression in violation of international law. Similarly, in 1981, the Council unanimously condemned Israel's "preventive" attack against an Iraqi nuclear plant as a "clear violation of the Charter of the UN and the norms of international conduct." A Council member explained the consensus:

The concept of preventive war, which for many years served as a justification for the abuses of powerful States, since it left to their discretion to define what constituted a threat to them, was definitively abolished by the Charter of the U.N.'
The German argument in favor of preventive war was judged and condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and German leaders held individually accountable as war criminals. Any return to this doctrine by powerful states such as the U.S. and U.K. would undermine world public order, and in the process encourage states and non-state actors alike to launch unilateral acts of aggression unconstrained by longstanding principles of international law.

Humanitarian Intervention

The U.S. and U.K. have also sought to justify war under the legally dubious doctrine of humanitarian intervention, a new concept that
has not gained the support of the international law community. This doctrine-recently advocated by several Western countries and human rights organizations-proposes that the international community has the right and duty to use military force for humanitarian purposes such as stopping egregious violations of human rights." This concept has aroused considerable skepticism from most international lawyers, in part because it circumvents well-established procedures and principles of the U.N. Charter and international law.' Even supporters concede that humanitarian intervention is a moral argument rather than a legal right.

The attraction of humanitarian intervention lies in its capacity to redress gross human rights abuses that otherwise might fall outside the scope of Security Council action-the genocide in Rwanda, for example. However, this is a misreading of the Council's authority. Major crises like the Rwandan genocide have regional and international repercussions. The Council is therefore already empowered, under Chapter VII, to respond with force if necessary as a final resort to maintain peace and security and uphold the U.N.'s fundamental purposes, which include "encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms."" As a matter of historical record, the Security Council did consider military intervention in Rwanda but was blocked repeatedly by its permanent members, including the U.S., the U.K, and France.'

The obvious danger of humanitarian intervention is that it enables individual states to intervene wherever and whenever they perceive a compelling humanitarian necessity, unaccountable to established legal limits on the use of force. There is no safeguard to prevent states from manipulating this concept to serve narrow political interests rather than universal humanitarian concerns. From the standpoint of preventing human rights abuses, it would seem more effective, morally and legally, to promote principled and consistent enforcement of the existing legal framework of the U.N. Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and international law in general.

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... Amnesty International issued an urgent report titled Iraq: Civilians Under Fire, calling for "an immediate moratorium on the use of cluster bombs by the U.S./U.K. forces ... that are inherently indiscriminate." Such weapons are illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which expressly forbid "arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering" to civilians.'

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CLUSTER BOMBS AND OTHER INDISCRIMINATE WEAPONS
by Amnesty International
The scenes at al-Hula's hospital on 1 April showed that something terrible had happened. The bodies of the men, women and children - both dead and alive - brought to the hospital were punctured with shards of shrapnel from cluster bombs. Videotape of the victims was judged by Reuters and Associated Press editors as being too awful to show on television. Independent newspaper journalists reported that the pictures showed babies cut in half and children with their limbs blown off. Two lorry-loads of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, were seen outside the hospital.

Injured survivors told reporters how the explosives fell 'like grapes" from the sky, and how bomblets bounced through the windows and doors of their homes before exploding. A doctor at al-Hilla's hospital said that almost all the patients were victims of cluster bombs.

Many of the cluster bombs reportedly dropped from the air by U.S. forces on a civilian area of al-Hilla were of the type BLU 97 A. Each canister contains 202 small bomblets the size of a soft drink can. These cluster bombs scatter and spray over a large area about the size of two football fields. At least 5 per cent of the bomblets do not explode on impact, turning them into de facto anti-personnel mines as they continue to pose a threat to people, including civilians, who come into contact with them.

The devastating consequences of using cluster bombs in civilian areas are utterly predictable. If, as accounts suggest, U.S. forces dropped cluster bombs in residential areas of al-Hula, even if they were directed at military targets, such an action could constitute a disproportionate attack. This would be a grave breach of international humanitarian law. An independent and thorough investigation must be held and those found responsible for any violations of the laws of war should be brought to justice. The U.S. and U.K. authorities should order the immediate halt to further use of cluster bombs.

The rules of war prohibit the use of inherently indiscriminate weapons. These are weapons which are incapable of being used in a manner that complies with the obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants.

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U.S. Forces' Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Is "Illegal"
by Neil Mackay
American forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.

DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects.

Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project and onetime U.S. army colonel who was tasked by the U.S. department of defense with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up, said use of DU was a "war crime."

Rokke said: "There is a moral point to be made here. This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction-yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves." He added: "Such double-standards are repellent."

According to a August 2002 report by the UN [Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights], laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; [and] the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which expressly forbid employing "poison or poisoned weapons" and "arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts.

Rokke told the Sunday Herald: "A nation's military personnel cannot willfully contaminate any other nation, cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions... To do so is a crime against humanity."

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U.S. Admits It Used Napalm Bombs in Iraq
by Andrew Buncombe
American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad. The attacks caused massive fireballs that obliterated several Iraqi positions.

The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions.

The upgraded weapon, which uses kerosene rather than petrol, was used in March and April, when dozens of napalm bombs were dropped near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris River, south of Baghdad.

"We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches," said Colonel " James Alles, commander. "Unfortunately there were people there... you could see them in the [cockpit] video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm."

At the time, the Pentagon insisted the report was untrue. "We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on 4 April, 2001," it said.

The Pentagon said it had not tried to deceive. It drew a distinction between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs.

Officials said that if journalists had asked about the firebombs their use would have been confirmed. A spokesman admitted they were "remarkably similar" to napalm.

John Pike, director of the military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, said: "The U.S. is the only country that has used napalm for a long time."

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