Congress May be Prosecutable For Participating In Bush War Crimes

[kpete]

FORUM
Op-eds on legal news by law professors and JURIST special guests...
A Plea to Congress on Military Commission Procedures
Congress may be prosecutable under international law if it helps him do this

JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that minimum due process guarantees under customary international law must not be denied when Congress attempts to articulate forms of procedure for new US military commissions...



Members of Congress are thus on notice that minimum due process guarantees under customary international law must not be denied when Congress attempts to articulate what forms of procedure a military commission should adopt. If members participate in a plan to do so or are complicit in the deprivation of minimum due process guarantees under customary international law incorporated by reference in common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions or any other rights or protections under common Article 3 (e.g., concerning the right to humane treatment even at the hands of CIA interrogators), they would be participating in the denial of rights, protections, and duties under Geneva law. Such denials are war crimes.

Moreover, “wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the ... Convention” constitutes a more egregious “grave breach” of Geneva law. Denial of what the world knows are minimum due process requirements would also resonate against us like the crimes at Abu Ghraib and the Administration’s criminal torture memos and authorizations.

War crimes policies and authorizations are not merely a threat to constitutional government and our democracy. They threaten law and order more generally, violate our common dignity, degrade our military, place our soldiers and CIA personnel in harms way, thwart our mission, and deflate our authority and influence abroad. They can embolden an enemy, serve as a terrorist recruitment tool, lengthen social violence, and fulfill other terrorist ambitions.

Additionally, Congress should not attempt to provide domestic immunity for criminal violations of rights and protections contained in the Geneva Conventions. Tin-horn dictatorships attempt such forms of impunity, but the attempt would itself violate several treaties of the United States and (as Marcos, Milosevic, Noriega, Pinochet, various Argentinian generals, and others learned) have no legal effect abroad in foreign or international fora. Instead, Congress should protect the honor of the United States and maintain the rule of law.

more at:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/09/plea-to-congress-on-military.php