U.S. human rights lawyers ask German court to expand war crimes probe of U.S. officials

A group of American human rights lawyers asked German prosecutors last Monday to investigate U.S. Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales on allegations of war crimes as part of a requested probe of U.S. officials' actions in Iraq, the group said. Attorneys from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed a suit with German federal prosecutors last November charging that U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA director George Tenet, are responsible for acts of torture committed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The attorneys said they chose Germany because it has legislation that allows for the prosecution of war crimes and human rights violations across national boundaries. Because the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, they could not take their case there. Documents submitted Monday detail how Gonzales' testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee "implicates him in the war crimes that were committed in Iraq," the group said in a statement.  The new documents include a letter from CCR attorneys detailing how Alberto Gonzales’s own testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee implicates him in the war crimes that were committed in Iraq, including the torture at Abu Ghraib.  Scott Horton, an expert on international law and the Chair of the International Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York said  “…no such criminal investigation or prosecution would occur in the near future in the United States for the reason that the criminal investigative and prosecutorial functions are currently controlled by individuals who are involved in the conspiracy to commit war crimes.” . [more] and [more] and [more]

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