Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Germany asked to investigate Rumsfeld

Lawyers for inmates held by the United States seek a war crimes inquiry of the defense chief.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 15, 2006

BERLIN - Lawyers for inmates of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, asked German prosecutors Tuesday to open a war crimes investigation of outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials for their alleged roles in abuse at the detention centers.

Although the lawyers who filed the lawsuit acknowledged that while there was little chance of seeing Rumsfeld in a German jail, the point was simply to increase the pressure on top brass they say are culpable. German federal prosecutors said they would examine the case.

"We are not expecting that Rumsfeld will appear in a court, but we are hoping investigators will begin looking into the case," said Wolfgang Kaleck, a German lawyer involved in the suit.

The 220-page lawsuit, which also names 13 other U.S. officials, was sent to prosecutors under a German law that allows the prosecution of war crimes regardless of where they were committed. It alleges that Rumsfeld personally ordered and condoned torture.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said that U.S. officials had not seen the complaint but that it was "frivolous."

"Abu Ghraib is something that the U.S. government has investigated very thoroughly," he said, noting more than 12 investigations as well as congressional hearings.

There have been 11 convictions and about a dozen courts-martial in the United States related to Abu Ghraib.

The suit is brought on behalf of 12 alleged torture victims - 11 Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib and Mohamad al-Qahtani, a Saudi being held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, who has been identified by the United States as a would-be participant in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In addition to Rumsfeld, the suit names Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former CIA director George Tenet; the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez; and eight others, alleging they either ordered, aided, or failed to prevent war crimes.

[Last modified November 15, 2006, 01:55:02]