Bush and Blair accused of War Crimes ; Kuala Lumpur Tribunal
For any endevour against war crimes and injustice a first step has to be taken .In this case a number of steps based on morality , ethics and international law have already been taken
In the minds of the majority of world's population ,War crimes have been committed by Anglo-American leadership and others and their armed forces with the connivance of the UN as in the case of the attacks on Yugoslavia and the dismanling of the state, Afghanistan and in the case of 2003 invasion of Iraq against UNSC opinion and its Charter .
Augusto Pinochet's arrest and trial ( from Wikipedia)
General Augusto Pinochet was indicted on 10 October 1998 by Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón. He was arrested in London and finally released by the British government in March 2000. Authorized to freely return to his native Chile, he was there first indicted by the judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, and charged of a number of crimes, before dying on 10 December 2006, without having been convicted in any case. His arrest in London made the front-page of newspapers worldwide as not only did it involve the head of the military dictatorship that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, but it was the first time that several European judges applied the principle of universal jurisdiction, declaring themselves competent to judge crimes committed by former head of states, despite local amnesty laws.
War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity And Genocide In Iraq
Legal Case Filed Against 4 U.S. Presidents and 4 UK Prime Ministers
By The Brussels Tribunal
October 08, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- MADRID: Today the Spanish Senate, acting to confirm a decision already taken under pressure from powerful governments accused of grave crimes, will limit Spain's laws of universal jurisdiction.
Yesterday, ahead of the change of law, a legal case was filed at the Audiencia Nacional against four United States presidents and four United Kingdom prime ministers for commissioning, condoning and/or perpetuating multiple war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Iraq.
This case, naming George H W Bush, William J Clinton, George W Bush, Barack H Obama, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown, is brought by Iraqis and others who stand in solidarity with the Iraqi people and in defence of their rights and international law.
Iraq: 19 years of intended destruction
The intended destruction — or genocide — of Iraq as a state and nation has been ongoing for 19 years, combining the imposition of the most draconian sanctions regime ever designed and that led to 1.5 million Iraqi deaths, including 500,000 children, with a war of aggression that led to the violent deaths of over one million more.
Destroying Iraq included the purposeful targeting of its water and sanitation system, attacking the health of the civilian population. Since 1990, thousands of tons of depleted uranium have been dropped on Iraq, leading in some places to a 600 per cent rise in cancer and leukaemia cases, especially among children. In both the first Gulf War and "Shock and Awe" in 2003, an air campaign that openly threatened "total destruction", waves of disproportionate bombing made no distinction between military and civilian targets, with schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, and historical sites all destroyed.
Destroying Iraq included promoting, funding and organizing sectarian and ethnic groups bent on dividing Iraq into three or more sectarian or ethnic entities, backed by armed militias that would terrorize the Iraqi people. Since 2003, some 4.7 million Iraqis — one fifth of the population — have been forcibly displaced. Under occupation, kidnappings, killings, extortion and mutilation became endemic, targeting men, women and even children and the elderly.
Destroying Iraq included purposefully dismantling the state by refusing to stop or stem or by instigating mass looting, and by engaging in ideological persecution, entailing "manhunting", extrajudicial assassinations, mass imprisonment and torture, of Baathists, the entire educated class of the state apparatus, religious and linguistic minorities and Arab Sunnis, resulting in the total collapse of all public services and other economic functions and promoting civil strife and systematic corruption.
In parallel, Iraq's rich heritage and unique cultural and archaeological patrimony has been wantonly destroyed.
In order to render Iraq dependent on US and UK strategic designs, successive US and UK governments have attempted to partition Iraq and to establish by military force a pro-occupation Iraqi government and political system. They have promoted and engaged in the massive plunder of Iraqi natural resources, attempting to privatize this property and wealth of the Iraqi nation.
Humanity at stake
This is but the barest summary of the horrors Iraq has endured, based on lies that nobody but cowed governments and complicit media believed. In 2003, millions worldwide were mobilized in opposition to US/UK plans. In going ahead, the US and UK launched an illegal war of aggression. Accountability has not been established.
The persons named in this case have each played a key role in Iraq's intended destruction. They instigated, supported, condoned, rationalized, executed and/or perpetuated or excused this destruction based on lies and narrow strategic and economic interests, and against the will of their own people. Allowing those responsible to escape accountability means such actions could be repeated elsewhere.
It is imperative now to establish accountability for US and UK war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq because:
Every Iraqi victim deserves justice.
Everyone responsible should be accountable.
We are before immoral and unlawful acts, contrary to the basis on which the international order of state sovereignty and peace and security rests. Whereas the official international justice system is closed before the suffering of those that imperialism makes a target, through this case we try to open a channel whereby the conscience of humanity can express its solidarity with justice for victims of imperial crimes.
Ad Hoc Committee For Justice For Iraq
Real history of UN and its manipulation.
Unfortunately UN itself was concieved as an organ of war ie the 'United Nations' which fought and won WWII. It was a product of the victor's war machine to control the world affairs and was not based on any world wide consensus .
It is funny and even absurd when US and UK leaders now a days talk of the 'international community'.,It mostly consists of USA,UK ,Australia and a few others not so 'willing' or bought over states.
Let us take Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty . The International Court of Justice in an Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, July 8, 1996 called for nuclear disarmament and opined that the 'threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.—unless the survival of the state is concerned (US which spends almost US$ 800 billion , as much as the rest of the world put together keeps on threatening others with the use of nuclear weapons .)
Following the ICJ advisory the UN General Assembly called "upon all States to immediately fulfill [the nuclear disarmament obligation affirmed by the ICJ] by commencing multilateral negotiations in 2000 leading to an early conclusion of a nuclear weapons convention prohibiting the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat or use of nuclear weapons and providing for their elimination."
Dan Plesch, in an article of 18 May, 2005 brought out the truth about the United Nations.
It is the military power of the victorious wartime allies ( of WWII) who have run the world since then that makes UN's supposed utopianism as ineffective and irrelevant.
According to the conventional wisdom the UN was established by the signing of the Charter in 1945 , when in fact, that agreement was the culmination of a complex military and political effort that began in 1941. Understanding the UN's wartime origins provides a powerful and much-needed reminder that the UN is not some liberal accessory but was created out of hard, realistic political necessity for control by the victorious powers.
"The historical records show how Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt created the United Nations to win the war both militarily and politically, and to create the foundations for a lasting peace. Their first expression of Anglo-American policy was in the Atlantic Charter of 1941; this included freedom from want, social security, labour rights and disarmament as well as self-determination, free trade and freedom of religion. Churchill himself remarked during the height of the fighting in 1944 that the "United Nations is the only hope of the world".
The records of the war years show the UN's origin as a strategic engine of victory in WWII. The document that formalised the Nazi defeat in the war includes the words: "This Act of Military Surrender is without prejudice to, and will be superseded by, any general instrument of surrender imposed by, or on behalf of, the United Nations on Germany…" President Truman broadcast on 8 May that: "General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations". So it was the United Nations fighting the war. United Nations political bodies were also created during the war and promote their interests.
How US undermines UN
The not-so-hidden US agenda has been to weaken the United Nations by depriving it of political and financial investment and then deride it for the very weakness that results. The United States pursued a cover strategy, stretching back at least to the early years of the Bill Clinton administration, of seeking to free itself from such tiresome constraints as the need for a United Nations mandate for military action.
In a 1994 , the US mission to Nato had circulated a "non-paper" (as unattributable informal documents are called) on precisely this topic entitled "with the UN whenever possible, without the UN whenever necessary" – argued that UN authority should be replaced with Nato's. The Bush administration and its supporters went further, declaring a policy of unilateral action that requires a permission slip from no one.
In undermining the UN's authority and in failing to adhere to UN conventions on issues as wide-ranging as terrorism, bio-weapons and the rights of the child, the US often finds itself in company with those unsavoury regimes which it vilifies for non-compliance with human-rights standards.
US assault on international law
The objective of the ultra-conservatives running the US government under George Bush was that the US should not be subject to international law at all, and that international law simply should not exist. It was demonstrated by John Bolton, as UN ambassador who argued in November 2003 that: "increasingly, (internationalists) place the authority of international law, which does not derive directly from the consent of the governed, above the authority of national law and constitutions."
Bolton had earlier argued: "treaties are 'law' only for US domestic purposes. In their international operation, treaties are simply 'political', and not legally binding".
But the relevant article of the US constitution clearly places treaties on an equal footing with the constitution itself and laws passed by Congress:
"This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land...".
Thus, contrary to John Bolton's view that treaties have no force if a court or Congress argues they do not, treaties are legally binding; most US administrations and lawyers have assumed that they are supreme unless and until they are formally revoked.
The global ambition of the neo-conservatives under Bush in parallel with their domestic demolition of the remnants of Roosevelt's "new deal" – is to dismantle international law and return to a pre-1914 world where power rules.
Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalise War
In 2005, the Kuala Lumpur based Perdana Global Peace Forum hosted a number of international consultations bringing together legal luminaries from around the world. This resulted in the launching of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalise War.
A War Crimes Commission was appointed to investigate allegations of brutality and to gather evidence. A War Crimes Court was also set up.
The Commission took two and ahalf years to trace and interview victims, gather evidence and research the law.On 31 October, 2009 the Commission submitted its case to the seven member judge Tribunal , whose composition is as follows ;
Dato Abdur Kadir Sulaiman is a retired Malaysian Federal Court Judge. He is the President of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal ,
Tunku Sofia Jewa ,was called to the English Bar at the Lincoln's Inn .She then obtained LLM and Ph.D from the US University of Miami .She has taught international law at universities in Malaysia and now heads a legal firm .
Prof .Francis A Boyle, who teaches law at the university of Illinois is a scholar in the areas of international law and human rights. He received a J.D. degree magna cum laude and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Harvard University , where he was a teaching fellow and an associate at its Center for International Affairs. He also practiced tax and international tax Laws with Bingham, Dana & Gould in Boston. He has written and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on the relationship between international law and politics. Professor Boyle served as counsel to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine. He has advised numerous international bodies in the areas of human rights, war crimes and genocide, nuclear policy, and bio-warfare.
Prof Salleh Buang ,a Bar-at Law from Lincoln's Inn. England, is visiting professor at Universiti Teknology, Malaysia .He served as a Federal council at the Attorney General's Chambers and taught law and practiced corporate law .He has written over 25 books on Law.
Prof.Niloufer Bhagvat , a graduate of Mumbai Law college , did her LLM from the Mumbai University in Constitutional Law , Administrative Law and International Law. She taught law at the university and has appeared as senior advocate at the Supreme Court in New Delhi and Mumbai High Courts and also before Commissions of Enquiries including the Justice Srikrishna Commission .She is the vice president of Indian Lawyers Association and writes on legal and international affairs regularly .She was a judge at the International Tribunal on Afghanistan at Tokyo in 2003.Alfred Lambremont Webre, J.D., M.Ed.,a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School is a renowned author, lawyer, futurist, peace activist, environmental activist . A space activist he promotes the ban of space weapons. He was a co-architect of the Space Preservation Treaty and the Space Preservation Act and is the International Director of the Institute for Cooperation in Space.He helped draft the Citizen Hearing in 2000 with Stephen Bassett and serves as a member on the Board of Advisors.
Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi is Emeritus Professor at UiTM and Visiting Professor at USM. After graduating from the Wesleyan University in the United States ,Dr Faruqi completed his LLB (First Class) and LLM (First Class) from Aligarh Muslim University, India and his PhD from International Islamic University MalaysiaBelow is a report by Shad Saleem Faruqi on the Tribunal hearings
Bush and Blair accused of War Crimes:
Kuala Lumpur Tribunal: Criminalize War
by Shad Saleem Faruqi
Global Research, November 6, 2009
Regardless of size or power, no country or national leader is exempt from international humanitarian law.
On Saturday Oct 31, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT) heard the opening arguments from the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) about war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Commission submitted on many grave issues of international law of war and of humanitarian law, arising out of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the conquest of Iraq in 2003 by the United States and its allies.
There are well documented allegations that the invading armies used banned weapons of mass destruction, bombed civilian areas and committed mass murders. There were kidnappings, torture, racial and religious profiling and many other acts of savagery and lawlessness that satisfy the legal definitions of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
Furthermore, in a show of invincibility and impunity, then US President George W. Bush, by a White House Memorandum of Feb 7, 2002 exempted his nation from the binding provisions of the much-venerated Geneva Conventions, excluding (suspected) al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees from the Conventions' protection.
The carnage in Afghanistan and Iraq continues but the Western world largely remains silent. Inter national institutions like the UN Security Council, the World Court and the International Criminal Court (ICC) look the other way.
It is in this context that in 2005, the KL-based Perdana Global Peace Forum hosted a number of international consultations bringing together legal luminaries from around the world. This resulted in the launching of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration to Criminalise War.
A War Crimes Commission was appointed to investigate allegations of brutality and to gather evidence. A War Crimes Court was set up.
The Commission took two-and-a-half years to trace and interview victims, gather evidence and research the law. Last Saturday, when the Commission submitted its case to the seven-judge Tribunal, two preliminary issues came up for adjudication.
First, does the Tribunal have jurisdiction to hear the cases? Second, can a head of state or government unilaterally exempt itself from any international treaty or convention (such as the Geneva Conventions) duly ratified by the state without first abrogating the relevant treaty or convention?
On both issues the Tribunal gave unanimous opinions. The Tribunal held that it has jurisdiction to adjudicate on war crimes in Iraq because of the Charter of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal. Its proceedings were also inspired by previous precedents of People's Tribunals, e.g. the Sir Bertrand Russell Tribunal in relation to US War Crimes in Vietnam, the Tokyo Tribunal on Afghanistan and the Turkish Tribunal in relation to Iraq.
The KL proceedings are inspired by the noble principle that wherever there is a right there must be a remedy. The families of the 650,000 innocents slaughtered in Iraq in the last five years, the thousands more who had been tortured and the millions more who have been displaced have no remedy in national or international courts.
Their country is still under brutal occupation and it is inconceivable that any Iraqi court will prosecute members of the occupation force for war crimes. US courts have no jurisdiction in Iraq and some US judges have even feigned helplessness in relation to torture and unlawful detentions in US-controlled concentration camps in Guantanamo Bay.
The ICC has been approached with 240 complaints. Its chief prosecutor, a European, has most amazingly ruled that the complaints do not have "sufficient gravity" to merit prosecution!
The Rome Statute that created the ICC has a number of flaws that prevent the horrendous war crimes, the genocide, the crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression from being prosecuted.
First, the United States did not ratify the Rome Statute. As such, US politicians and generals are largely exempt from the jurisdiction of the ICC.
British and Australian citizens belong to a ratifying state, and as such are subject to the ICC's jurisdiction but are being shielded by the ICC prosecutor because in his opinion their crimes of complicity lack sufficient gravity!
Second, for a crime to be prosecuted before the ICC, it must be committed on the territories of a member state of the ICC. Iraq and Afghanistan are not parties to the ICC Treaty and the bestialities committed there are, therefore, exempt from the ICC's jurisdiction.
Third, the UN Security Council has the power to refer a non-signatory to the ICC (as it did for Darfur). But due to its geopolitical, racial and religious bias, the UNSC will not refer US, British, Polish, Italian or Australian citizens to the ICC.
Fourth, the ICC can investigate a case only if national courts fail or are unable to investigate a case. In the United States and Britain, only low-level soldiers have been prosecuted. The fact that the orders came right from the top is being ignored by the international legal system.
The Tribunal was also unanimous in holding that over the last 50 years, international humanitarian law has developed to the point that no head of state or nation can unilaterally renounce it.
If there is a treaty, it is binding. Even if a nation is not a signatory to a treaty or claims to revoke it, it is still bound by a higher customary international law that is universal and that cannot be disowned.
National sovereignty is no more the absolutist concept it was in the Middle Ages. Today, sovereignty is a shield against foreign aggression.
It cannot be used as a sword against one's own people or the people of other nations. No nation can legislate to legalise wars, conquer territories, enslave populations or commit genocide, torture or crimes against humanity.
In the case of former president Bush there was an additional factor: in the United States, treaties are part of the law of the land.
The US president has no authority to abrogate the law of his country. Therefore, Bush's memorandum exempting the United States from the binding rules of the Geneva Convention had no force in law.
The Tribunal held that in relation to crimes against humanitarian law, the status of a head of state does not constitute a defence. Nor is it a defence to submit that one was acting under the orders of a superior; this is the law since the Nuremberg Trials.
The lifting of immunity and the principle of individual criminal respon sibility are now embodied in a plethora of international laws and decisions. These include the UN General Assembly Resolution 95(1) of Dec 11, 1946; Article 13 of the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind (1991); UN Document No. S/25704 (1993); and Article 27 of the Rome Statute. The Tribunal has just begun its work. The road ahead is long and painful.
What is important is that there is a Malaysian initiative to remind the world that some rules of civilised behaviour bind all nations of the world, big and small. No nation of the world, no matter how powerful, can exempt its officials from the long arm of international humanitarian law.
Programme details of the Conference ,the exhibition ,the Commission and the Tribunal the profiles of the speakers and other information pertaining to the event from these websites:
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| Criminalise War: | |
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| October 28th 2009 (Wednesday) | |
| Time |
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| 8.30 am | Arrival of Guests |
| 9.30 am | Keynote by Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad |
| 10.30 am | Launching of War Crimes Exhibition Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad |
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| Coffee Break |
| 11.30 am | Session 1 – Flouting International Law |
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| Speakers:
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| Moderator | Tan Sri Razali Ismail |
| 1:00 pm | Lunch (Venue: Dewan Tun Razak, PWTC, Kuala Lumpur) |
| 2.00 pm | Session 2 – Economic Warfare |
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| Moderator | Mr. Zainul Ariffin |
| 3:45 pm | Coffee Break |
| 4.00 pm | Session 3 – War and Civil Society |
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| Moderator | Tan Sri Hasmy Agam |
| 5.30 pm | Ends |
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| October 29th 2009 (Thursday) | |
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| 9.30 am | Session 4 – War and the Mass Media |
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| Moderator | Datuk A. Kadir Jasin |
| 11.30 am | Session 5 – War and Banned Weapons |
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| Moderator | Shamsul Akmar |
| 1.15 pm | Lunch (Venue: Dewan Tun Razak, PWTC, Kuala Lumpur) |
| 2.00 pm | Session 6 – Peace and Justice |
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| Moderator | Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah |
| 3.45 pm | Panel Session, to be chaired by YAB. Tun Dr. Mahathir |
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| 5.45 pm | Group Photography Session |
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| Ends |
| 6.00 pm | Press Conference (Venue: Melor Suite, PWTC, Kuala Lumpur) |
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| October 30th 2009 (Friday) | |
| Time |
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| 9.30 am – 1.00 pm | Witness Testimonies (7 witnesses) |
| 1.00 pm | Lunch |
| 2.00 pm – 5.00 pm | Continuation of Testimonies |
| October 31st 2009 (Saturday) | |
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| 9.30 am – 1.00 pm | Hearing of an Application by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission for an Advisory Opinion on : Whether a Head of State And / or Government can unilaterally exempt itself from complying with any provisions of any international treaties /conventions (such as the Geneva Conventions) duly ratified by the state without first abrogating the relevant treaty/convention. |
| 1.00 pm | Lunch |
| 2.00 pm – 5.00 pm | Continued Hearing and Decision of Tribunal |
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