Looks like the first US official associated with torture and Guantanamo is getting publicly fingered, by UN Special Rapporteur (diarist note, on judiciary independence) Leandro Despouy, for his role in US human rights abuses over the past decade:
Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld could soon be in trouble for the role he played in human rights abuses committed in the Guantanamo prison, a United Nations expert said Wednesday.
"In a year or two, his responsibilities will be established. Wherever he goes, he will face difficulties," Leandro Despouy, who is Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told journalists in Geneva.
Argentine Human Rights lawyer knows what he's talking about when he speaks of government officials engaging in human rights abuses, having seen them up close and personal in his own country. Perhaps soon, like Pinochet in his day, Donald Rumsfeld will need to think twice before going on a European vacation for fear of extradition to an EU country whose citizens he had tortured.
But when will the US start its own investigations? What did the Obama administration have to say, in particular, about Rumsfeld, back in March?
Oh yeah, they're defending him:
In a brief filed Thursday evening, Obama Justice Department lawyers extended many of the same arguments made by Bush attorneys -- that top government officials have qualified immunity from prosecution and that Guantanamo detainees do not have constitutional rights to due process.
The Department of Justice has asserted that a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming the rights of Guantanamo detainees to habeas corpus does not apply to plaintiffs in a case against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld because the plaintiffs were released from prison four years prior to the Supreme Court's decision.
So, UN special rapporteur on judicial independence declares it likely that Donald Rumsfeld will be fair game, as he travels abroad to countries which take Human Rights seriously, for prosecution of US Human Rights abuses. And, ironically, it is the US' (theoretically) independent Justice Department who is defending the very same Donald Rumsfeld.
Since Rummy is accused of authorizing torture at Guantanamo, what does the US Special Rapporteur on torture have to say about all of this?;
In January, the UN's special torture rapporteur called on the US to pursue Rumsfeld and former president George W. Bush for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.
"Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said, in remarks broadcast on Germany's ZDF television.
He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.
Again, what does the Obama administration have to say?
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said during our exclusive interview Sunday on "This Week" that President Barack Obama will not pursue the prosecution of Bush-era officials who devised torture policy against detainees, as laid out in memos the Obama administration released this week.
President Obama is in Europe this week-end, cozying up with the conservative Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel yesterday, and France's conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy today. Both conservative leaders are anxious to have some of President Obama's undeniable star power here in Europe rub off on them, in Sarko's case due to his chronic unpopularity at home (among younger voters in particular), in Merkel's case due to tough elections she faces later this year.
It would be nice if President Obama used some of that star power to strongly re-establish the United State's respect for human rights and international law instead of strongly supporting Conservative regimes here in Europe.