Europeans Increase Calls to Try former-president Bush and his former-administration Officials for Crimes against Humanity

Having lost the protections of the office of the president, European legal and human rights activists are insisting that Bush and other former members of his administration must face legal charges for their complicity in the commission of crimes against humanity during Bush’s self-proclaimed ‘war on terror.’

Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Centre for Human and Constitutional Rights has declared: "Judicial clarification of the crimes against international law the former U.S. government committed is one of the most delicate issues that the new U.S. president Barack Obama will have to deal with."

Kaleck is demanding the the United States move against Bush's illegal breaches of law. In his most demanding statement to date; Kaleck went on to charge that the government of the United States must meet its responsibility as a civilized nation and "pay compensation to the innocent people who were victims of these crimes."

General agreement exists among European authorities that the United States engaged in torture, including waterboarding against its illegally detained prisoners. Europeans cited the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as the center of illegal United States torture violations.

Austrian human rights lawyer Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture is on public record for his admonitions against numerous instances of illegal U.S. approved torture: "We possess all the evidence which proves that the torture methods used in interrogation by the U.S. government were explicitly ordered by former U.S. defence minister Donald Rumsfeld," Nowak has publicly declared and went on to state: "Obviously, these orders were given with the highest U.S. authorities' knowledge."

Another well respected voice on the issue of the illegal use of torture by the United States; Dietmar Herz, professor of political science at the university of Erfurt, 235 km southwest of Berlin has stated: "George W. Bush is without doubt responsible for crimes such as torture." Herz continued: "According to the U.S. constitution, the U.S. president is responsible for all actions carried out by the executive (branch),... Therefore, George W. Bush is responsible for the torture methods used by U.S. authorities, such as waterboarding."

Kaleck has cited the words of U.S. lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, Robert Jackson, and used them against the former-president Bush and his former-administration figures, by quoting Jackson's statement at the opening of the trials that were held against Nazi war criminals in October 1945; that: "we are able to do away with...tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of (the) people...only when we make all men answerable to the law."

Unfortunately, Nuremberg has proved an insufficient means for prosecuting "crimes against humanity committed in Algeria by France, in Vietnam and Latin America by the U.S., in Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and in Chechnya by Russia," added the Inter Press Service News Agency.

It was not until the atrocities committed in the 1990s "after the Yugoslav wars of secession, the Rwanda genocide, and civil wars in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone were state criminals captured, judged and convicted, " the IPS explained.

Kaleck discussed the new focus on crimes against humanity by pointing out that: "The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 in The Hague in the Netherlands marks a turning point in the prosecution of state officials accused of crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity or of war."

IPS adds a note of further explanation to Kaleck's claims by explaining that: ".... prosecution for crimes of war or for crimes against humanity continues to be highly selective. So far, only perpetrators from weak or failed states from south-eastern Europe, or from the south, especially Africa, have been brought to court. In a case such as that of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Britain acted as an accomplice to protect him." IPS remarks in conclusion that: "Over the last couple of years, human rights activists and some national courts in Europe have been fighting these arbitrary ways. They are appealing for, and in some cases even applying, a universal jurisdiction of national courts. The Spanish judiciary has opened cases against Latin American dictators such as Guatemalan general Efraín Ríos Montt, who ruled the Central American country between 1982 and 1983, and Argentinean military officers involved in kidnapping and killing civilians."