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November 29, 2004
Rummy – Fun with Old Europe

According to the German news site Spiegel Online the US Center for Constitutional Rights plans to file a complaint against Rumsfeld, Tenet and eight other US officials with the German federal general prosecutor.

The German laws covering war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, formed under the impression of the Nuernberg Processes, allow for prosecution in Germany, even if the defendant is not German and the deeds were not done on German ground.

Main theme of the 160 page complaint is said to be the Abu Ghraib crime complex.

Details will follow at a press conference tomorrow morning.
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This could get entertaining. It will be very hard to turn the case down legally and the German public will love it. The politicians will not like it as it makes for even more trouble with the Bush administration.

Posted by b on November 29, 2004 at 19:16 UTC | Permalink
Comments

bernhard, can we get that (Spiegel Online) in English?

Posted by: beq | Nov 29 2004 19:33 utc | 1

@beq – The above is the translated essence of that short newsflash.
SPIEGEL now has some stuff in English but they do not translate these smaller things.

Posted by: b | Nov 29 2004 20:02 utc | 2

If there are hearings, hope they are televised–Court TV probably won’t carry it, and poor old Dan Abrams would become apoplectic.
Still, I’ll buy, prepare, and bring the pop corn.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Nov 29 2004 20:12 utc | 3

Wonder if the French lady with the knitting needles will be there for the prelim.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Nov 29 2004 20:15 utc | 4

CCR is calling for people worldwide to contact the German prosecutor in support of the action. I’d like to think something will come of this but suspect the US will find some way to quash it. And if not, I expect the US mainstream media to pay it as much mind as they did the Winter Soldier investigations.

Posted by: ralphbon | Nov 29 2004 22:40 utc | 5

A Conservative Christian Republican Says Listen To whistleblower Sibel D. Edmonds Oh God how I want this to be true. I pray this is true. And I’m not the praying type.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 29 2004 23:16 utc | 6

Guillotine! Guillotine!

Posted by: Madame DeFarge | Nov 29 2004 23:51 utc | 7

uncle $cam –
for what it’s worth i heard karl schwarz speak at a 9-11 forum in new york this past summer. of a long line of speakers he was the most compelling and credible, seemed to have his facts and conclusions well-organized and his feet firmly on the ground. personally, i believe sibel edmonds as does he. he is from the wayne madsen camp and i guess we will all see the drama playout if their charges can be substantiated. at this point i am not sure what to believe, but if there is truth to be found, i am glad they are making an effort to find it and expose it.

Posted by: conchita | Nov 30 2004 0:30 utc | 8

@beq
Group to file war crime charges against US

Posted by: b | Nov 30 2004 0:38 utc | 9

$cam: TV and movie fictions are dangerous things. They can lead to some disturbing and disturbingly coherent thinking. Take 24, 2nd season and The world is not enough, from the Bond franchise. And you may come up with the notion that the goal isn’t only or mostly to take over Iraq oil, but on the contrary to cause so much havoc in the whole area that oil prices will sky-rocket. Big Oil profits being tied to the actual price of oil, the higher it is, the bigger their benefits.
This is of course purely speculative.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 30 2004 2:19 utc | 10

Knight Ridder report
A truck pulled up carrying a rocket with about 350 feet of cord attached to it and 5-pound blocks of C4 plastic explosives spaced out every foot down the line. With a small whoosh, the rocket flew forward and a wall of flame shot up. Roadside bombs planted by rebels exploded, one after the other.
Barreto cheered.
“You know we’re going to destroy this town,” said Barreto, 22.
“I hope so,” replied the soldier sitting next to him.
Phosphorous shells came next, releasing bouncing white orbs of smoke. The gunner on top of the Bradley began firing 25 mm high explosive rounds, filling the cabin of the Bradley with an ammonia-like smell. Barreto looked outside the window again and could see only smoke and flashes of light.
Riverbend report
The situation in Falloojeh is worse than anyone can possibly describe. It has turned into one of those cities you see in your darkest nightmares- broken streets strewn with corpses, crumbling houses and fallen mosques… The worst part is that for the last couple of weeks we’ve been hearing about the use of chemical weapons inside Falloojeh by the Americans. Today we heard that the delegation from the Iraqi Ministry of Health isn’t being allowed into the city, for some reason.
I don’t know about the chemical weapons. It’s not that I think the American military is above the use of chemical weapons, it’s just that I keep wondering if they’d be crazy enough to do it. I keep having flashbacks of that video they showed on tv, the mosque and all the corpses. There was one brief video that showed the same mosque a day before, strewn with many of the same bodies- but some of them were alive. In that video, there’s this old man leaning against the wall and there was blood running out of his eyes- almost like he was crying tears of blood. What ‘conventional’ weaponry makes the eyes bleed? They say that a morgue in Baghdad has received the corpses of citizens in Falloojeh who have died under seemingly mysterious conditions.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 30 2004 2:57 utc | 11

For those who remember Galiel I just found he has a blog at Daily Kos that talks about the use of white phosphorus.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 30 2004 3:02 utc | 12

For what it’s worth, like the stuff in chemistry class, burns at room temp. Commonly used in the Vietnam war (by the US) as an artillary shell or (hand) gernade type weapon — ignites rather like a firework display bloom, spreading thousands of small white hot burning particles that “stick” where they land, has a rather short duration burn of a few seconds for hand thrown type.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 30 2004 3:50 utc | 13

@ Uncle $cam and Conchita
Schwarz’s comments on the Edmonds case and the (already known) letter are encouraging. The fact that
they turn up on Rumor Mill doesn’t help their credibility with buttoned-down true believers, but
Schwarz seems to be exactly the type of ally anyone seriously interested in deposing the Bush regime should be looking for. Indeed, I had expected such “true conservatives” to desert Bush in hordes.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 30 2004 7:56 utc | 14

6 pm ET: On Link TV, directv channel 375, they are showing Democracy Now and interviewing Michael Ratner reporting from Germany about lawsuit against Rumsfeld, etc. He is a lawyer representing some of the detainees.

Posted by: aw | Nov 30 2004 23:18 utc | 15

@ b: Thanks for the Aljazeera link from yesterday. You’ve had me singing the blues all day with your news of taking down the Moon. Yeah, I’d like to see them ALL in orange jumpsuits. Frederick is small fry.

Posted by: beq | Dec 1 2004 0:11 utc | 16

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