"In a breathtakingly short time, Amnesty International has
declined from being a respectable human rights organization
to its current status as a joke and a disgrace."
Amnesty Over the Edge
Power Line
I think I saw a reference to this some days ago but didn't follow it up. Today Captain Ed picked up the story, and Glenn Reynolds linked, so there should be a fair amount of buzz about Amnesty International's call for the arrest of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Roberto Gonzales, and pretty much any other Republican whom foreign governments can get their hands on.
Yes, it's true: the official statement by John Kerry and Ted Kennedy donor Bill Schulz, the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, is here. Schulz writes:
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If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.
>>>
Interesting precedent. General Pinochet, traveling with a visa for the United Kingdom and under a diplomatic passport, went to England to have surgery on his back. While recuperating in the hospital, he was arrested so that he could be put on trial on Spain for offenses allegedly committed in Chile. Human rights activists think that this was a good and honorable action on the part of the English authorities, although the extradition effort ultimately failed.
Schulz continues with a list of American officials that Amnesty thinks should be arrested and put on trial if they leave the U.S.:
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Foreign governments that are party to the Geneva Conventions and/or the Convention against Torture-and that is some 190 countries-and countries that have national legislation that authorizes prosecution-and that is at least 125 countries-have a legally binding obligation to exercise what is known as universal jurisdiction over people accused of grave breaches of the Conventions. Governments are required to investigate suspects and, if warranted, to prosecute them or to extradite them to a country that will.
Amnesty International's list of those who may be considered high-level torture architects includes Donald Rumsfeld, ...William Haynes, the Defense Department General Counsel..., and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy....Our list includes Major General Geoffrey Miller, Commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo... former CIA Director George Tenet...
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Amnesty next perpetuates an urban legend:
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And it includes Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "obsolete" in a January 2002 memo...
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This is a charge often repeated by Democrats; what Gonzales actually wrote was:
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In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments.
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I suppose there is not a person in the U.S. who would disagree with Gonzales' statement that
1) captured terrorists can be asked for more than their name, rank and serial number (which, of course, they don't have), and
2) the idea that they should be provided with athletic uniforms and scientific instruments is "quaint."
Nevertheless, Amnesty says that Gonzales should be arrested, tried and jailed for making this uncontroversial statement.
In a breathtakingly short time, Amnesty International has declined from being a respectable human rights organization to its current status as a joke and a disgrace.
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