THE HANDSTAND |
FEBRUARY-MARCH2010
|
Crimes
Against Humanity
Complaint
Filed Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al
International
Arrest Warrants Requested
January 20, 2010
"Information Clearing House" - -Professor Francis A.
Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in
Champaign, U.S.A. has filed a Complaint with the
Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.)
in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush,
Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet,
Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the
Accused) for their criminal policy and
practice of extraordinary rendition
perpetrated upon about 100 human beings. This term is
really their euphemism for the enforced disappearance of
persons and their consequent torture. This criminal
policy and practice by the Accused constitute Crimes
against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute
establishing the I.C.C.
The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute.
Nevertheless the Accused have ordered and been
responsible for the commission of I.C.C. statutory crimes
within the respective territories of many I.C.C. member
states, including several in Europe. Consequently, the I.C.C.
has jurisdiction to prosecute the Accused for their I.C.C.
statutory crimes under Rome Statute article 12(2)(a) that
affords the I.C.C. jurisdiction to prosecute for I.C.C.
statutory crimes committed in I.C.C. member states.
The Complaint requests (1) that the I.C.C. Prosecutor
open an investigation of the Accused on his own accord
under Rome Statute article 15(1); and (2) that the I.C.C.
Prosecutor also formally submit to the Pre-Trial
Chamber a request for authorization of an
investigation of the Accused under Rome Statute
article 15(3).
For similar reasons, the Highest Level Officials of the
Obama administration risk the filing of a follow-up
Complaint with the I.C.C. if they do not immediately
terminate the Accuseds criminal policy and practice
of extraordinary rendition, which the Obama
administration has continued to implement.
The Complaint concludes with a request that the I.C.C.
Prosecutor obtain International Arrest Warrants for the
Accused from the I.C.C. in accordance with Rome Statute
articles 58(1)(a), 58(1)(b)(i), 58(1)(b)(ii), and 58(1)(b)(iii).
In order to demonstrate your support for this Complaint
you can contact the I.C.C. Prosecutor by letter, fax, or
email as indicated below.
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Law Building
504 East Pennsylvania Avenue
Champaign, Illinois 61820
Phone: 217-333-7954
Fax: 217-244-1478
The Honorable Luis Moreno-Ocampo
Office of the Prosecutor
International Criminal Court
Post Office Box 19519
2500 CM, The Hague
The Netherlands
Fax No.: 31-70-515-8555
Email: OTP.InformationDesk@icc-cpi.int
January 19, 2010
Dear Sir:
Please accept my personal compliments. I have the honor
hereby to file with you and the International Criminal
Court this Complaint against U.S. citizens George W. Bush,
Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet,
Condoleezza Rice , and Alberto Gonzales (hereinafter
referred to as the Accused) for their
criminal policy and practice of extraordinary
rendition. This term is really a euphemism for the
enforced disappearances of persons, their torture, severe
deprivation of their liberty, their violent sexual abuse,
and other inhumane acts perpetrated upon these Victims.
The Accused have inflicted this criminal policy and
practice of extraordinary rendition upon
about one hundred (100) human beings, almost all of whom
are Muslims/Arabs/Asians and People of Color. I doubt
very seriously that the Accused would have inflicted
these criminal practices upon 100 White Judeo-Christian
men.
The Accuseds criminal policy and practice of
extraordinary rendition are both
widespread and systematic within
the meaning of Rome Statute article 7(1). Therefore the
Accused have committed numerous Crimes against
Humanity in flagrant and repeated and longstanding
violation of Rome Statute articles 5(1)(b), 7(1)(a), 7(1)(e),
7(1)(f), 7(1)(g), 7(1)(h), 7(1)(i), and 7(1)(k).
Furthermore, the Accuseds Rome Statute Crimes
Against Humanity of enforced disappearances of persons
constitutes ongoing criminal activity that continues even
as of today.
The United States is not a contracting party to the Rome
Statute. Nevertheless, the Accused ordered and were
responsible for the commission of these I.C.C. statutory
crimes on, in, and over the respective territories of
several I.C.C. member states, including many located in
Europe. Therefore, the I.C.C. has jurisdiction over the
Accused for their I.C.C. statutory crimes in accordance
with Rome Statute article 12(2)(a), which provides as
follows:
Article 12
Preconditions to the Exercise of Jurisdiction
2. In the case of article 13, paragraph (a) or (c), the
Court may exercise its jurisdiction if one or more of the
following States are Parties to this Statute or have
accepted the jurisdiction of the Court in accordance with
paragraph 3:
(a) The State on the territory of which the conduct in
question occurred
So the fact that United States is not a contracting party
to the Rome Statute is no bar to the I.C.C.s
prosecution of the Accused because they have ordered and
been responsible for the commission of Rome Statute
Crimes against Humanity on, in, and over the respective
territories of several I.C.C. member states.
Consequently, I hereby respectfully request that the
Court exercise its jurisdiction over the Accused for
these Crimes against Humanity in accordance with Rome
Statute article 13(c), which provides as follows:
Article 13
Exercise of Jurisdiction
The Court may exercise its jurisdiction with respect to a
crime referred to in article 5 in accordance with the
provisions of this Statute if:
(c) The Prosecutor has initiated an investigation in
respect of such a crime in accordance with article 15.
Pursuant to Rome Statute article 13(c), I hereby
respectfully request that you initiate an investigation
proprio motu against the Accused in accordance with Rome
Statute article 15(1): The Prosecutor may initiate
investigations proprio motu on the basis of information
on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court. My
detailed Complaint against the Accused constitutes the
sufficient information required by article 15(1).
Furthermore, I respectfully submit that this Complaint by
itself constitutes a reasonable basis to proceed
with an investigation under Rome Statute article 15(3).
Hence, I also respectfully request that you formally
submit to the Pre-Trial Chamber a request for
authorization of an investigation of the Accused
under Rome Statute article 15(3) at this time. Please
inform me at your earliest convenience about the status
and disposition of my two requests set forth immediately
above.
Based upon your extensive human rights work in Argentina,
you know full well from direct personal experience the
terrors and the horrors of enforced disappearances of
persons and their consequent torture. According to
reputable news media sources here in the United States,
about 100 human beings have been subjected to enforced
disappearances and subsequent torture by the Accused. We
still have no accounting for these Victims. In other
words, many of these Victims of enforced disappearances
and torture by the Accused could still be alive today.
Their very lives are at stake right now as we communicate.
You could very well save some of their lives by publicly
stating that you are opening an investigation of my
Complaint.
As for those Victims of enforced disappearances by the
Accused who have died, your opening an investigation of
my Complaint is the only means by which we might be able
to obtain some explanation and accounting for their
whereabouts and the location of their remains in order to
communicate this critical information to their next-of-kin
and loved-ones. Based upon your extensive experience
combating enforced disappearances of persons and their
consequent torture in Argentina, you know full well how
important that objective is. The next-of-kin, loved-ones,
and friends of disappeared human beings can
never benefit from psychological closure
unless and until there is an accounting for the fates, if
not the remains, of the Victims. In part that is
precisely why the Accuseds enforced disappearances
of about 100 human beings constitutes ongoing criminal
activity that continues as of today and will continue
until the fates of all their Victims have been officially
determined by you opening an investigation into my
Complaint.
Let us mutually suppose that during the so-called
dirty war in Argentina the International
Criminal Court had been in existence. I submit that as an
Argentinean human rights lawyer you would have moved
heaven and earth and done everything in your power to get
the I.C.C. and its Prosecutor to assume jurisdiction over
the Argentine Junta in order to terminate and prosecute
their enforced disappearances and torture of your fellow
Argentinean citizens. I would have done the same.
Unfortunately, the I.C.C. did not exist during those
darkest of days for the Argentine Republic when we could
have so acted. But today as the I.C.C. Prosecutor, you
have both the opportunity and the legal power to do
something to rectify this mass and total human rights
annihilation, and to resolve and to terminate and to
prosecute the widespread and
systematic policy and practice of enforced
disappearances and consequent torture of about 100 human
beings by the Accused.
Unfortunately, the new Obama administration in the United
States has made it perfectly clear by means of public
statements by President Obama and his Attorney General
Eric Holder that they are not going to open any criminal
investigation of any of the Accused for these
aforementioned Crimes against Humanity. Hence an I.C.C.
case against the Accused is
admissible under Rome Statute article 1(complementarity)
and article 17. As of right now you and the I.C.C. Judges
are the only people in the entire world who can bring
some degree of Justice, Closure, and Healing into this
dire, tragic, and deplorable situation for the lives and
well-being of about one hundred disappeared
and tortured human beings as well as for their loved-ones
and next-of-kin, who are also Victims of the
Accuseds Crimes against Humanity. On behalf of them
all, as a fellow human rights lawyer I implore you to
open an investigation into my Complaint and to issue a
public statement to that effect.
Also, most regretfully, the new Obama administration has
publicly stated that it will continue the Accuseds
policy and practice of "extraordinary rendition,"
which is really their euphemism for enforced
disappearances of human beings and consequent torture by
other States. Hence the Highest Level Officials of the
Obama administration fully intend to commit their own
Crimes against Humanity under the I.C.C. Rome Statute
unless you stop them! Your opening an
investigation of my Complaint will undoubtedly deter the
Obama administration from engaging in any more
extraordinary renditions -- enforced
disappearances of human beings and having them tortured
by other States. Indeed your opening of an investigation
into my Complaint might encourage the Obama
administration to terminate its criminal
extraordinary rendition program immediately
and thoroughly by means of issuing a public statement to
that effect. In other words, your opening an
investigation of my Complaint could very well save the
lives of a large number of additional human beings who
otherwise will be subjected by the Obama administration
to the Rome Statute Crimes against Humanity of enforced
disappearances of persons and their consequent torture by
other States, inter alia.
The lives and well-being of countless human beings are
now at risk, hanging in the balance, waiting for you to
act promptly, effectively, and immediately to save them
from becoming Victims of Rome Statute Crimes against
Humanity perpetrated by the Highest Level Officials of
the Obama administration as successors-in-law to the
Accused by opening an investigation of my Complaint.
Otherwise, I shall be forced to file with you and the I.C.C.
a follow-up Complaint against the Highest Level Officials
of the Obama administration. I certainly hope it will not
come to that. Please make it so.
Finally, for reasons more fully explained in the
Conclusion to my Complaint, I respectfully request that
you obtain I.C.C. arrest warrants for the Accused in
accordance with Rome Statute articles 58(1)(a), article
58(1)(b)(i), article 58(1)(b)(ii), and article 58(1)(b)(iii).
The sooner, the better for all humankind.
I respectfully request that you schedule a meeting with
me at our earliest mutual convenience in order to discuss
this Complaint. I look forward to hearing from you at
your earliest convenience.
This transmission letter is an integral part of my
Complaint against the Accused and is hereby incorporated
by reference into the attached Complaint dated as of
today as well.
Please accept, Sir, the assurance of my highest
consideration.
Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
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