The New York based Center for Constitutional Rights is filing war crimes charges against Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Undersecretary of State Stephen Cambone and seven other senior U.S. officials. The charges are being filed in Germany, which is said to have leading-edge laws regarding international crime and can prosecute defendants no matter where they reside. From the CCR press release:
In a historic effort to hold high-ranking U.S. officials accountable for brutal acts of torture including the widely publicized abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib, on Tuesday November 30, 2004, CCR and four Iraqi citizens will file a criminal complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office at the Karlsruhe Court, Karlsruhe, Germany. Under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction suspected war criminals may be prosecuted irrespective of where they are located.
Much like Jim Garrison's prosecution of Clay Chaw in the JFK assassination conspiracy, this is a small first step in a much larger battle to hold accountable those who sanctioned torture at Abu Ghraib. None-the-less, it's a safe bet that Rumsfeld and company will walk away from this, that is if they even notice they've been charged with something. More details are to be released on Tuesday.