war crimes | ukwatch.net

The Arrest of Radovan Karadzic

Ellie Keen — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:08:09 +0000

The Selective Prosecution of War Crimes

To great fanfare in the Western media, the Serbian government recently arrested Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalist cause during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the early to mid-1990s, on war crimes charges.

Karadzic and Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, who is still at large, have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in the Hague, in connection with the siege of Sarajevo, during which up to 11,000 people were killed, and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica.

That Karadzic is responsible for war crimes should not be in question. Under his political leadership, Serbian nationalists engaged in terrible atrocities—including the shelling of cities and towns, massacres of civilians, rapes and herding people into concentration camps—to drive people out and create an “ethnically pure” swath of Bosnia and the Krajina region of Croatia that they hoped to annex to Serbia.

But this fact alone does not close the case. As with all war crimes tribunals in history, there is selectiveness about what is considered a war crime and who ends up on the dock.

After the Second World War, some Nazis were put on trial in Nuremburg (though because of U.S. Cold War interests in establishing a strong German state and utilizing former Nazis as spies and scientists, the trials were wound up quickly). But as a court of the victors, no Americans were tried for the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or for the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden.

Throughout the Balkans conflict, Serbs were systematically demonized in the Western press, while atrocities and ethnic cleansing committed by Croats and Muslims were either omitted or played down.

* * *

On first look, the ICTY offers an image of impartiality. In addition to indicting Slobodan Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, it has also indicted Milan Babi, president of the Republika Srpska Krajina; Ramush Haradinaj, former prime minister of Kosovo (recently acquitted); Rasim Deli, who served as commander of the main staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina from June 1993 until September 200; and Ante Gotovina, former general of the Croatian Army (currently on trial).

However, of the 161 individuals indicted by the ICTY, from common soldiers to generals, police commanders and political leaders, three-quarters are Serbs or Montenegrins. This is not surprising considering the court was established by the UN Security Council, under pressure from the U.S.—making it, again, a “court of the victors.”

While it is true that the conflict in the region developed out of the ambitions of Slobodan Milosevic for a greater Serbia, uniting the Serbs of Serbia with those living in Bosnia and Croatia, Croatia’s nationalists under Franjo Tudjman were no less ruthless in their efforts to create a “greater Croatia,” based on the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the Krajina and Serbs and Muslims from parts of Bosnia.

Croatian paramilitaries massacred hundreds of Muslim civilians in the town of Ahmici, to give just one example. After shelling the town to force townspeople to flee, Croatian forces sprayed them with machine gun fire across an open field through which the people were forced to run, a scenario similar to the atrocities committed by Serbian forces in many Bosnian villages during the war.

Indeed, as Bosnia came under attack from Serbian and Croatian paramilitaries, Muslim nationalists, with (eventually) military aid and air support from the U.S. and Europe, engaged in similar acts of ethnic cleansing as their Serbian and Croatian counterparts. Journalist Misha Glenny, in his excellent book The Fall of Yugoslavia, offers an example:

Wherever they could, the Muslims used the considerable sympathy which they enjoyed in the outside world as a cover to undertake military operations.

In December and early January [1993], they launched an intensive offensive from Srebrenica with the aim of regaining control of Bratunac, to the east on the river Drina. The Serbs were caught unawares by the attack, and the Muslims moved swiftly through Serbian villages, slaughtering a large number of civilians on the way. Because the atrocities were being perpetrated by the Muslims, they received relatively little attention in the world media.

They also provoked a fearsome counter-attack by the Serbs, who had soon driven the Muslims back to Srebrenica. Politicians and journalists were quick to condemn the Serbs for this operation, but they entirely neglected to point out that it had been provoked by the original Muslim offensive.

But what really throws the impartiality of the court into question is that no individuals—military or political leaders—from NATO countries that intervened in the war have been indicted. Yet there can be no doubt that the United States and NATO forces committed war crimes in the former Yugoslavia—first, in the Bosnian war, and later, in the air war against Serbia in 1999 during the conflict over Kosovo.

From the start, there was the complicity of the Western powers in creating the conditions that made war and ethnic cleansing inevitable. As Phil Gasper wrote:

In the end, Germany’s recognition of Croatia’s independence—without any guarantees of the Serb minority’s national rights in Croatia—made the outbreak of war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia inevitable. The same holds true for Bosnia. Germany and the U.S. recognized Bosnian independence even though the majority of Bosnian Serbs and Croats—about 51 percent of the republic—had rejected it. By doing so, they put their seal of approval on Bosnia’s descent into war.

* * *

Then there is the direct complicity of the United States in the greatest single act of ethnic cleansing that took place during the war—Operation Storm in August 1995.

By 1993, the U.S. was finally able to strong-arm its reluctant European war partners into adopting a new policy (the old one being an arms embargo on Bosnia)—NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs, combined with arming the Bosnian Muslim army. The policy was called “lift and strike.”

Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, brokered a new alliance—after the two sides had been fighting for months in central Bosnia—between Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims.

To “level the playing field” further, a group of retired U.S. generals helped Croatia to devise a military plan, with U.S. and German military aid, to overrun the Serb-held Krajina region. A private U.S. mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc., provided training to the Croatian Army.

The August 4, 1995, Croatian offensive, dubbed “Operation Storm,” drove upwards of 200,000 Krajina Serbs from their homes. Human rights observers reported the burning of homes, looting and massacres of elderly Serbs too old to flee the region. Croatia was completely “cleansed” of its historic Serbian population, and in the following weeks, U.S. air support for Muslim and Croatian forces allowed them to seize 20 percent of Bosnia back from the Serbs.

According to Mark Danner, writing in the New York Review of Books:

During two weeks beginning at the end of August, NATO pilots flew 3m400 sorties, destroying Serb antiaircraft batteries, radar sites, ammunition depots, command bunkers, bridges. Meanwhile, the Croats and Bosnians pressed their combined attacks in northwest Bosnia, conquering town after town. Indeed, NATO planes had in effect become the Croatian and Bosnian air force, ensuring that they would succeed, in just over two weeks, in changing the balance of power in Bosnia.

Bill Clinton praised Operation Storm, saying that he was “hopeful Croatia’s offensive will turn out to be something that will give us an avenue to a quick diplomatic solution.” The three-pronged offensive—the Croat invasion of Krajina, a Muslim attack in central Bosnia and punishing air strikes—pushed all sides to the negotiating table in 1995 to sign the Dayton Accords.

Today, Ante Gotovina, the Croatian general who led Operation Storm, along with two other generals, is currently facing trial on war crimes charges associated with that operation. But Bill Clinton and the U.S. generals who helped plan it and gave the green light for it remain at large.

Finally, the 11-week NATO air assault on Serbia during the Kosovo war in 1999 is a war crime that the tribunal won’t touch.

The U.S. claimed that it went to war to help Kosovar Albanian refugees under attack by Serbian forces. However, the NATO bombing produced another several hundred thousand Kosovar refugees and later helped facilitate the cleansing of the Serb minority from Kosovo.

U.S. and NATO planes conducted several thousand sorties, destroying Serbia’s power grid, factories (372 industrial sites), railways, bridges, schools and hospitals. Between 1,200 and 1,500 Serb civilians and as many as 5,000 Serbian military personnel were killed. At one point, NATO planes destroyed a bridge filled with fleeing refugees, killing 87 people. After blowing up Belgrade’s TV station with a cruise missile, killing 16 people, NATO officials justified it by claiming that the station had been a source of “propaganda.”

Directing and encouraging ethnic cleansing, playing one nationality off of another, bombing civilian infrastructure and murdering civilians—these acts engaged in by the U.S. and its NATO allies took place under the pleasant halo of “humanitarian intervention.”

The perpetrators of these great “humanitarian” deeds will likely never see the inside of a jail cell or face criminal prosecution for their crimes against humanity without a massive alteration in the balance of forces in the world between the powerful and the dispossessed.

Paul D’Amato is the author of The Meaning of Marxism

Eamonn McCann on the Raytheon Victory

Ellie Keen — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:33:58 +0000

On 9 August 2006, nine Northern Irish anti-war activists occupied the Derry offices of Raytheon, one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world, and destroyed its computers.

Their action was sparked by anger at Raytheon’s complicity in Israel’s bombing campaign against Lebanon.

The Raytheon 9 won a massive victory when they were acquitted of charges of criminal damage earlier this month.

Campaigning journalist Eamonn McCann was one of the nine protesters. He spoke to Socialist Worker about the case

There has been considerable controversy about Raytheon ever since the company announced that its factory was coming to Derry in 1999.

Raytheon specialises in producing hi-tech bombs, missiles and battlefield control systems.

It sells arms mainly to the US government. But it is also one of the largest suppliers of the Israeli army.

The immediate cause of our occupation of the Raytheon factory was the bombing of Qana in southern Lebanon on 30 July 2006.

This came at a time when the United Nations secretary general and even the archbishop of Canterbury were calling upon George Bush and Tony Blair to at least pose the idea of a ceasefire. But they adamantly refused.

They wanted Israel to finish crushing Hizbollah and the Lebanese resistance forces.

In the midst of this, a bomb was used to destroy an apartment building in Qana leading to the deaths of 28 people.

We were almost certain that this was a Raytheon bomb. In campaigning against Raytheon we’d acquired a great deal of knowledge about what it was producing and where it was selling it.

We held a meeting of the Derry anti-war coalition and decided to occupy the building. Our intention was not just to protest about what was happening in Lebanon – it was much more practical than that.

We believed that we could in effect decommission the factory, disrupt production and delay the ability of Israel to rain down further death on southern Lebanon.

We were aware that Israel was running short of some of the weapons that Raytheon was delivering and that encouraged us in our belief that we could have some effect on Israel’s ability to wage war.

We smashed Raytheon’s computers and used a fire extinguisher and other equipment to take out their communications hub.

The charges levelled against us were affray and criminal damage. The charge of affray was thrown out because key to the charge is that you severely frighten people by your behaviour.

We demonstrated in court that there was no evidence that we had frightened anybody.

Then we fought the criminal damage charge. Of course, we didn’t deny doing any of the things we were accused of.

In fact we said on the first day that we did all of the things we were accused of and that we would have done more if we could.

I stood up in the witness box and said that we regretted that we couldn’t have done more.

Our defence was not a moral defence – it was a political defence. We didn’t say that this was a protest because we were angry at Israel’s actions. We said that this was a genuine, serious effort to disrupt the supply of arms to Israel.

Our argument was that Israel was committing war crimes and that our action was intended to prevent this larger crime.

If you hear the sound of a child being brutalised in the house next door and you rush in to smash the door down and save the child, should you be charged with breaking and entering? Obviously not.

In the same way we were trying to save people in Lebanon who were being criminally attacked by Israel.

We presented lots of evidence. This included documents from the Norwegian government about why it had withdrawn investment from Raytheon, journalism by Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn, and lots more to back up our argument.

We explained what Raytheon’s weapons were and what they were used for.

We were not required to establish as a certainty that these things were happening. We were required to show our belief that these things were happening.

And we showed that we had a genuine belief based on reasonable evidence.

The jury accepted that we believed that Israel was guilty of war crimes and that our action was intended to hamper this. We were vindicated.

I hope the case will lead to a wider campaign over Raytheon. In light of the court’s decision, there is now a case for Raytheon to be investigated to determine whether it is a criminal enterprise.’

For more information on the case go to www.raytheon9.org

Interview with George Monbiot

Ellie Keen — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:54:25 +0000

Listen to the interview:

As real audio stream

Download MP3 file

AMY GOODMAN: John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, escaped a citizen’s arrest Wednesday night as he addressed an audience gathered at the Hay Festival in Wales. Security guards blocked the path of columnist and activist George Monbiot, who tried to make the arrest as Bolton left the stage. Monbiot planned the action, because he says Bolton is a war criminal for his role in helping to initiate the invasion of Iraq in 2003 while he served as US undersecretary of state for arms control.

George Monbiot joins us now on the phone from England. He is a widely read columnist for the Guardian of London and the author of numerous books. His latest is Bring On the Apocalypse: Collected Writing. Actually, he joins us now from Wales.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, George Monbiot.

GEORGE MONBIOT: Thanks very much, Amy. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us exactly what happened.

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, I made my intention clear to perform a citizen’s arrest of John Bolton. I wrote a charge sheet detailing exactly the role that he had played in launching a war of aggression in violation of international treaties, which is a clear violation of the Nuremberg Principles. And I took a dossier of evidence down to the local police station. I asked them to act on it. But when they failed to arrest Mr. Bolton, I tried to arrest him myself, and I tried to get up onto the stage as he was leaving it. And I called out, “John Robert Bolton, I am arresting you for the charge of aggression, the crime of aggression, as defined by the Nuremberg Principles.” But I was caught by two very large security guards and pulled out of the venue very quickly.

AMY GOODMAN: How does a citizen’s arrest work?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, under an act of Parliament here, the Serious Organised [Crime and Police] Act, a citizen has the right to arrest anyone that they suspect to be guilty of a crime who would otherwise get away from the scene or escape without being arrested, and to hand that person over to the police. Now, there is a proviso which says that if—you can only act in this way if the police are unable to act to arrest this person. In this particular case, the police were able to act and had chosen not to do so. So, had I succeeded in arresting Mr. Bolton, I would have put myself on the wrong side of the law.

AMY GOODMAN: John Bolton has also been criticized for calling for US strikes on Iran. Earlier this month, the New York Times published an article, based solely on unnamed sources, suggesting the Lebanese group Hezbollah is training Iraqi militants inside Iran. Hours after the article was published, this is what John Bolton had to say on Fox News.

JOHN BOLTON: I think this is a case where the use of military force against a training camp or to show the Iranians we’re simply not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do, and then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.

JAIME COLBY: Ambassador John Bolton, a good message to end on. Thank you very much.

JOHN BOLTON: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response, George Monbiot?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Yes. Well, John Bolton has the position that any and every country of which he disapproves should be attacked, and then we work out the justification for that attack later. He was one of the signatories of the letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to Bill Clinton in 1998, saying that we should attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. And he had one justification then, he had a different justification in 2003, he has a different justification today. It’s very clear that with Bolton, as with Bush, as with Cheney, as with Rumsfeld, the urge to go to war came first, and the justification came second.

Now, when you look at the main instruments of international law, you see very clearly that waging a preemptive war where you are not in an immediate crisis of self-defense is a crime against international law. In fact, the Nuremberg tribunals described it as the supreme international crime. And it was for that crime that most of the Nazi war criminals were convicted. And that is exactly the crime that Bolton has conspired in committing.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what happened to Jose Bustani?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, Jose Bustani is a Brazilian diplomat who was head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. And in 2002, Bustani offered a way out of the impasse between Iraq in the United States. He said, OK, Saddam Hussein won’t allow the UNMOVIC inspectors in, primarily because UNSCOM turned out to have been infiltrated by the CIA, and so the successor organization UNMOVIC was viewed with intense suspicion in Iraq. Bustani said, “I can solve this problem for you by bringing Saddam Hussein into the Chemical Weapons Convention and then launching inspections of my own in Iraq, and therefore we could have a peaceful resolution to this crisis.”

Immediately, the United States swung into action against him—the delegation led by John Bolton—and demanded his dismissal as director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, failed at first and then threatened to withhold all its dues and to destroy the organization altogether, whereupon the other nations, led by the United Kingdom, went along with the US delegation and agreed to sack Bustani.

Bustani later took his case to an international labor organization tribunal and was completely exonerated of all the complaints which the US had leveled against him. And the only one which seemed to remain was that he had tried to prevent war from being waged with Iraq. And so, far from seeking a negotiated settlement to the issue of the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, John Bolton ensured that anyone—Bustani’s attempt to ensure there was a negotiated settlement was, in Bolton’s word, “tanked.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, George Monbiot, where you go from here? You didn’t—were not able to arrest John Bolton in Wales. Did he know what you were attempting to do?

GEORGE MONBIOT: Yes, he does. And he’s actually made a public statement concerning it. I would urge anyone who is in a position to do so to try to exercise a citizen’s arrest of any of the primary authors of the Iraq War. And I’m talking about Bush—that makes it very, very difficult, but it’s—there’s a higher chance obviously when he ceases to be president—Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Bolton, and over here in the United Kingdom, Tony Blair and some of his cabinet ministers. And I certainly intend to try to carry out a citizen’s arrest of either Blair or one of the other senior architects of the war here in the United Kingdom.

And what I found from this instance was that even if you don’t succeed in carrying out the citizen’s arrest, you are able to focus a great deal of attention on the issue and to ensure that people do not forget. This is not an ordinary political mistake which was committed in Iraq. This was the supreme international crime, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Those people were not killed in the ordinary sense; they were murdered. And they were murdered by the authors of that war, who are the greatest mass murderers of the twenty-first century so far.

AMY GOODMAN: George Monbiot, I want to thank you very much for being with us, a columnist for the Guardian of London. His latest book is called Bring On the Apocalypse: Collected Writing.

Monbiot to Arrest John Bolton for War Crimes

eddie — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:50:39 +0000

As this article is uploaded, George Monbiot may have tried, or be trying, to carry out a citizens’ arrest of John Bolton for war crimes relating to the Iraq war. What follows is a press release concerning the attempted arrest, followed by the charge sheet against Bolton.

Press Release

At 7.20pm on Wednesday 28th May, at the Hay Festival, the writer and campaigner George Monbiot will attempt to arrest John Bolton for the crime of planning a war of aggression.

From 2001-2005 John Bolton was Under-Secretary of State at the US State Department. He was one of the key initiators of the war against Iraq. He is coming to the Hay Festival, at Hay-on-Wye, Powys, to promote his book Surrender is Not an Option.

This appears to be the first time that a citizen’s arrest of one of the architects of the Iraq war has been attempted.

As the attached charge sheet shows, John Bolton was instrumental in preparing and initiating the Iraq war, by disseminating false claims through the State Department and by orchestrating the sacking of an official who tried to provide a negotiated settlement.

The Nuremberg Principles, which form the basis of customary international law concerning armed action, state that the following action is a crime punishable under international law:

“participation in a common plan” for the “preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances”.

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg ruled that “to initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime”.

The 2003 war with Iraq launched by the United States and the United Kingdom qualifies under international law both as a war of aggression (it was pre-emptive and unnecessary) and as a war in violation of international treaties (primarily the UN Charter).

In the Guardian today (Tuesday) Mr Bolton denies that he is a war criminal.

Many people accept that the launching of the Iraq war was an international crime, but no one has yet been prepared to act on it by arresting one of the perpetrators. Monbiot intends to arrest John Bolton as he comes off the stage after speaking at the festival and to hand him over to the police. Bolton is speaking on the Guardian Stage from 6pm until 7.20.

Monbiot comments, “This could be hazardous, as Mr Bolton knows of the attempt, and is likely to be surrounded by security guards. But someone has to take the initiative, if the perpetrators of the supreme international crime are to be held to account.”

Contact: George Monbiot’s office – 01654 702758
g.monbiot@zetnet.co.uk

Charge Sheet

John Robert Bolton, Former Under-Secretary of State, US State Department, 2001-2005

We are conducting a citizen’s arrest for the crime of aggression, as established by customary international law and described by Nuremberg Principles VI and VII.

These state the following:

“Principle VI
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i)
…
“Principle VII
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.”

The evidence against you is as follows:

1. You orchestrated the sacking of the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Jose Bustani. Bustani had offered to resolve the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, and therefore to avert armed conflict. He had offered to seek to persuade Saddam Hussein to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, which would mean that Iraq was then subject to weapons inspections by the OPCW. As the OPCW was not tainted by the CIA’s infiltration of UNSCOM, Bustani’s initiative had the potential to defuse the crisis over Saddam Hussein’s obstruction of UNMOVIC inspections.

Apparently in order to prevent the negotiated settlement that Bustani proposed, and as part of a common plan with other administration officials to prepare and initiate a war of aggression, in violation of international treaties, you acted as follows:

In March 2002 your office produced a ‘White Paper’ claiming that the OPCW was seeking an “inappropriate role” in Iraq.

On 20th March 2002 you met Bustani at the Hague to seek his resignation. Bustani refused to resign. 1

On 21st March 2002 you orchestrated a No-Confidence Motion calling for Bustani to resign as Director General which was introduced by the United States delegation. The motion failed.

On 22nd April 2002 the US called a special session of the conference of the States Parties and the Conference adopted the decision to terminate the appointment of the Director General effective immediately. You had suggested that the US would withhold its dues from OPCW. The motion to sack Bustani was carried. Bustani asserts that this ‘special session’ was illegal, in breach of his contract and gave illegitimate grounds for his dismissal, stating a ‘lack of confidence’ in his leadership, without specific examples, and ignoring the failed No-Confidence vote.

In your book, Surrender is Not an Option, you describe your role in Bustani’s sacking (pages 95-98) and state the following:

“I directed that we begin explaining to others that the US contribution to the OPCW might well be cut if Bustani remained”.

“I met with Bustani to tell him he should resign … If he left now, we would do our best to give him ‘a gracious and dignified exit’. Otherwise we intended to have him fired”.

“I stepped in to tank the protocol, and then to tank Bustani”.

You appear, in other words, to accept primary responsibility for his dismissal.

Bustani appealed against the decision through the International Labour Organisation Tribunal. He was vindicated in his appeal and awarded his full salary and moral damages.2

2. You helped to promote the false claim, through a State Department Fact Sheet, that Saddam Hussein had been seeking to procure uranium from Niger, as part of a common plan to prepare and initiate a war of aggression, in violation of international treaties.

The State Department Fact Sheet was released on the 19th December 2002 and was entitled ‘Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United States Security Council’3. Under the heading ‘Nuclear Weapons’ the fact sheet stated –

“The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger.
Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?”

In a US Department of State press briefing on July 14th 2003 the spokesman Richard Boucher said “The accusation that turned out to be based on fraudulent evidence is that Niger sold uranium to Iraq”4.

Your involvement in the use of fraudulent evidence is documented in Henry Waxman’s letter5 to Christopher Shays on the 1st March 2005. Waxman says “In April 2004, the State Department used the designation ‘sensitive but unclassified’ to conceal unclassified information about the role of John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, in the creation of a fact sheet distributed to the United Nations that falsely claimed that Iraq sought uranium from Niger”.

“Both State Department intelligence officials and CIA officials reported that they had rejected the claims as unreliable. As a result, it was unclear who within the State Department was involved in preparing the fact sheet”.

Waxman requested a chronology of how the Fact Sheet was developed. His letter states –

“This chronology described a meeting on December 18,2002, between Secretary Powell, Mr. Bolton, and Richard Boucher, the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Public Affairs. According to this chronology, Mr. Boucher specifically asked Mr. Bolton ‘for help developing a response to Iraq’s Dec 7 Declaration to the United Nations Security Council that could be used with the press.’ According to the chronology, which is phrased in the present tense, Mr. Bolton ‘agrees and tasks the Bureau of Nonproliferation,’ a subordinate office that reports directly to Mr. Bolton, to conduct the work.

“This unclassified chronology also stated that on the next day, December 19, 2003, the Bureau of Nonproliferation “sends email with the fact sheet, ‘Fact Sheet Iraq Declaration.doc,’” to Mr. Bolton’s office (emphasis in original). A second e-mail was sent a few minutes later, and a third e-mail was sent about an hour after that. According to t=987e chronology, each version ‘still includes Niger reference.’ Although Mr. Bolton may not have personally drafted the document, the chronology appears to indicate that he ordered its creation and received updates on its development.”

Both these actions were designed to assist in the planning of a war of aggression. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg ruled that “to initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime”.

28th May 2008

Tony Blair accused of War Crimes

Ellie Keen — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:33:14 +0000

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair on Trial in The Hague

On the same day the BBC reported that former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was to go on trial after five years in prison over the deaths of a group of Baghdad merchants in 1992, it was rumoured the former prime minister of Britain will be indicted for crimes against humanity. The list of charges is long and not confined to the many alleged crimes in Iraq. Mr Blair’s whereabouts are uncertain; he has been sighted occasionally in occupied East Jerusalem where he is acting as “peace” envoy for the “Quartet”. Most recently, he has been facilitating industrial zones for the employment of Palestinians and for the removal of a few of the over 500 Israeli Occupation Force roadblocks.

The charge list includes:

Breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention from the time he became prime minister in 1997 until March 2003 during whichtime draconian sanctions were being applied to the civilian population of Iraq. These sanctions prompted the resignation of Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck who served as assistant secretaries-general of the UN. The former stated that the effect of those sanctions was genocidal. It was established that there was an excess mortality of babies and children of at least 500,000 between 1992 and 2003. This had to do with foul water, poor nutrition and deteriorating medical services, all of which were satisfactory before the sanctions took hold.

Conspiracy to join with another power in aggressive war, the supreme international war crime, contrary to the Nuremberg Rules and the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. This was first made public when he joined Mr George Bush, President of the United States of America, and Britain for bloodied steaks over a barbecue at Crawford Ranch in April 2002.

High treason (betrayal of one’s country, sovereign or government) in manufacturing a case for war, the central one of which was the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq. This in itself gave no grounds because the possession of such was no basis for a military assault on a sovereign country. Three aggressive nations, the US, UK and Israel, have held weapons of mass destruction for decades; no attempt has been made to disarm them. The grounds for UK military action against Iraq changed as the unlawful operation proceeded under the guise of liberation of the people and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The part played by the “sofa cabinet”, three of whom were unelected, in promulgating a war fought on behalf of Her Majesty is being minutely examined by law officers. One such cabinet member, Mr Charles Powell, recently stated on BBC TV that the aim of the war was the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. He would know that was an illegal aim. Ann Clywd MP was appointed Mr Blair’s human rights envoy in Iraq. She has continuously claimed a virtuous aim … [but the fact is that] at least a million Iraqis have been killed, about 40 per cent of whom will have been children. Using a conservative ratio, at least two million will have been maimed.

Mr Blair is charged with a litany of war crimes that followed the invasion, one of which is the failure of the “coalition of the willing” to halt the further deterioration in the quality and quantity of medical services in Iraq which had already worsened during the 12 years of sanctions. Another obligation of an occupier is to maintain security for the populace. The very opposite happened. Disbanding the Iraqi army and other Baathist structures was central to the violent chaos which followed the invasion. Protecting the heritage of a country is another obligation of an occupier in international law. Mr Blair failed as leader to meet these and he is so charged.

The general charges in this indictment are followed by an annex which details names in which there has been death or extreme injury.

The charges also include collusion in a military and political coalition which has used banned weapons. The use of white phosphorus at Fallujah by the US was admitted. Armour-penetrating tank and cannon shells, as well as “bunker busting” bombs and missiles, have used depleted uranium. Uranium U238 is dispersed widely as a very fine dust; it has been detected as far away as the UK. Iraqi doctors claim that there have been dramatic rises in grotesque deformities in babies born prematurely, in leukaemia and in other malignancies.

The list of charges includes the case of Ali Abbas, then 12 years of age and formerly of the village of Zafaraniya, which is 30 miles from Baghdad, and his deceased family: his mother who was six months pregnant, his father, brother and at least 10 other relatives. It has been reported that, just after midnight on 30 March 2003 and 10 days into “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, a weapon or two weapons exploded.

We had all gone to bed and there was this loud noise and smoke. I felt very scared and I was in much pain. I kept shouting for my mother. I did not know at the time what had happened to her.

A photograph taken in hospital in Baghdad shows that Ali was burned across his trunk and that his hands and forearms were incinerated. His head, neck, abdomen and legs were unblemished. Examination of this photograph shows this boy was subjected to the most intense radiated heat – not contact heat.

It seems likely that his head and lower half were screened from the source of this radiation by a window aperture or similar, given the rectangular pattern of the thermal injuries. The weapon that caused such rapid incineration is unknown. It certainly was not a thermobaric weapon as used currently in Iraq and Gaza. Uranium weapons give rise to a fireball as the dust ignites. This can melt steel but there are no photographs of human victims of such attacks which match the incineration of the arms of Ali Abbas, although these weapons have been used frequently – both in the Gulf War and in the ongoing Iraq War. The clandestine use of a small tactical nuclear weapon cannot not be ruled out.

The authorities will require that Ali Abbas comes to the Hague to give evidence. However, he has not been able to leave Baghdad since last summer. He has of course required someone else to attend to his every toilet need and to his dressing. An uncle provided that for him whilst he grew from boy to man at the private boys school in London and where he excelled scholastically. Another uncle took over last summer but a visa has not been forthcoming from the UK.

The US named Tariq Aziz the Eight of Spades, thus coming 43rd in the United States’ set of 55 playing cards. His trial for involvement in the hanging of 40 alleged racketeers started on 29 April under a Kurdish judge and a military occupation.

The central charge against Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is that he has caused the death of thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians, the maiming of many more and the displacement of over four million people. Unlike the treatment of those humans, his hearing will be fair.

It is understood that he will be able to receive a Catholic priest in the cell which was formerly occupied by Slobodan Milosevic. The prison chaplain will encourage further study of “faith”, which with globalization were the topics of Mr Blair’s address in Westminster Cathedral. The commander-in-chief of the USA spoke of the “sanctity of life” when he was receiving the Pontiff in Washington recently. This principle will be applied to Anthony Charles Lynton Blair but probably not to the deputy prime minister of Iraq.

David Halpin FRCS is a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon. He founded the Dove and the Dolphin charity, one of whose aims is to promote the health and welfare of Palestinian children.

In the dock for Haditha

JamieSW — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:44:00 +0000

As My Lai is for Vietnam, Abu Ghraib and the Haditha massacre of 2005 will be remembered as the most haunting, symbolic events of the Iraq war. In reality there were countless Hadithas; this kind of thing happens and will always happen in any serious conflict. It is an inherent part of war, and the Tony Blairs and George Bushes know when they embark on such misadventures that countless numbers of innocent people will inevitably be killed. A million Iraqis have died in the last five years, and the responsibility can only be taken by the same politicians who actively chose to create a war.

I approached the making of my film, Battle for Haditha, by preparing in the same way as one would for a documentary, although I had decided to cast the drama with ex-marines and Iraqis who had lived through the conflict to work as “non-actors”. After meeting the Time magazine journalist responsible for the article that revealed the massacre, my co-producer, Anna Telford, and I journeyed to Camp Pendleton, San Diego, to meet with marines of Kilo Company, the unit involved in the killing of civilians at Haditha. Initially they supplied a barrage of disgusting humour about the Iraqis, but the bravado had slipped by the second day, revealing traumatised young boys unable to deal with what they had endured. They were all now on tranquillisers, with uncertain futures, haunted by memories that would remain for the rest of their lives.

We went to Amman in Jordan to meet survivors of the massacre who had been able to flee Haditha, a formerly wealthy Sunni city with large houses and good schools – a place where couples would honeymoon by the Euphrates. Most of the survivors initially supported the American liberation but then watched their streets, town and way of life disintegrate in front of them. The Sunnis of Haditha are not an especially religious people, but when the foreign fighters came the insurgency was forced to become fundamentalist. Alcohol was banned, people speaking English were executed on suspicion of being spies, satellite phone networks were blown up, and the residents of Haditha started to fear for their lives. It is clear to me that the massacre of November 19 2005 delivered Haditha into the hands of the insurgency: every family now had a personal grudge against US marines.

Both sides harboured a deep suspicion of the other. Despite the fears and prejudices that were so ingrained, a few months later, when we actually began filming, they had the first real opportunity to get to know one another. On the first day of production a nasty fight broke out between an Iraqi and a marine when the former learned that some of the latter had served in Falluja, where three of his brothers had been killed. At one stage I didn’t think we would finish filming because tensions were so severe.

Yet within several weeks, the Iraqis and marines got to kicking a football around and chatting. Then they became close friends, both sides amazed that they could actually like the other, and I realised that this was the first time that they had ever communicated meaningfully. The film-making process revealed the humanity of both reconciliation and conflict, not to mention the incomprehensible, horrible reality of Iraq.

The trial for the marines of Kilo Company continues, and will not realistically be resolved until the end of March or April – if ever. But isn’t it the architects of this war, Blair and Bush, who knew what they were doing and were advised what the repercussions could be, who should be standing in a dock?