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Blair has no right to lecture on the rule of law

JamieSW — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:17:16 +0000

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, has been lecturing Russia on the need to respect Ukrainian and Georgian sovereignty. He doesn’t seem to realise how incongruous this sounds to much of the world, given Britain’s own disregard of international law.

In a similar vein, our former prime minister, Tony Blair, also caused wry smiles earlier this month when he visited Malaysia to give the Universiti Malaya’s 22nd Sultan Azlan Shah lecture on Upholding the Rule of Law: A Reflection.

Blair argued that this means “rules and procedures that are transparent, and rules of evidence that make sense and are fair. These basic principles apply universally and without them, the rule of law means little or nothing.”

As you can imagine, the topic Blair sought to address was a source of both amusement and disbelief among the Malaysians.

This is what the vice-chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia, Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, had to say: “It is quite obvious from casual observation that someone who has been known to have misled others, including the country’s parliament, has lost the moral authority to preach about the rule of law and good governance … One wonders then what ‘basic principles’ Blair had in mind when he gave an almost unconditional support for the unilateral decision to invade Iraq against the wishes of the international community and without the approval of the UN … Indeed, as late as April 2006, when an eminent British former law lord attacked Guantanamo Bay as ‘a stain on American justice’, Blair reportedly refused to follow suit. According to Lord Steyn, who just retired from Britain’s highest court: ‘While our government condones Guantanamo Bay, the world is perplexed about our approach to the rule of law. You may ask: how will it help in regard to the continuing outrage at Guantanamo Bay for our government now to condemn it. The answer is that it would at last be a powerful signal to the world that Britain supports the international rule of law.’”

The former Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, was characteristically blunt: “It is disgusting to see this criminal of the highest order being welcomed in Malaysia and worse still to talk on the rule of law when he broke all international laws and the laws of his own country by deliberately lying and sending young British soldiers to die in a war of aggression.”

Mahathir added that: “Saddam has been hanged, Karadzic was recently arrested, but this man goes around the world, lecturing on the rule of law.”

Roger Tan, a member of the Malaysian Bar Council, asked if, “by supporting and participating in the 2003 United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, I wonder whether Britain, being the world’s oldest democracy, still possesses moral authority in a comity of nations to lecture on the principle of rule of law.”

I visited the official Tony Blair website to read his own account of what had transpired in Malaysia. Unfortunately, I could find no mention made of the trip.

An Arresting Encounter

eddie — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:53:47 +0000

Things were getting so unremittingly damp and miserable yesterday that something dramatic was desperately needed to raise the spirits, and it duly arrived: an appearance by the sometime American UN ambassador and neocon poster-boy John Bolton – and an attempt by George Monbiot of this parish to try a citizen’s arrest on him for war crimes. This being Hay, the scenario turned out to be equal parts polite and pantomimic – and as it turned out, Bolton’s interview was sufficiently compelling to mark this session down as one of the week’s real highlights, well before Monbiot made his move.

If you watch a moderate amount of TV news, you will know Bolton: lush-haired, moustachioed, largely unrepentant about the Bush administration’s serial misdemeanours, and quiet happy to pop up on any number of television networks – but mostly Fox – to make his case. Prior to his shortlived UN appointment, he served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs in Colin Powell’s State Department. His memoir, published last year, is subtly titled Surrender Is Not An Option; the blurb describes him as “one of America’s outstanding statesmen”, and makes mention of his self-professed fight to “preserve American sovereignty and strength” – not least at the UN, which is allegedly guilty of “bias against Israel and the United States”.

And so to business. In the absence of the BBC’s Nik Gowing, the event was chaired by Hay festival boss Peter Florence, who played something of a blinder, first leading Bolton through his lack of repentance about the invasion and occupation of Iraq (“a fascist dictator is dead, and his regime is just as dead”), and on through the tangle of questions surrounding the absence of WMD. The latter prompted answers that blithely bypassed the distortion of intelligence, and ended with the somewhat disappointing conclusion, “What’s the story? I don’t know the story.”

From there, after a brief exchange about Bolton’s role in the sacking of Jose Bustani (more here), the conversation was pushed towards one of the most remarkable episodes in Bolton’s personal history – the decision of this supposedly stout conservative patriot to try to avoid service in Vietnam by registering to serve in the Maryland National Guard, a move he attempted to explain in an essay written for his 25th anniversary college reunion (he went to Yale).

“By 1969 or 1970,” he explained to the crowd, “it was apparent to me that there was no chance of victory in Vietnam … My feeling was that many, many people were going to Vietnam and having their sacrifice taken away by people in Congress who wanted to end the war … I felt in those circumstances the best thing was to join the National Guard, so I signed my name on a waiting list and that’s how I got on.” There may be an implicit logic in that argument that a reservist called to serve in Iraq might want to think about, but that’s probably another story.

The main event – before the Monbiot incident, at least – came when he was asked his opinion on the use by American interrogators of the technique known as waterboarding, placed on the Hay agenda last weekend by Jimmy Carter. He began with the claim that the unit responsible for the grim goings-on in Abu Ghraib had been “out of control”, before Florence pushed the point: is there any justification for what anyone of sound mind would consider to be torture?

“It depends on the circumstances,” said Bolton. Was that a yes, then? “No. It depends on the circumstances … I don’t opine on things I haven’t studied. This is a complex and difficult subject … I have not studied it to my satisfaction.”

This was also his line on extraordinary rendition, which rather beggars belief, but there it is: a Bush administration high-up who went on to make a second career defending the neocon position in the world’s media claims to have chosen not to work through his thoughts on two of the most controversial US policy stories of the last five years. They were, he said, “not my responsibility”.

Twenty or so minutes later, after questions from the floor had tumbled through the UN, Britain’s relationship with the EU (too close, Bolton seems to think), and another exchange on extraordinary rendition, time was called, and Monbiot made his move.

Clutching a charge sheet accusing Bolton of “the crime of aggression, as established by customary international law and described by Nuremburg Principles VI and VII”, he sprinted for the stage. Bouncers intercepted him and he was led away, while a gaggle of protesters chanted, “Arrest John Bolton!”

Not even the ubiquitous Marcus Brigstocke could help.

The obligatory book signing had obviously been a non-starter, but I spent my £18.99, and am currently making my way through 486 pages, which thus far prompt one thought more than most: notwithstanding the fact that John McCain’s foreign policy rhetoric prompts all kinds of worries, it’s a profound relief to be reading it as a work of history.

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

A Cluster of Excuses

Ellie Keen — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:24:35 +0000

Since the first day here at the negotiations in Dublin the UK has appeared determined to undermine efforts to achieve an effective and comprehensive international treaty banning cluster munitions. It is becoming increasingly hard to see how the Oslo process is going to come up with a good treaty – at least one with the UK on board – unless the British delegation starts to compromise. Without having Princess Diana championing humanitarianism, as in the days of the mine ban treaty, getting the UK on board has been akin to dental surgery without an anaesthetic.

For sure, in diplomacy it takes time for directions to filter down from policymakers to the diplomats, but time is running out. We have a week left and it looks like the UK delegation has not even read the newspapers. Prime minister Gordon Brown’s widely reported pre-by-election statement this week asking the defence ministry to review its position on clusters indicated a shift, but the UK delegates have remained unmoved. Brown might want to call them up. Then again, his apparent concession may just have been an election gimmick, in which case shame on him.

Cluster munitions leave de facto landmines when their duds scatter, often over a wide area. Today they cause a far greater threat to civilian lives and livelihoods than land mines. With 156 states party to the Mine Ban Treaty, the world has already agreed mines are illegal. Their use has been so stigmatised that even non-parties to the treaty like the US, China and Russia are reluctant to use them.

Clusters, however, are still used in massive numbers. It is hard to imagine the deadly legacy of one million cluster duds hidden in the homes, gardens, and fields of southern Lebanon. I tiptoed through those terrifying booby-trapped killing fields in the course of investigations for Human Rights Watch. It will take years of work to clear the land of the bitter fruit of conflict. They maim and kill, but they also mean you cannot farm the land or walk the fields.

Imagine if the green and pleasant pastures of England were suddenly off limits, the hospitals filled with injured, the morgues with the dead. And even when life started to turn around, the farmers had to sit idly by contemplating their unplanted fields, unable to make a living for fear of stepping on a hidden bomb.

There is a macabre surrealism to listening to the delegations of so-called “like-minded states” talking about the enormous exemptions they want to ram through in this treaty. Some delegations use terms like “dangerous duds” as if every live bomb were not dangerous. But this “like-minded” bloc looking for maximum exemptions is crumbling. Only the UK is really holding on to a no-compromise position.

The UK is fixated with “self-destruct devices”, insisting that they work. But the simple fact is that self-destruct mechanisms do not work. In Basra and Lebanon the vaunted M85 cluster munitions failed so miserably their dud rate was 10 times higher than advertised. It is absurd to claim that these munitions don’t cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

I have to wonder if the members of the British delegation or their political masters would be comfortable with their children playing in the fields of southern Lebanon. I am scared to walk even in the cleared areas – and I am a grown-up with a soldier’s training.

The British delegates here say their cluster rockets are “different” because they fly straight and the pilot sees where they are aimed, and instead of covering a football field they only cover an area the size of a few homes. And with only nine sub-munitions the rockets cannot be so bad as the bombs with over 600. That is all very well and good. But you don’t fire just one, and an Apache carries enough rockets for a volley of 684 cluster munitions in total. And the effect is the same – when they strike they explode over a target raining down over an area, no matter the size, and leave unexploded duds behind.

It is clear the US is pushing the British government hard to insert a massive loophole in the treaty that would allow parties to conduct joint military operations with non-parties even if those non-parties used clusters in joint operations. The UK is thus trying to shape the treaty to say cluster munitions are so bad they must be illegal, but if the US uses them, then Britain must be allowed to help. This is nonsense.

Before it is too late, the UK needs to start showing some humanitarian principles and some political backbone. As a close ally of the US and a major military player on the global stage, it is important that the UK remains on board the Oslo process. But it is also essential that the UK follow up on Brown’s helpful statement this week and drop its efforts to drive an American coach and horse through the treaty. Rather than standing up for narrow US interests, the UK needs to start standing for the interests of the victims – past, present and future – of these horrible weapons.

Unlawful Combat

Ellie Keen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:44:54 +0000

The Guardian’s Seumas Milne reports on a secret framework agreement between the Iraqi and US governments that would authorise the US (and thus, by implication, other coalition forces – including the UK) to “conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security” without time limit. This agreement would replace the existing UN mandate from various security council resolutions, starting with resolution 1546 from 8 June 2004. The question arises as to whether any of this is lawful within international law.

The answer could not be clearer. It is not lawful, for two main reasons. First, there is the question of attributability. In the House of Lords in December 2007 in the al-Jedda case the UK lost an argument that in Iraq, because there was a UN mandate provided by resolution 1546, all the actions of UK forces were attributable to the UN and not the UK. The Lords distinguished the mandate in Iraq from that in Kosovo (the government relied on the Behrami case where the grand chamber of the European court of human rights had held that the actions of troop contributing nations in Kosovo were, for different reasons, attributable to the UN). However, under this framework agreement there would be no UN mandate, and so there could be no doubt that the actions of the US and UK would be attributable to the individual states.

Second, there is the question of jurisdiction. In the al-Skeini case (which included the case of Baha Mousa, who was brutally killed in a UK detention facility) of June 2007, the Lords also held that the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European convention on human rights (ECHR) did apply to UK detention facilities. Thus, there is jurisdiction for the purposes of article 1 of the ECHR. By implication there would also be jurisdiction for the purposes of article 2 of the international covenant on civil and political rights (ICCPR). Article 5 of the ECHR provides for no detention without due process. Article 9 of the ICCPR is in similar terms. The former applies to the UK and European coalition partners. The latter applies to the US too (leaving aside its successful efforts to render its ICCPR obligations unenforceable). Thus, internment “for imperative reasons of security” by the US and others is in fundamental breach of these rights, that is, in breach of international human rights law.

Thus, if the US and UK have jurisdiction, as they certainly do in a detention facility, they cannot intern under this framework agreement. Even if there were to be a security council UN mandate, it is extremely doubtful whether a UK court, or the European court of human rights, would allow such a fundamental right as that protected by article 5 of the ECHR to be displaced in this way. Without a mandate, it is completely out of bounds.

The Iraqi government should refuse to sign any such agreement as it is in flagrant breach of international law – and of Iraqi law, which provides for no detention without due process by article 37 of the new Iraqi constitution.

It is understood that the US and UK find compliance with international law hugely inconvenient. However, we should not allow our governments to sign up to this framework agreement, and neither should the Iraqi government or Iraqi civil society have anything to do with it.