US: A US human rights group has launched a fresh attempt in Germany to prosecute outgoing US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld for alleged abuse of detainees at US-run prison camps.
The federal prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe confirmed yesterday it had a received a complaint running to 384 pages, filed on behalf of 12 individuals who say they were abused at the Abu-Ghraib prison in Iraq and at the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.
The complaint, filed by the US-based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), calls on the German government to prosecute Mr Rumsfeld, US attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and nine other government and military officials.
The CCR filed a similar complaint in 2004 based on Germany's universal jurisdiction law, which allows German prosecutors to pursue cases originating outside the country.
German officials threw out that complaint, but CCR officials said they were optimistic they had a stronger case this time because of new evidence that has since emerged on the treatment of prisoners in US custody.
The organisation was spurred into action by Mr Rumsfeld's departure from the Pentagon last week.
"We believe all of these people named, that - really there was a torture programme created in the United States after 9/11," said Michael Ratner, president of the CCR. "The fact that within a short period of time Donald Rumsfeld will no longer be in office exposes him to this kind of investigation and prosecution. One of our goals here is to turn Donald Rumsfeld into a Henry Kissinger, where he will be not free to travel from country to country."
CCR officials said they had filed the request in Germany as a last resort as US courts were unwilling to launch investigations, and because the US does not recognise the International Criminal Court.
The document filed yesterday details cases of prisoners being beaten, deprived of sleep and food, sexually abused, stripped naked and hooded, and exposed to extreme temperatures.
It remains unclear if the case will ever be heard in Germany. If it does, the CCR's star witness will be former US brigadier general Janis Karpinski. She headed the Abu-Ghraib prison when soldier abuse photos emerged, but was later fired and demoted.
"I see it as my duty to tell the truth about what I saw and experienced in Iraq," she said in Berlin yesterday. "I hope that my testimony will help put an end to such behaviour."