By Brittney Hodnik
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America
WASHINGTON, United States – A Malaysian tribunal found former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and other former members of Bush’s administration guilty of torture and war crimes. The “Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal” reached the decision after hearing evidence from former inmates who told their stories of detention, torture, and mistreatment.
One former inmate, Abbas Abid testified that US troops subjected him to electric shocks, beatings, and sexual abuse at his time in Al-Jadiria prison in Iraq, according to PressTV News. He was a former chief engineer at the Science and Technology Ministry in Baghdad at the time US troops brought him in for questioning, reports The Malaysia Insider. He described the sexual abuse he sustained in the prison; he also claimed that he wanted to “[have] 15 children” and now that is not possible due to his ordeal in prison.
A second witness, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg was captured in Afghanistan, moved to Pakistan, and was eventually brought to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. According to The Malaysia Insider, he does not know what his crime was to this day. He also testified that his 20 months at Gitmo in solitary confinement led to serious mental deterioration.
This Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (“KLFCW”) is comprised of five members, which heard three witnesses speak in total, according to The Jurist. These trials are headed by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad who has stood in starch opposition to the Iraq conflict since its beginning.
These trials have no enforcement power under international or domestic rules of law but the KLFCW expressed hope that “the witnesses will . . . find a state or an international judicial entity able and willing to exercise jurisdiction and to enforce the verdict of the [KLFCW] against the 8 convicted persons and their government,” reported The Jurist.
Even former UN officials criticize the way things have been carried out. Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General told PressTV News “The UN is a weak body … and it is corrupted by member states, who use the Security Council for their own interests.” He went on to say that the members do not respect international law or the Geneva Conventions.
Other human rights groups have filed charges against US and UK officials alleging war crimes committed in Afghanistan and Iraq including the Canadian Centre for International Justice, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the European Center for Human Rights, as reported by The Jurist. Although many are calling for reprimand, the ideas are consistently rejected by US officials.
Halliday told PressTV News, “as long as they continue to use the UN it’s going to be somehow redundant and possibly a dangerous and certainly corrupted organization.”
For more information, please visit:
PressTV — Malaysian Tribunal Finds Bush Guilty of War Crimes — 12 May 2012
KLFCW Press Release — Bush and Associates Found Guilty of Torture — 11 May 2012
The Jurist — Malaysia Rights Group Finds Bush and Associates Guilty of War Crimes in Symbolic Trial — 11 May 2012
The Malaysia Insider — NGO “Tries” Bush, Former US Officials for “War Crimes” — 7 May 2012