Kudos to President Obama for releasing the Bush administrations torture memos despite strong opposition from US intelligence officials. However, the president also signaled that CIA interrogators would not be prosecuted for war crimes since they were following legal guidelines issued by the US Justice Department. Certainly, in the scale of culpability, the attorneys at the Justice Department committed the worst crime in crafting these monstrous memos. But, under the Nuremberg Principles, the memos do not absolve the the interrogators from committing war crimes.
Specifically, the Fourth Nuremberg Prinicple nullifies the so-called Nuremberg Defense that a defendent was merely following orders (Befehl ist Befehl):
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of
a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international
law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Wolfgang Heinz of the German Institute for Human Rights and a member of the Anti-Torture commission of the European Council was interviewed about this in the Frankfurter Rundschau:
Folter ist absolut verboten und nach dem Völkergewohnheitsrecht in
jedem Fall eine Straftat. Die USA haben außerdem die
Antifolterkonvention der UN unterzeichnet, und es gibt ein US-Gesetz,
das Folter verbietet. Auch ein Regierungsmemorandum wie das des
Justizministeriums kann das Völkerrecht nicht aushebeln. Und aus den
jetzt veröffentlichten Dokumenten geht klar hervor: Die Verhörmethoden
waren Folter, und sie wurde systematisch organisiert von ganz oben. (Torture is absolutely forbidden and under International Customary Law is in every case a punishable crime. Furthermore, the US is a signatory of the anti-torture provisions of the United Nations, and there are US laws outlawing torture. A government memorandum, such as those produced by the Justice Department, cannot circument human rights. And it is clear from the documents that the interrogation techniques constituted torture and that it was systematically organized from the top.)
ANZEIGE
The fact that the CIA interrogators were acting in accordance with the memoranda does not absolve them of a criminal offense:
Auch sie müssten vor Gericht gestellt werden. In der
UN-Antifolterkonvention heißt es: "Eine von einem Vorgesetzten oder
einem Träger öffentlicher Gewalt erteilte Weisung darf nicht als
Rechtfertigung für Folter geltend gemacht werden." Auf einen
Befehlsnotstand können sie sich nicht berufen, das wurde schon in den
Nürnberger Prozessen festgestellt. (They, too, must be brought to justice. The anti-torture provision of the UN reads: "A command issued by a superior or a representative of a governing body may not serve as a justification for torture." They cannot use a defense of superior orders as justification as this was alredy nullified in the Nuremberg trials.)
Heinz believes it would be catastrophic for the US if those who committed torture are not punished:
Der Schaden wäre immens. Die Verfehlungen der Ära Bush würden nicht
aufgeklärt und das Argument der Cheneys und Rumsfelds, die Verhöre
seien für den Schutz der USA notwendig gewesen, nicht abschließend
entkräftet. Repressive Regimes, denen der Westen
Menschenrechte predigt, könnten sich in ihrer Praxis durch die
"doppelten Standards" des Westens bestätigt fühlen. (The damage would be enormous. The improprieties of the Bush era would not be cleared up, and the arguments of the Cheneys and Rumsfeld - that the interrogations were necessary for the protection of the US - would not be refuted. ... Repressive regimes that are routinely criticized by the west for human rights abuses, could point to the double standard of western nations to justify their practices.)
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