THE HANDSTAND

JUNE 2003

  international criminal tribunal for Afghanistan

PESHAWAR, April 30: The federal government has refused to allow the Japan-based International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan (ICTA) to hold a public hearing in Islamabad on Wednesday to collect evidence of war crimes against US President George Bush during the Afghan war.

Speaking at a press conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday, co-representative of the ICTA Prof Akira Maeda said his organization was to hold a public hearing against President Bush at a hotel in Islamabad but the authorities denied them e said this would have been the 7th public hearing against the US president.

Prof Maeda said the government might not want to expose the US government's war crimes in Afghanistan as it could hurt relations between Islamabad and Washington and perhaps that was why the tribunal was not allowed to conduct hearing.

He said: "The Pakistan government's decision caused great disappointment. Our main purpose is to give a peace message to the international community, stop the US government from violent behaviour and pay compensation to the war victims."

He said public hearings against President Bush would be held in other parts of the world including America.

The ICTA had already conducted public hearings in Tokyo, Osaka, Shibuya, Kobe, Hachioji and planned to hold the seventh hearing in Islamabad in collaboration with the Revolutionary Association for Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). The organization is scheduled to hold next hearing in Yokohama (Japan) on May 31.

According to the chargesheet prepared by the ICTA, the first charge against president Bush is that he, "individually or jointly with other members, planned and instigated illegal attack in Afghanistan, ordering US forces to invade Afghanistan
on October 7, 2001."

The second charge is that the military action caused a huge number of refugees and internally-displaced persons in Afghanistan and Pakistan near the border. Depending on the information sources, the number varies from several hundred thousands to several millions.

Thirdly, the US-UK forces dropped cluster bombs, daisy cutters,
used bunker-busters that killed and injured a large number of civilians.

Hundreds of Taliban POWs were killed in the midst of an uprising at the Qala-i-Janghi camp and the Amnesty International warned that the incident could be a violation of the international law.

It said the international concerns over the US government's inhuman treatment of suspected terrorists grow who have been detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and the transfer of Al Qaeda fighters captured in Afghanistan to Cuba was also a questionable practice.
Bureau Report
Dawn Online

George Monbiot
Tuesday May 20, 2003
The Guardian  : Excerpts
  Belgium is becoming an interesting country. On Wednesday, a human rights lawyer filed a case with the federal prosecutors whose purpose is to arraign Thomas Franks, the commander of the American troops in Iraq, for crimes against humanity. This may be the only judicial means, anywhere on earth, of holding the US government to account for its actions.

The case has been filed in Belgium, on behalf of 17 Iraqis and two Jordanians, because Belgium has a law permitting foreigners to be tried for war crimes, irrespective of where they were committed. The suit has little chance of success, for the law was hastily amended by the government at the beginning of this month. But the fact that the plaintiffs had no choice but to seek redress in Belgium speaks volumes about the realities of Tony Blair's vision for a world order led by the US, built on democracy and justice.   Franks appears to have a case to answer. The charges fall into four categories: the use of cluster bombs; the killing of civilians by other means; attacks on the infrastructure essential for public health; and the failure to prevent the looting of hospitals. There is plenty of supporting evidence.   US forces dropped around 1,500 cluster bombs from the air and fired an unknown quantity from artillery pieces. British troops fired 2,100. Each contained several hundred bomblets, which fragment into shrapnel. Between 200 and 400 Iraqi civilians were killed by them during the war. Others, mostly children, continue to killed by those bomblets which failed to explode when they hit the ground. The effects of their deployment in residential areas were both predictable and predicted. This suggests that their use there breached protocol II to the Geneva conventions, which prohibits "violence to the life, health and physical or mental well-being" of non-combatants. All these actions appear to offend the fourth convention.   The armed forces also deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure, bombing the electricity lines upon which water treatment plants depended, with the result that cholera and dysentery have spread. Protocol II prohibits troops from attacking "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as ... drinking water installations and supplies".   The fourth convention also insists that an occupying power is responsible for "ensuring and maintaining ... the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory". Many hospitals remain closed or desperately under-supplied. On several occasions US soldiers acted on orders to fire at Iraqi ambulances, killing or wounding their occupants. They shot the medical crews which came to retrieve the dead and wounded at the demonstration in Falluja. The Geneva conventions suggest that these are straightforward war crimes: "Medical units and transports shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attack."  
  We should not be surprised to learn that the US government has responded to the suit with outrage. The state department has warned Belgium that it will punish nations which permit their laws to be used for "political ends". The Belgian government hasn't waited to discover what this means. It has amended the law and denounced the lawyer who filed the case.  
Of course, the sensible means of resolving legal disputes between nations is the use of impartial, multinational tribunals, such as the international criminal court in the Hague. But impartial legislation is precisely what the US government will not contemplate. When the ICC treaty was being negotiated, the US demanded that its troops should be exempt from prosecution, and the UN security council gave it what it wanted. The US also helped to ensure that the court's writ runs only in the nations which have ratified the treaty. Its soldiers in Iraq would thus have been exempt in any case, as Saddam Hussein's government was one of seven which voted against the formation of the court in 1998. The others were China, Israel, Libya, Qatar, Yemen and the US. This is the company the American government keeps when it comes to international law.