Michael Ratner vs Rumsfeld

Um dos advogados que apareceu hoje na RTP, Michael Ratner é um dos comunistas mais influentes da sociedade americana, preside o Center for Constitutional Rights organização criada em 1966 por vários camaradas e progressistas US.

San Francisco Chronicle

14 Nov

Lawyers representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib will renew their efforts today to get a foreign prosecutor to charge Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with war crimes and torture.
The Center for Constitutional Rights plans to file a criminal complaint with a prosecutor in Germany against Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA Director George Tenet and others under a German law allowing state authorities to bring charges for violations of international law, regardless of who committed them or where.
The legal organization, acting on behalf of 11 former Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and one current Guantanamo inmate, accuses Rumsfeld of complicity in interrogation methods such as beatings, the use of extreme temperatures and loud noise, threats with dogs, sleep deprivation, forcible stripping and sexual humiliation.
The center filed a similar complaint against Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials in December 2004. A German prosecutor rejected the complaint two months later, saying there was still a possibility the case could be prosecuted in the United States.
That rationale no longer applies because a law signed last month by President Bush, legalizing military tribunals to try U.S. captives, included a provision immunizing Rumsfeld and other top officials from U.S. prosecution for past interrogations and detentions, said attorney Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The nonprofit organization, based in New York, describes its mission as promoting the rights of the powerless through litigation.