(In a break from my usual satirical content, the following is a real news item)On Monday February 15 in Madrid, Judge Baltasar Garzon will convene an investigation of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity allegedly committed by U.S. government officials and others during the Bush administration.
The first witness called to testify will reportedly be American international human rights lawyer Dr. William F. Pepper. Dr. Pepper, who for twenty years convened the International Human Rights Seminar at Oxford University, stated that he was, “asked by the Court to file an Opinion and testify as an expert on the issue of jurisdiction of the Spanish Court with respect to the various crimes being alleged.” He may also testify as to his opinion on the validity, or invalidity, of the most likely defenses to be offered by defendants should criminal charges result, namely ‘Sovereign Immunity’ and ‘Superior Orders’ (more commonly known as ‘The Nuremberg Defense’).
In his Opinion submitted to the Court last spring, Pepper concluded:
“… from the U.S. government’s own documents and the public statements of its leaders, that there is prima facie evidence of the following crimes:
o Torture and the Conspiracy to Commit Torture
o War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
o Waging Aggressive War
o Illegal (Arbitrary) Detention
(He) places varying degrees of responsibility on particular government officials including George W. Bush and Richard Cheney and dismisses as inapplicable to serious international crimes the relevant defenses available to them and their subordinates including the government lawyers who (he argues) have a special professional responsibility.”
He further concluded that the Spanish Court,
“is fully able and obligated …under international law and Universal Jurisdiction” to prosecute if the evidence indicates that prosecutions are legally justified.
Pepper, who in 2007 won the landmark case Nikbin v. the Islamic Republic of Iran in which — for the first time in U.S. history — a sovereign state, as opposed to individuals or government agencies, was held accountable for torture, is no stranger to controversial cases. A friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the last year of his life, Dr. Pepper went on to represent James Earl Ray in his quest for a new trial. After Ray’s death in 1997, he later represented the King family in the 1999 wrongful death civil suit King v. Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators. In that case, after a month-long trial in which over 70 witnesses testified, the jury found, after only 59 minutes of deliberation, that defendant Loyd Jowers and “others, including government agencies” participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.
Dr. Pepper is expected to be followed to the witness-stand on Monday by two former Guantanamo detainees.
The investigation by the Spanish Magistrate is expected to last several months and include testimony from a number of victims, five of whom are Spanish citizens or residents who were allegedly detained and tortured. Judge Garzon’s inquiry will be the first, and perhaps only, formal examination of alleged criminal activity that could lead to a number of officials being charged with violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, both of which were signed by the United States and ratified by the U.S. Senate.
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