Nuremberg Prosecutor Talks About Guantanamo Trials
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in History, Law, Military, The War On Terrorism
No surprise here, but he says they’re absolutely unfair.
“I think Robert Jackson, who’s the architect of Nuremberg, would turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on at Guantanamo,” Nuremberg prosecutor Henry King Jr. told Reuters in a telephone interview.“It violates the Nuremberg principles, what they’re doing, as well as the spirit of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.” [...]
“The concept of a fair trial is part of our tradition, our heritage,” King said from Ohio, where he lives. “That’s what made Nuremberg so immortal — fairness, a presumption of innocence, adequate defense counsel, opportunities to see the documents that they’re being tried with.”
And concerning torture…
“To torture people and then you can bring evidence you obtained into court? Hearsay evidence is allowed? Some evidence is available to the prosecution and not to the defendants? This is a type of ‘justice’ that Jackson didn’t dream of,” King said.
This is something I don’t think a lot of torture supporters really take into consideration, how very suspect that testimony and evidence is. I mean, come on people…it’s TORTURE. How reliable do you think it’s going to be when you’re subjecting somebody to all varieties of physical and emotional abuse?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 and is filed under History, Law, Military, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:13 am
I especially love those old clips from the Korean War, the U.S. media showed Americans bound and tortured. There was nothing but disgust for such inhumane acts. There’s countless cases just like these where the U.S. holds up an example of a flagrant act against humanity during times of war. Fast forward to the latest Iraq War and it is not other countries who are engaging in these utterly indefensible acts but it is us.
Despite the repeated assurances given by the president that “we do not torture” there is a mountain of evidence that proves otherwise.
America for all intents and purposes was the champion of the Geneva Conventions–the torchbearer for human rights.
Taking anyone you are suspicious of off the “battlefield” and making them disappear is something you would have expected Soviet Russia to do, something Soviet China still does.
Everything America stood for in terms of due process and human rights protector is gone! We can now proudly lump ourselves in the same category as our human rights violator leader China. When American looks to reprimand and condemn the clear human rights violations of China, China rightfully so, can now say “oh, but
what about you? does America not torture?” Everything we have worked so hard for has vanished under a sick hubris and an utter
disrespect for the values America is by obligation supposed to maintain. Our credibility is arguably destroyed, and it’s likely to remain that way for a very long time.