UNITED NATIONS – Member states of the U.N. have frequently disregarded international human rights laws and principles in the name of counter-terrorism, an expert panel here found. 
The panel entitled “Fortress or Sand-Castle? Human Rights in the Age of Counter-Terrorism“, was the seventh instalment of the New Human Rights Dialogue Series, a 12 part monthly series in commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘read today very much like a catalogue of abuses, and quite often abuses carried out in the name of something called counter-terrorism,’ said Craig Mokhiber, of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who moderated the panel.
Some areas of concern with regards to counter-terrorism stressed by the panellists are the expansion of police powers, use of secret courts and evidence, use of preventative detention, and the application of the death penalty for non-lethal crimes.
‘Counter-terrorism laws passed worldwide have represented a broad expansion of government power to investigate detain, prosecute, and imprison individuals with minimal judicial oversight, public transparency, and due process,’ said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counter-terrorism programme director at Human Rights Watch.
These laws restrict the rights of terrorists, political dissidents, social activists, and common criminals, according to Mariner.
The legislation is partly the result of the lack of an international definition for terrorism, without which countries are allowed to create their own broad definitions of what constitutes a terrorist organisation or act. Human rights violations resulting from laws based on these broad definitions are exacerbated by international pressure from the Security Council for member states to show that they are combating terrorism domestically.
The U.S. among other nations has attempted to justify the derogation of certain international human rights laws by claiming that the ‘war on terror’ is a new kind of armed conflict that lies outside of international human rights law and warrants the creation of a new structure of humanitarian law.
Margaret Satterthwaite, co-director of the international human rights clinic at the centre of human rights and global justice at New York University School of Law, noted that, ‘this argument has been rejected by a number of key high courts of various member states of the U.N. and even if one were to accept such an argument, one would still be under the rule of international humanitarian principles of customary international law when forging those new rules.’
The panellists explained that the Security Council has been slow to incorporate human rights into its global counter-terrorism strategy.
Joanna Weschler, director of research of the Security Council Report — a non-profit organisation affiliated with Columbia University — described the Council’s progress on integrating human rights into the counter-terrorism strategy as a, ‘process of slow and partial overcoming of a very deep reluctance.’
Weschler recalled that, ‘Council members were initially quite adamant that the Council would not make safeguarding human rights part of its anti-terror agenda and I remember very vividly in that period when a P5 ambassador said to me, ‘Joanna don’t expect to see the two words human and rights together in any council documents on terrorism any time soon’, and I must say they kept their word for a while.’
Weschler referenced Security Council resolution 1390, which expanded the Council’s sanctions on Afghanistan to be applicable worldwide. One result of this resolution was the creation of a list of individuals and entities that could be subjected to asset freezes, travel bans, and other sanctions — but there were no clear rules governing how parties were placed or removed from the list, and once listed, parties could not find out the reason for their listing or challenge it. Numerous cases of mistaken identity, post-mortem listing of individuals, and other human rights violations stemmed from the creation of the list, Weschler said.
The original sanctions were imposed on the Taliban in part because of their violation of human rights and were supported by human rights groups because they targeted governing bodies as opposed to citizens. To date the Security Council members have raised strong opposition to the creation of an independent review panel for the list.
Although there are many areas in which human rights continue to be neglected, the Security Council and other U.N. bodies have recently begun to take significant steps towards integrating human rights into counter-terrorist activities. The 2006 U.N. Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy lists human rights as one of its 4 pillars and states that, ‘the promotion and protection of human rights for all and the rule of law is essential to all components of the Strategy, recognising that effective counter-terrorism measures and the protection of human rights are not conflicting goals, but complementary and mutually reinforcing.’
The final document of the International Process on Global Counter-Terrorism Cooperation has recently been released and lists numerous recommendations for the General Assembly to consider in advance of the first formal review of the of the U.N. Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in September. Among the recommendations the document lists are numerous enhancements of U.N. efforts to promote human rights within the context of counter-terrorism including further inclusion of human rights experts within the counter- terrorist bodies of the U.N. and greater support for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Emi MacLean of the Centre for Constitutional Rights concluded, ‘There seem to be varying options as we move forward. We could see international rights and humanitarian obligations as inapplicable to the current paradigm and forcing a paradigm shift… or we can reaffirm that [human rights] laws continue to have resonance and import and indeed continue to carry obligations even, or perhaps, especially within this context when we are tempted to derogate from them.’
© 2008 Inter Press Service
Peace and Justice Post 
The Bush Administration Is an Ongoing Criminal Conspiracy Under International Law and U.S. Domestic Law
September 4, 2008Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference:
Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals
Massachusetts Law School
September 13-14, 2008
Andover, Massachusetts
Since the impeachable installation of George W. Bush as President in January of 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Gang of Five, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in the United States that has demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution.
What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian and Straussian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the Bush administration’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), all of which apply to President Bush himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.
Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes against peace: For example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and perhaps their longstanding threatened wars of aggression against Iran and now Pakistan. Their criminal responsibility also concerns Nuremberg crimes against humanity and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare: For example, torture at Guantanamo, Bhagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, Fallujah, and the Gitmo kangaroo courts.
Furthermore, various members of the Bush administration have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as paragraph 500 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 are international crimes in their own right: planning and preparation—which they are currently doing today against Iran and Pakistan—solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting.
Finally, according to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or private contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes.
At the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command are President Bush and Vice-President Cheney; former U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld’s Deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Secretary of State Rice; former Director of National Intelligence Negroponte; National Security Advisor Hadley; his Deputy Elliot Abrams; former U.S. Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales, criminally responsible for the torture campaign launched by the Bush Jr. administration; and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staffs along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chief, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10. Today in international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law and U.S. domestic law because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.
Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that the members of the Bush administration currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether they be Bush Jr., Tony Blair, or Saddam Hussein.
As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by Bush administration officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism. Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs! The Bush administration officials are the outlaws!
We American citizens must reaffirm our commitment to the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding our government officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic crimes. We must not permit any aspect of our foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged “war criminals” according to the U.S. government’s own official definitions of that term as set forth in the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Four Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations. The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes. If not so restrained, the Bush administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.
In this regard, during the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, President Bush Jr. terrorized the entire world with the threat of World War III if he could not work his illegal will upon Iran. It is my opinion that the Bush administration is fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons against Muslim and Arab states and peoples in order to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In post -9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against Peoples of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas. The Crusades all over again. But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!
We American lawyers must be inspired by the stunning example set by those heroic Pakistani lawyers who led the successful struggle against the brutal Bush-supported Musharraf military dictatorship in Pakistan. We American lawyers must now lead the fight against the Bush dictatorship and empire! This is our Nuremberg Moment!
Thank you.
Francis A. Boyle is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Francis A. Boyle
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