November 2004 - ACTIVISTS FROM around the world convened at New York City’s Martin Luther King, Jr. High School on Aug. 26 for the Iraq War Crimes Tribunal. The New York meeting was one of a series of such tribunals, held in places as diverse as Kyoto, Istanbul and Belgium, to hear witnesses’ accusations that the current U.S. administration has committed war crimes in pursuit of its Middle East policy, specifically with regard to Iraq. An earlier tribunal collected evidence of alleged war crimes committed by the Bush administration in Afghanistan. The current series will culminate in a tribunal in Istanbul, Turkey in 2005.

Based on an indictment written by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, founding member of the International Action Center (IAC), the tribunal accuses President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Gen. Tommy Franks, and his successors as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and George Tenet, L. Paul Bremer, and John Negroponte, as well as others, with 19 war crimes.

In summary, the charges are: 1. waging a war of aggression; 2. using excessive force; 3. using illegal weapons; 4. using assassinations, executions, kidnappings, and torture; 5. using mercenaries; 6. destroying civilian infrastructure; 7. encouraging internal (Iraqi) conflict; 8. maintaining a criminal occupation; 9. shutting out the United Nations through unilateral action; 10. systematically defying and undermining international law; 11. manifesting commitment to world domination by directing a coup d’état in Haiti; 12. threatening the sovereignty of nations by threatening similar actions in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the Philippines, Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela, and supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine; 13. destroying Iraqi sovereignty by imposing a U.S.-chosen government in Iraq; 14. usurping the war powers of the U.S. Congress; 15. weakening human rights and the U.S. Bill of Rights through illegal arrests and detentions; 16. illegally detaining foreign nationals at Guantanamo Bay against international law and Cuba’s will; 17. encouraging war profiteering; 18. censoring the press; and 19. carrying out the above for the purpose of controlling and exploiting Iraq and other nations through military and economic force.

These acts, Clark points out, are in contravention of the Nuremberg principals, the United Nations charter, international law, and the Constitution of the United States.

Various panels ran concurrently on such topics as the struggle against war and occupation, the planning and preparation for wars in the Middle East and Africa, East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, the targeting of civilians and infrastructure in Iraq, illegal detentions, torture and mass repression, the use of illegal weapons, U.S. soldiers’ rights to refuse illegal orders, the domestic cost of the war, and the rights of a people to self-determination and resistance.

A number of distinguished speakers added their voices to the panels. Testifying in the panel on civilian targeting were Maria Penarroya and Javier Barandiaran of Spain and the Basque country, respectively, both of whom witnessed the 2003 "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad, and Jo Wilding of Britain, who witnessed the siege of Fallujah. Dr. Hans Rothe, a British kidney specialist who treated soldiers for depleted uranium (DU) poisoning, spoke on the panel about illegal weapons. Attorney Lynne Stewart, under indictment for her defense of "The Blind Sheikh," the Egyptian implicated in the first World Trade Center bombings in 1992, spoke against illegal detentions, torture and mass repression, while Fernando Suarez, Michael Hoffman and Maritza Castillo talked about the GI struggle. Suarez is an anti-war activist whose son, Jesus, was killed in Iraq, and Castillo’s son, Camilo Mejia, is a war resister in jail for desertion. Hoffman is the founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). South African poet and anti-apartheid activist Professor Dennis Brutus, once imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, talked about self-determination and the right of resistance on the GI panel.

The panel on preparing for wars in the Middle East and Africa focused on U.S. support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and the looming possibility of U.S. intervention in the Sudan. Palestinian artist Samia Halaby gave a brief history of the Israeli occupation and its support by the West, including U.S. support that continues today. This writer spoke about the concrete ways the U.S. supports Israel, in both foreign and domestic policies. Palestinian lawyer and Al Awda organizer Lamis Deek discussed issues and precedents under international and U.S. law, and how they pertained to Palestine; Kadouri al Kaysi of the Committee in Support of the Iraqi People discussed crimes in Iraq; and the IAC’s John Parker pointed out hidden U.S. agendas in the drive to label Sudan as genocidal of its own people.

The evening plenary featured a number of people known for their struggles for civil rights, as well as international groups reporting on their own tribunals and actions. In addition to many already mentioned, Gerry Condon, who conscientiously refused orders to fight in Vietnam and who now counsels Iraq refusers, added his thoughts on the right to refuse illegal orders, and Iraqi-French filmmaker Hana Al Bayaty spoke on the occupation. Her film "On Democracy in Iraq" was screened.

Akira Maeda, professor of criminal law at Tokyo Zokei University, discussed Japan’s tribunal on Iraq, as well as its previous tribunal on war crimes committed in Afghanistan by the Bush administration, and Japanese concerns (as the only people ever to withstand a nuclear assault) with DU. Manik Mukherjee of the All-India Anti-Imperialist Front that successfully opposed Indian troop deployment to Iraq also spoke. Former Attorney General Clark concluded by outlining and explaining the legal and moral issues of war crimes involved, urging accountability for the Bush administration. A number of papers presented at the conference are available online, as is the full indictment, at <www.PeopleJudgeBush.org>.