Feb. 6, 2013 (TSR) – Following September 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency embarked on a highly classified program of secret detention and extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. The United States conspired with dozens of governments that spanned the globe to transfer—without legal process—of a detainee to the custody of a foreign government for purposes of detention and interrogation.

 

The program was intended to protect America. “Suspected” “terrorists” were seized and secretly flown across national borders to be interrogated by foreign governments that used torture, or by the CIA itself in clandestine “black sites” using torture techniques.

Globalizing Torture, an Open Society Justice Initiative 216 page report released on Tuesday, is quite a comprehensive account of the human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations. It details for the first time what was done to the 136 known victims, and lists the 54 foreign governments that participated in these operations. It shows that responsibility for the abuses lies not only with the United States but with dozens of foreign governments that were complicit.

 

I wish to emphasize that Open Society is funded by George Soros and therefore, it begs the question which part of this report has disinformation and ulterior motive. For instance, the Thai National Security Council’s secretary-general, Lt General Paradorn Pattanathabutr yesterday firmly dismissed the report and called it as “untrue”. He hit back at Soros, a financier whose speculative attacks on the baht currency were blamed partially for Thailand’s 1997 financial crisis and wondered the ulterior motive in raising the accusation against Thailand.

Just as George Soros’ involvement with the Arabspring and destabilizing the Middle East, Larouche gives a good summation of his involvement in destabilzing Thailand and who George Soros is:

The fascist mob laying siege to Bangkok today is a classic example of the Soros-financed “rose” and “orange” revolutions across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, even if the color in Thailand is Royal Yellow, and they don’t need Soros’s money. It must be remembered that Soros infamously launched the 1997 speculative assault on Thailand in a fit of rage that Thailand and its neighbors were bringing Myanmar into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Soros, the financier and leader of the world’s movement to legalize drugs, was furious that Myanmar had wiped out the opium trade, forging peace agreements with the ethnic drug armies and unifying the country for the first time since the British colonization. He was even more furious with ASEAN for befriending Myanmar and rejecting his anti-Myanmar hysteria.

The Soros-linked mobs on the streets today against Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, as in 2006 against the former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, are but a continuation of Soros’s brutal economic destruction of Thailand in 1997, in which Soros personally stole billions of dollars from Thailand’s government and population. It is also no coincidence that Prime Minister Thaksin’s “war on drugs” in Thailand in 2003 was a major target of the global Soros-funded human rights mafia, building towards the 2006 coup, nor that Prime Minister Samak has discussed reviving the war on drugs this year.

Lyndon LaRouche, briefed on this situation, noted that the drug question is central to the current global strategic crisis. Without wiping out the drug traffickers, he said, there is no security anywhere. The example of Colombia crushing the FARC narco-terrorists, thus opening up the possibility of rail and infrastructure development across the Colombia/Venezuela region, is a case in point. As also in Afghanistan, where the failure to attack the drug lords has made the war on terror an impossible task, and the entire war on Afghanistan a brutal, failed policy.

LaRouche added that international cooperation on this issue is essential. Such cooperation requires the recognition that Soros is a Nazi, and has been since he was 14, aiding the Nazis in his native Hungary, that this is his ideology, and his conditioning through life. The Thailand operation, and similar operations in Ibero-America and elsewhere, are precisely the kind of fascist operations he would do – with his British controllers turning him loose to do so.

With regards to Myanmar, or Burma, George Soros has set up an “official presence” there between December 26, 2012 – January 3, 2013. The so-called independent, yet US State Department-funded, Norway-based “Democratic Voice of Burma” reported that Soros’ mission was an effort to aid Myanmar in “the transition from a closed to a more open society.”

“Open” means open to the forces of globalization and exploitation by the “international order” contrived by the corporate-financier elite that run it. It should be noted that “democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi’s entire movement including the network of NGOs that support her political movement as well as the domestic and foreign media fronts that build up her image is entirely funded by Wall Street and London.

Therefore, we must remember that there is a big possibility that more countries might to come out with dismissal of this report and do question its ulterior motive.

According to the report:

1. At least 136 individuals were reportedly extraordinarily rendered or secretly detained by the CIA and at least 54 governments reportedly participated in the CIA’s secret detention and extraordinary rendition program; classified government documents may reveal many more.

2. A series of Department of Justice memoranda authorized torture methods that the CIA applied on detainees. The Bush Administration referred to these methods as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” “Enhanced interrogation techniques” included “walling” (quickly pulling the detainee forward and then thrusting him against a flexible false wall), “water dousing,” “waterboarding,” “stress positions” (forcing the detainee to remain in body positions designed to induce physical discomfort), “wall standing” (forcing the detainee to remain standing with his arms outstretched in front of him so that his fingers touch a wall five four to five feet away and support his entire body weight), “cramped confinement” in a box, “insult slaps,” (slapping the detainee on the face with fingers spread), “facial hold” (holding a detainee’s head temporarily immobile during interrogation with palms on either side of the face), “attention grasp” (grasping the detainee with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, and quickly drawing him toward the interrogator), forced nudity, sleep deprivation while being vertically shackled, and dietary manipulation.
3. President Bush has stated that about a hundred detainees were held under the CIA secret detention program, about a third of whom were questioned using “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
4. The CIA’s Office of Inspector General has reportedly investigated a number of “erroneous renditions” in which the CIA had abducted and detained the wrong people. A CIA officer told the Washington Post: “They picked up the wrong people, who had no information.  In many, many cases there was only some vague association” with terrorism.
5. German national Khaled El-Masri was seized in Macedonia because he had been mistaken for an Al Qaeda suspect with a similar name. He was held incommunicado and abused in Macedonia and in secret CIA detention in Afghanistan. On December 13, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights held that Macedonia had violated El-Masri’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, and found that his ill-treatment by the CIA at Skopje airport in Macedonia amounted to torture.
6. Wesam Abdulrahman Ahmed al-Deemawi was seized in Iran and held for 77 days in the CIA’s “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan.  He was later held in Bagram for 40 days and subjected to sleep deprivation, hung from the ceiling by his arms in the “strappado” position, threatened by dogs, made to watch torture videos, and subjected to sounds of electric sawing accompanied by cries of pain.
7. Several former interrogators and counterterrorism experts have confirmed that “coercive interrogation” is ineffective. Col. Steven Kleinman, Jack Cloonan, and Matthew Alexander stated in a letter to Congress that that U.S. interrogation policy “came with heavy costs” and that “[k]ey allies, in some instances, refused to share needed intelligence, terrorists attacks increased world wide, and Al Qaeda and like-minded groups recruited a new generation of Jihadists.”
8. After being extraordinarily rendered by the United States to Egypt in 2002, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under threat of torture at the hands of Egyptian officials, fabricated information relating to Iraq’s provision of chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda. In 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell relied on this fabricated information in his speech to the United Nations that made the case for war against Iraq.
9. Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times by the CIA. FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified before Congress that he elicited “actionable intelligence” from Zubaydah using rapport-building techniques but that Zubaydah “shut down” after he was waterboarded.
10. Torture is prohibited in all circumstances under international law and allegations of torture must be investigated and criminally punished. The United States prosecuted Japanese interrogators for “waterboarding” U.S. prisoners during World War II.
11. On November 20, 2002, Gul Rahman froze to death in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan called the “Salt Pit,” after a CIA case officer ordered guards to strip him naked, chain him to the concrete floor, and leave him there overnight without blankets.
12. Fatima Bouchar was abused by the CIA, and by persons believed to be Thai authorities, for several days in the Bangkok airport. Bouchar reported she was chained to a wall and not fed for five days, at a time when she was four-and-a-half months pregnant. After that she was extraordinarily rendered to Libya.
13. Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered suspects,” as were Egypt and Jordan. One Syrian prison facility contained individual cells that were roughly the size of coffins.  Detainees report incidents of torture involving a chair frame used to stretch the spine (the “German chair”) and beatings.
14. Muhammed al-Zery and Ahmed Agiza, while seeking asylum in Sweden, were extraordinarily rendered to Egypt where they were tortured with shocks to their genitals.  Al-Zery was also forced to lie on an electrified bed frame.
15. Abu Omar, an Italian resident, was abducted from the streets of Milan, extraordinarily rendered to Egypt, and secretly detained for fourteen months while Egyptian agents interrogated and tortured him by subjecting him to electric shocks. An Italian court convicted in absentia 22 CIA agents and one Air Force pilot for their roles in the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar.
16. Known black sites—secret prisons run by the CIA on foreign soil—existed in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, and Thailand.
17. Abd al Rahim al Nashiri was secretly detained in various black sites. While secretly detained in Poland, U.S. interrogators subjected al Nashiri to a mock execution with a power drill as he stood naked and hooded; racked a semi-automatic handgun close to his head as he sat shackled before them; held him in “standing stress positions;” and threatened to bring in his mother and sexually abuse her in front of him.
18. President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order repudiating torture does not repudiate the CIA extraordinary rendition program.  It was specifically crafted to preserve the CIA’s authority to detain terrorist suspects on a short-term, transitory basis prior to rendering them to another country for interrogation or trial.
19. President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order also established an interagency task force to review interrogation and transfer policies and issue recommendations on “the practices of transferring individuals to other nations.” The interagency task force report was issued in 2009, but continues to be withheld from the public. It appears that the U.S. intends to continue to rely on anti-torture diplomatic assurances from recipient countries and post-transfer monitoring of detainee treatment, but those methods were not effective safeguards against torture for Maher Arar, who was tortured in Syria, or Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed al-Zery, who were tortured in Egypt.
20. The Senate Select Intelligence Committee has completed a 6,000 page report that further details the CIA detention and interrogation operations with access to classified sources. However, the report itself remains classified.

FACT SHEETS: Investigations into CIA Renditions

This fact sheet summarizes the principal inquiries into the program that have been launched by prosecutors, parliamentarians and others in Europe and Canada:

Dick Marty and the Council of Europe: In 2005, parliamentarians at the Council of Europe set up a human rights investigation, following reports in the US media that the CIA had been operating secret detention centers for terror suspects in Europe. Headed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, the investigation’s first report in 2006 named more than 20 countries that had cooperated with a program of secret CIA flights moving suspects to and from the so-called “black sites”. Its second report in 2007 asserted that Poland and Romania had hosted secret CIA prisons from 2003 to 2005.

Fava Inquiry and the European Parliament: In January 2006, the European Parliament set up a separate inquiry led by Claudio Fava, an Italian MEP. His report concluded that the CIA operated nearly 1,245 flights through European airspace between 2001 and 2005. A subsequent parliamentary resolution criticized the lack of effective controls over member states’ rules of cooperation with foreign secret services.

Germany: The abduction of Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen wrongly seized in Macedonia and interrogated for four months by the CIA in Afghanistan, led to a three-year inquiry by German parliamentarians, who concluded that El-Masri’s claims of abuse were credible. The Munich state prosecutor’s office announced in January 2007 that it had issued arrest warrants for 13 people suspected of involvement in El-Masri’s rendition. Following pressure from the U.S. administration, the German government declined to seek the extradition of the suspects from the US.

Spain: A separate investigation into the El-Masri case was launched by prosecutors in Spain, on the grounds the CIA rendition plane that transported El-Masri had stopped in Mallorca in 2004, with CIA operatives using hidden identities without official permission. In 2010, Spanish prosecutors also requested arrest warrants for the 13 operatives. There are two other investigations related to the US torture program pending before Spain’s National Court: an open investigation into “an authorized and systematic plan of torture and ill-treatment on persons deprived of their freedom without any charge and without the basic rights of any detainee, set out and required by applicable international conventions,” in US detention facilities; and a case filed against Bush administration lawyers for torture and war crimes, which has been stayed, and referred to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Italy: In November 2009, a judge in Milan found 23 US officials as well as two Italian intelligence operatives guilty of the abduction of Usama Mostafa Hassan Nasr (known as Abu Omar), an Egyptian national, who was seized in Milan and secretly handed over to Egypt in 2003, where he spent 4 years in prison and was tortured. The Italian justice ministry declined to seek the extradition of the Americans, who included the former CIA station chief in Milan. In September 2012, the Court of Cassation upheld the judgments, and also ruled that five senior Italian secret service agents —including the former head of the country’s military intelligence agency—should be tried for their role in the kidnapping.

Canada: The Canadian government established a Commission of Inquiry in 2004 to look into the wrongful seizure and subsequent detention and torture of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained at New York’s JFK airport in September 2002 while in transit. Arar was interrogated for 2 weeks and then deported to his native Syria, where he was held for a year and tortured before being released. The inquiry exonerated Arar in 2006 and found that he had been tortured. He received C$10.5 million and Stephen Harper, the prime minister, formally apologized to Arar. In 2010, the US courts rejected a bid by Arar to sue members of the Bush administration, on national security grounds.

Poland: In 2008 the Polish state prosecutor’s office began an investigation into the country’s role in providing the CIA with a secret base for interrogation and detention of al-Qaeda suspects at Stare Kiejkuty military base in northeastern Poland. In March, local media reported that charges had been brought against Zbigniew Siemi?tkowski, former head of Polish intelligence. The Polish government has subsequently moved the investigation from the prosecutor’s office in Warsaw to the city of Krakow, without giving reasons. The Open Society Justice Initiative has brought a complaint against Poland over the use of this “black site” on behalf of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was imprisoned and interrogated there. Al-Nashiri is currently facing trial before a U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay.

United Kingdom: In the UK, the government settled a civil suit brought by Binyam Mohamed and others who had been seized by the US in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at Guantanamo Bay. The suit, alleging involvement of British intelligence in torture and mistreatment, was dropped by the UK to avoid bringing intelligence material provided by the US into open court. The UK government subsequently set up a public inquiry into the security services’ collusion with torture. This was closed down in January this year after UK police said they were pursuing criminal investigations in the cases of two Libyans, who assert they were tortured after being seized in 2004 with UK support and shipped to Libya.

Sweden: In 2001, two Egyptian nationals, Mohammed Alzery and Ahmed Agiza, were deported from Sweden and transferred by the CIA to Egypt were they faced subsequent torture and abuse. In October 2006 the UN Human Rights Committee found that Sweden had violated Alzery’s rights by standing by as he was brutally prepared for the CIA rendition flight. The UN Committee against Torture ruled in 2005 that in Agiza’s case, Sweden had exposed him to the risk of torture in Egypt.  The decision to expel the two men was also examined by Sweden’s Ombudsman, and in 2008, the Swedish government awarded Agiza and Alzery around $500,000 each as compensation.

The Santos Republic agrees with OPEN SOCIETY JUSTICE INITIATIVE Following RECOMMENDATIONS

To the United States government:

  1. Repudiate the CIA’s practice of extraordinary rendition.
  2. Cease reliance on “diplomatic assurances” against torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, as a basis for transferring individuals to foreign countries.
  3. Reaffirm and extend the commitment set forth in Executive Order 13491 to close secret CIA detention facilities by prohibiting secret detention—including short-term secret detention—by or with the involvement of any U.S. federal agency.
  4. Disclose information relating to human rights violations associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, including but not limited to the identities of all individuals subjected to these operations, along with available information on their detention and treatment, current whereabouts, and diplomatic assurances secured in particular cases. The U.S. administration and senate should work to declassify, to the maximum extent possible, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA detention and interrogation.
  5. Conduct an effective and thorough criminal investigation into human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations (including into abuses that had been authorized by the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice), with a view to examining the role of, and holding legally accountable, officials who authorized, ordered, assisted, or otherwise participated in these abuses.
  6. Create an independent, non-partisan commission (with authority to access all relevant documents, subpoena witnesses, and make its concluding report public) to investigate human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations (including into abuses that had been authorized by the Office of Legal Counsel), with a view to examining, and publicly disclosing, the role of officials who authorized, ordered, assisted, or otherwise participated in these abuses.
  7. Create an independent, non-partisan board to review compensation claims and provide just compensation to all individuals subjected to human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations.
  8. Publicly disclose the report and recommendations of the Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies (created pursuant to Executive Order 13491 in January 2009 to issue recommendations for ensuring that these policies comply with U.S. domestic laws and international obligations) along with descriptions of measures taken to implement the recommendations, so that the public may be able to assess whether policies were revised and adequate safeguards instituted against torture and other abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations.
  9. Institute safeguards for ensuring that future joint counterterrorism operations do not run afoul of human rights standards, including by making participation in such operations contingent on compliance of all participating governments with human rights standards.

To other governments that participated in CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations:

  1. Refuse to participate in CIA extraordinary rendition.
  2. Refuse to participate in secret detention, including at the behest, or with the involvement, of any U.S. agency or any other government.
  3. Disclose information relating to human rights violations associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, including but not limited to the identities of all individuals subjected to secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations along with available information on their detention and treatment, current whereabouts, and diplomatic assurances secured in particular cases.
  4. Conduct effective and thorough investigations (including, where appropriate, criminal investigations) into the full range of human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, with a view to examining and publicly disclosing the role of, and holding legally accountable, officials who authorized, ordered, assisted, or otherwise participated in these abuses.
  5. Provide appropriate compensation to all individuals subjected to secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations in which the particular government participated.
  6. Institute safeguards for ensuring that future joint counterterrorism operations do not violate human rights standards, including by making participation in such operations contingent on compliance of all participating governments with human rights standards.

Real Recommendations: Global Sanctions and Formation of a Multipolar hybrid International Military Tribunal Against USA

Anyone who reads this extensive report must sober up and hold these perpetrators accountable and be tried in a War Tribunal for Crimes Against Peace.

If there is any country that deserves global sanctions and war criminal distinction, it is USA for these crimes. No one should be immune and be above to International Human Rights and Humanitarian Laws. USA with its complicit partners have made all our universal rights and laws into a mockery and made our international community into a world of lawlessness.

Individuals responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes and against humanity should no longer be above the international laws and must be prosecuted. Only a few individuals have been brought before justice and no Western politician has ever been brought to trial.

International courts and tribunals have been active for close to two decades and yet the impact of their work remains questionable and biased. Much of the prosecuted have been African nations and whoever USA deemed fit according to their own global hegemony agenda.  These tribunals must no longer be symbolic but efficient, and ceased from being an instrument for the more powerful Western States.

The United States led the way in the Nuremberg trials – underscoring the need for strict, aggressive adherence to the rule of law in the face of mass lawlessness. Yet the last 66 years, USA has significantly undermined the Nuremberg legacy, using it as the tool of their foreign relations, departing from the rule of law, and openly flouting international law.

Most people know that the Allied powers, i.e. the Victors — United States, Russia, Great Britain and France — convened the Tribunals in 1945 to try high-level leaders of the Nazi Germany government. What is not as well known, however, is that the trials were fraught with controversy and behind-the-scenes politicking. Indeed, the trials almost did not happen at all.

This is real history in a nutshell:

In the United States, two radically opposing factions developed. In 1944, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau proposed summarily executing many prominent Nazi leaders, and banishing others to far corners of the world. Under his proposal, German prisoners of war would be forced to rebuild Europe. Even Winston Churchill supported a version of this plan, preferring to simply shoot the leaders.

At first, President Roosevelt leaned in this direction, too. But Secretary of War Henry Stimson had a different idea: He pushed for some sort of tribunal, believing that the rule of law needed to be reinforced where the Nazis had mocked it. He considered the Nazi activities as war crimes that called for a judicial response – and therefore, his counter-proposal called for trying Nazi leaders in open court. Stimson eventually convinced Roosevelt, who gave his approval for the Tribunal only months before he died in April 1945. That approval paved the way for the U.S. to become the prime mover behind the trials.

Shortly after he assumed his new office, President Truman allowed Justice Robert Jackson, who was at the time sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, a leave of absence so that Jackson could become Chief Prosecutor of the main Tribunal. Jackson was an inspired choice. Representing the U.S position, Jackson proclaimed, “This Tribunal is not the product of abstract speculation. It represents a practical effort to use international law to meet the greatest menace of our time …We are able to stop this menace only when we make all men and nations equally answerable to the law.”
In other words, the United States saw the Nuremberg trials as the epitomy and victory of Justice and Laws against Lawlessness.
This was exhibited at Nuremberg. Within a year, 21 defendants were tried and 18 convicted. The Tribunal indicted high-level defendants on charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which it defined as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation…or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds.” At no prior time in history had the leaders of a nation been brought to trial for killing their own citizens.
A huge precedence, the tribunals established individual accountability for mass atrocities — previously, only nations could be held accountable. They also furthered the concept of international law as a separate and enforceable set of legal standards –creating a way to find an individual liable for massive crimes even if he might be found innocent under domestic law.
The tribunals eliminated any immunity based on the official position of a defendant – giving birth to the concept of “command responsibility.” They also created a legal basis for finding private actors – not just public officials – responsible for atrocities. And at a larger level, they established that due process needs to be followed even after mass atrocities. Even Churchill, when the Tribunal ended, admitted that his initial skepticism had been wrong.
WHERE IS JUSTICE AND INTERNATIONAL RULE OF LAW APPLIED NOW?
After the tribunals closed in 1948, there was an almost fifty-year period in which international justice seemed to have disappear from among the world’s priorities. Until the Statute for the International Criminal Court was drafted in 1998, there was no comprehensive international justice system in place.
Some people would consider the International War Tribunal for Rwanda and for the former Yugoslavia as progress. But closer scrutiny of the people who were involved showed self-interests and covert operations instigated by USA and their puppeteering Zionist and Neocon elites behind it.
Decades gone by, United States has moved eons away from the sentiments expressed by Jackson about the importance of the rule of law and have gotten away unscathed from all its atrocities committed to Humanity starting with the 21st century Anti-Semitic Islamophobia.
Millions of innocent lives have been killed due America’s thirst for global hegemony and covert operations. It is most troubling that the international criminal trials have not deterred genocide, mass atrocity, and crimes of aggression. But many people do not know that the same person who funds destabilization of governments and the International Criminal Court is the very same person who funded this foundation who wrote this Globalizing Torture report, George Soros.
To impose an effective international criminal justice model on mass atrocity must be done to break these ongoing cycles of violence and unwarranted military interventions through the aspirations and respect of the rule of law. A proper and multipolar approach as a collective criminal justice response to mass atrocity USA has committed to many nations and individuals can break silences produced by fear or repression.
Admittedly, we face this enormous challenge but a collective call for us to be as bold in pursuing dignity in our dangerous time is much greater. I, therefore, summon the hopes and commitments of new generations around the world and locate responsibility in individuals rather than nations or ethnicities and holds these individuals accountable for their actions.
The crimes of aggression committed by George W. Bush and Tony Blair, among others, has been totally dismissed by international criminal justice and have been swept under rug. The bombing of innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and elsewhere perpetuated by the NATO and CIA drones, initiated by the Bush administration and even intensified under the Obama administration, has not yet received any attention from international criminal courts even if they can classify as war crimes.
In the words of Yolande Mukasana on the wall of the National Genocide Museum in Kigali, Rwanda: ”There will be no humanity without forgiveness. There will be no forgiveness without justice. There will be no justice without humanity.”
The existing regime of international criminal justice has been designed selectively and it is much more likely to affect weak and non-Western players than powerful Western ones. The ICC is not competent as per my experience on how they handled Libya using propaganda and lies from mainstream media as their “evidence”. The personal ambitions of its judges and the budget that International Criminal Court receives from US and other member states are much more in their focus than doing their jobs. If we want to avoid the noble ideal of an international criminal justice becoming simply a tool in the hands of Western powers, a major mobilization is needed.
First, we need to do is to force the existing judicial institutions to be more daring and more independent. In order to achieve this, there must be sustained pressure from the global public opinion in order to direct the existing institutions to be more comprehensive in their mandate.

Second, Humanity needs to realize that the government-instituted international criminal tribunals do not have the monopoly on judicial method. The judicial method of investigation, evidence and controversy between accusation and defence can be applied by Courts that do not have an inter-governmental mandate. Just like in the 1960s when Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Lelio Basso established an Opinion Tribunal on the War Crimes in Vietnam, though having no enforcing power,  it managed to assemble significant evidence and to alert the public opinion on crimes that were often overlooked by most of the media and even more by the American Courts designed to investigate on war crimes. Since then, the Basso Foundation in Rome has continued this tradition with a Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal.

We have something like that through the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War which was founded by Tun Dr. Mahathir, Malaysia’s longest-serving 4th Prime Minister and one of the longest-serving leaders in Asia. However, more of these ventures are needed in order to use the judicial discourse to held powerful players accountable.

Thirdly, we should be extend justice by involving larger parts of the population through education. The problem is deeply embedded due to the unlimited funds that has been used for shaping global consciousness, and therefore, our goal and mission should not just be punishing symbolic and egregious criminals, but also to understand why some major crimes happened with the silence or even the collaboration of much larger groups of peoples. Punishment and incarceration of a handful of criminals is certainly helpful, but even more so if we expose and educate the world in how the aggressive machinery’s top-down procedure allowed the crimes to occur. Case in point, Nelson Mandela fearlessly launch the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which managed to involve a much larger number of victims and perpetrators. This avoided the impression that criminal justice is just concentrating on a few symbolic cases and gave it credence.

I would also add that governments and nations should consider imposing sanctions, direct or indirectly, and make a stand in showing intolerance to hypocrisy and human rights abuses committed by USA.

It’s more than 10 years since the 2001 smokescreen, this detailed Open Society report, though with gaps and perhaps ulterior motive disinformation, proved how USA stripped people of their most basic rights, facilitated gruesome forms of torture, at times captured the wrong people, and debased the United States’ human rights reputation world-wide. It makes it unequivocally clear that the time has come for the United States and its partners to definitively repudiate these illegal practices, hypocrisy and secure accountability for the associated human rights abuses. I know, at the very least, we can all agree that we feel this injustice together.
We need efficient, unbiased and efficient international and hybrid Courts and Tribunals that should enforce what Immanuel Kant stated in his “Towards Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Project” more than two centuries ago: “the peoples of the earth have thus entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere”.
The time for TRUTH and JUSTICE is now.

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