Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1394137.ht...Broadcast: 16/06/2005
PM may be targeted by criminal indictment: lawyer
Reporter: Tony Jones
snip
PHILIPPE SANDS: Well, let's take the case of Donald Rumsfeld. In a sense, his is the clearest case because in December 2002 he signed a memorandum, one of the infamous torture memorandums, which I describe in the book Lawless World, in which he authorises various techniques of interrogation which in the views of basically every international lawyer around amounts to torture. Those techniques were used for several weeks before the order was rescinded. They were used, for example, in Afghanistan, which is a party to the Statute of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over torture and that means in principle that court has jurisdiction to investigate the involvement of Donald Rumsfeld for authorising activities which amount to torture. You mentioned Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prime Minister John Howard, the issue there is slightly more complex and turns really on the legality of the war in Iraq. No-one is suggesting that either the British or Australian prime ministers have been involved in torturing anybody, but most people now recognise that the war in Iraq was illegal and under international law, an illegal war amounts to a crime of aggression and in some countries around the world a crime of aggression is one where they exercise jurisdiction. So the possibility really can't be excluded if Messrs Blair and Howard at some point in the future travel after they've left office to a country which, for example, has an extradition agreement with another country where you have an independent prosecutor like the independent prosecutor in Spain who initiated the investigation of Senator Pinochet, a request for extradition or for investigation or questioning has happened in the case of Mr Kissinger could happen. There's precedent for it."
Interesting...