Will anyone from the Bush administration be tried

Great Debates
81

This is a complete non sequitur. And if you read my posts you’d actually already have the answer to this ludicrous statement already.

When a country violates a UN resolution, how does the international community enforce that? Were we supposed to arrest the country of Iraq? How would we do that?

No, because international law is not substantive criminal law. It can prohibit but it does not specify a punishment. And it’s a legal principle that one cannot be convicted of a crime when the punishment isn’t laid out. It’s considered unfair, legally, for someone to be convicted of a crime and then punished when in no existing statute did it specify how they were to be punished. Let’s say there was a law on the books that made rape illegal (there is) but unlike real rape laws, this one said nothing about punishment. So the police arrest someone for rape, convict him, and sentence him to 20 years. The rapist could rightfully argue, “If the law had told me there was a penalty like this, I wouldn’t have committed the crime.”

For a criminal law to be valid, the punishment has to exist in statute.

The U.S. argues that Iraq violated international law, and that justified our invasion, legally. When someone violates an international law, you either use might (be it economic or military might) to dissuade them from continuing to do so, or you do nothing and they get away with it.

Anyways, to get back to your original post. You quoted me as saying “violating U.N. law is not a crime on the individual level” and then you respond by saying, “well, we invaded Iraq because they violated U.N. resolutions.” Explain to me how invading a country in some way suggests that the COUNTRY in question had committed a crime on an individual level? Nations != individuals. And they aren’t treated as such, either.

Anyways, if anyone actually wants to try Bush, there’s only two ways it could happen.

  1. The United States finds him in violation of U.S. law and he is put on trial

  2. An international war crimes tribunal is formed to try American “war crimes” in Iraq. The United States recognizes the legitimacy of said tribunal and surrenders Bush for trial. Or, the international community uses force to compel the United States to surrender Bush for trial.

That’s basically the only two ways it could be possible. However, other individual countries could not arrest or try Bush for a crime. In Canada for example one crown prosecutor has actually filed a criminal suit against Bush, and I think something similar happened in Spain in the past. Whatever moral or legal problems any other country has with Bush, the fact is they don’t have legal jurisdiction to act, and thus have no legal power to try him of any crimes.

82

In this case, France requests his citizen to be returned for trial, of course. I’m not sure what is confusing you.

83

Depends.

As a prosecutor, I have an ethical duty not to prosecute unless I have a good-faith belief in a crime having been committed. So I’m thinking that as things stand now, I would simply accept that the president’s actions, though potentially immoral, are not illegal and thus beyond my reach.

Now, if I had an organization to work with that was outside official government channels, then I might try to create a perjury trap: maybe cause a civil suit against the President in his personal and official capacity for injuries suffered as the result of torture. Get it front of a friendly judge that would allow discovery before the almost-inevitable dismissal, and hope that I could get a deposition from either the President or a senior member of the administration. If the deponent chose to lie in that deposition, then I empanel a grand jury to go after the perjury.

Of course, that assumes that the deponent would choose to lie. But since there are negative political consequences to telling the truth, it’s not a bad gamble.

84

This line confused me:

85

Is there any chance that Cuban laws apply in Guatanamo, Cuba?

86

I’m not precisely sure what clairboscur is saying, either. But factually speaking we have an extradition treaty with France, so they would extradite a French citizen to the United States under the usual circumstances. That being, a French citizen commits a crime in the United States, and then flees to France.

The one exception, and the common exception among most countries that have extradition treaties with the United States is for capital crimes. France won’t extradite someone back to the United States if the person is charged with a capital crime unless they receive assurance the American prosecutor won’t request the death penalty.

87

Like others have been said, the United States holds the idea of jurisdiction pretty seriously. Without proper jurisdiction, our courts cannot act. And there’s only one type of U.S. court that would have jurisdiction in Iraq, and that’s only “technically.”

All members of the United States armed forces are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice whenever they are operating as agents of the United States armed forces anywhere in the world. So if I violate the UCMJ in a base in Germany or on a ship in the South Atlantic, I can be tried by a courts martial and punished accordingly.

Since torture is actually prohibited both via treaty and in the specific by the UCMJ, if a soldier in Iraq engages in it he’s going to be tried by a courts martial. That is how the Abu Ghraib soldiers got convicted. They were convicted by a United States military court for violationg U.S. military law. However, Bush does not fall under military law, he is outside their jurisdiciton. And so are members of the CIA.

88

Well, the original legal justification for the Guantanmo detainment center is based just on this. The argument is that Gitmo is outside of U.S. Jurisdiction, but also outside of Cuban jurisdiction since Cuba doesn’t have any actual legal authority over the Gitmo base.

The SCOTUS ruled on this and I think rejected this idea, but I’d have to look in to it as I’ve forgotten the specifics at the moment.

89

Is it clear now? :confused:
France doesn’t extradite its citizens to others countries, but will ask his citizens to be extradited from other countries.

90

If a French person committed a murder in New York, then hopped a plane to France, is I think what is meant by “doesn’t extradite”.

91

Yes. He wouldn’t be extradited to the USA, but tried in France.

92

I will state, right here, that I am willing to bet great sums of imaginary money that at no point will anyone be able to provide proof, trial or not, that The President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, gave an order stating to torture any individual or group of individuals.

I also don’t believe he has given that order. If that order has been given, it will have come from someone pretty far down the line from the POTUS.

Bush’s hands, legally, are pretty clean. I practically guarantee it.

Also, google “Plausable Deniability”.

93

Incorrect, France does indeed extradite its citizens.

Not sure where you’ve gotten this misconception.

94

I should clarify. The extradition treaty between the United States and France specifically says that neither nation can be required to extradite their own nationals, because of France’s policy to not extradite its own citizens. Because of this policy the United States in general cannot get French nationals extradited back to the United States, and the United States in general will not extradite an American national back to France (treaties typically have to be reciprocal in nature and most states won’t agree to a one-way treaty.)

The exception being that the extradition treaty with France states, that in cases where the President feels it appropriate, he can order an American national extradited to France.

However in spite of France’s stance on extraditing their nationals, they have extradited French nationals to Algeria a few times. And if someone has already been convicted of a crime and imprisoned in the United States, and escapes to France, that person will be returned IIRC, although such a situation has never arisen.

95

Bush has been threatening to veto any bill that forbids torture, and Cheney and Rumsfeld have been howling for the blood of others (via torture) for months. You don’t think at some point these three didn’t sit around a table and say, “Yeah, we gotta be able to torture these ragheads if we want to get info out of 'em.” Because it’s hard to see it all as a remarkable coincidence.

96

Huh? Maybe I’m mistaken, then, but can you provide an example of this?

Besides, here’s what the penal code says :

It clearly states that french courts have juridction over french citizens commiting a crime on foreign soil. So, why would France extradite one of them?

97

France could request his extradition but more than likely he wouldn’t be extradited. The extradition treaty between the United States and France requires Presidential approval for any American citizen being extradited to France. And in general the French don’t even request it because American and French law enforcement don’t have a very cooperative relationship (and haven’t since the late 1960s.)

France has a right under the treaty to request prosecution, but in general the United States won’t prosecute someone for a crime that occurs outside of its jurisdiction.

So in general you have a get out of jail free card if you’re a Frenchman and kill someone in America and flee back to France, or if you’re an American and kill someone in France and flee back to America.

98

For crimes where the possible penalty would be capital punishment?

99

They probably wouldn’t, but legally speaking France does have the option of extraditing under the extradition treaty. I can’t think of an example where they’ve actually pursued that option.

Of course, France is equally unlikely to extradite an American citizen who commits a crime in America and flees to France back to the United States. It took them twenty years to extradite Ira Einhorn, a convicted murderer and American citizen back to the United States.

100

No, for almost any crime. In general France has a long history of letting murderers and rapists who commit their crimes in America to run free in France, regardless of the possible punishment in the United States or their nationality. For example Roman Polanski is still technically a fugitive from the United States. And Ira Einhorn (an American citizen) was for quite some time in France who refused to extradite him. One of the arguments was he could be subjected to the death penalty in the United States, which was factually incorrect because the murder he committed was in a state which had abolished the death penalty.

In general that’s why it’d be a good idea for any American prosecutor to try French nationals here in the United States when they commit crimes on our soil, because the chances of them being prosecuted in France is fairly laughable.