Charges sought against Rumsfeld
Groups allege he had role in torture
WASHINGTON -- Twelve former detainees in the US war on terror will ask German prosecutors next week to indict Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials on charges related to torture and other war crimes, a lawyer for the group said yesterday.
Eleven Iraqis who were held at the Abu Ghraib prison and other US-run facilities in Iraq and a Saudi former detainee at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will file a criminal complaint Nov. 14, said Michael Rattner of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
"I don't think there's any doubt anymore that Rumsfeld and these guys authorized torture," Rattner said in a telephone interview.
He said the criminal complaint will ask the German federal prosecutor to begin an investigation into what role Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, and other high-ranking US officials may have had and to charge them as war criminals.
Air Force Major Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment. "We have not seen the lawsuit itself [and] have nothing to provide," he said.
Photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees sparked worldwide outrage when they were made public in April 2004. Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration said in congressional hearings in 2004 that prisoner abuses were confined largely to a group of soldiers on the night shift for a few months at Abu Ghraib prison.
The suit will allege that the administration officials ordered, assisted, or failed to prevent war crimes. German law provides "universal jurisdiction," allowing for the prosecution of war crimes committed anywhere, said Rattner, who is in Berlin preparing the case.
George J. Tenet, former Central Intelligence Agency director; Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence; David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff; Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of US forces in Iraq; and Colonel Thomas Pappas, the former top intelligence official in Iraq, will also be named in the suit, Rattner said.
Now that Rumsfeld has resigned, he no longer has the type of immunity typically given to heads of state and high-ranking government officials, Rattner said. 
