General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Obama is BOUND BY LAW to prosecute torture. [View all]sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)misunderstanding you?
Spain which has the jurisdiction to do so, began the prosecution of six of Bush's torturers just before the Bush gang left the WH.
The court did so because it was clear that the Bush administration would not.
However, in order to give the US a chance to do so themselves, the Spanish Court, assuming the US would return to being a nation that respects International Law after the election in 2008, waited to proceed..
After the announcement by President Obama that 'we are going to move forward' from all these war crimes, the Spanish Court began to move forward itself towards the prosecutions and convictions of those six war criminals.
However, thanks to the Wikileaks cables we discovered that the Obama Administration put pressure on the Spanish Court to drop the prosecutions. They were threatened with 'consequences' if they proceeded.
That explained the lack of news for a while regarding those cases.
However, the cases were not dropped airc, and recently there were indications of revival of those prosecutions.
And there have been other prosecutions. I believe France prosecuted and convicted several CIA agents but the US has refused to extradite them.
There are too many victims for these cases to go away and anyone following the torture story will see how often cases are brought even in this country, by the victims. Here they are always dismissed for 'national security reasons'.
I hope the German people pressure THEIR government to proceed with prosecutions also now that the interest is there.