An international legal team filed a criminal complaint in Germany Tuesday against US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US officials over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association said they and five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US soldiers were seeking a probe by German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers.
They said they had chosen Germany because of its Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in 2002, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity.
It also makes military or civilian commanders who fail to prevent their subordinates from committing such acts liable.
"We filed these cases here because there is simply no other place to go," CCR vice president Peter Weiss said in a statement.
"It is clear that the US government is not willing to open an investigation into these allegations against these officials," he said, adding that the US Congress had "failed" to seriously investigate the abuses.
The Center for Constitutional Rights noted that while several US soldiers were facing court martial for the abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners at the US-run Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq, their superiors looked set to escape discipline.
The complaint names Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, Under Secretary of Defence for Intelligence Steven Cambone, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski and other military officers who served in Iraq.
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