The Indictment For Torture Filed Against George W. Bush (Part One: The Facts)

By Andy Worthington
The Public Record
Feb 20th, 2011

Just two weeks ago, as former US President George W. Bush was preparing to make his first visit to Europe since the publication, last November, of his biography Decision Points, the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, with support from the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), reminded the former President that he was a torturer — who, in addition, had openly bragged in his book that he had authorized the torture of “high-value detainees” in the “War on Terror” — and that, as a result, they would be filing a criminal complaint (an “indictment for torture”) in Switzerland, prior to the former President’s arrival for a meeting on February 12. According to the requirements of the UN Convention Against Torture (to which both the US and Switzerland are signatories), this might well have led to his arrest.

As I explained in a recent article, George W. Bush, War Criminal, Is Not Welcome in Europe, Bush subsequently cancelled his visit. However, as Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutonal Rights explained in the Huffington Post:

Swiss law requires the presence of an alleged torturer on Swiss soil before a preliminary investigation can be open. Because Bush canceled, the complaints could not be filed as the basis for legal jurisdiction no longer existed. However, the fact that Bush authorized torture remains … In the long run, ducking a charge of torture is not as easy as ducking a shoe thrown at a press conference.

In my article, I stated that “the fact that the torturer-in-chief has been made unwelcome in Europe — and, in theory, anywhere outside the US – is heartening news indeed,” and this remains the case. In the hope of keeping the story alive — and providing the Preliminary Bush Torture Indictment in an accessible form, I’ve divided the original PDF into two HTML documents, and am cross-posting the first part below. The second part will follow soon. Please not that CCR will amend the indictment as new information comes to light (as it undoubtedly will, given how much of the US torture story is still hidden), and please also note that the original contains detailed footnotes, which I have not attempted to replicate here, where I have, instead, inserted a number of important hyperlinks.

http://pubrecord.org/torture/8924/indictment-torture-filed-against-george/

Oh, that's just lookin' backwards to the past. We're all about lookin' forward to the future in America!