It began with all of this: In a packed courtroom including former high flyers in the United Nations, lawyers appointed to defend the Bush regime in their absence face an uphill task.
Abbas Abid a father from Fallujah, appeared in a scarf fearing reprisals. He enacted how US troops subjected him to electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse over a number of months. High ranking former UN officials here are expressing frustration.
An avalanche of information emerging after the launch of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has provided the strongest proof yet that America and her ally the UK are involved in practices that their leaders publicly deplore.
Mozzam Begg, British, former Guantanemo Bay detainee, who has received compensation from the British Government, described to a shocked court, how his torment began the moment he was handed over to American troops by the Pakistani authorities.
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s former Prime Minister and founder of the Foundation to Criminalize War remains determined to bring Bush and his cohorts to justice.
There’s pride here too that Tony Blair has already been convicted of war crimes by the tribunal in 2011. If Bush and Cheney are similarly found guilty at the end of this week. The question will arise which us organization will have the nerve and the power to try the same thing.
Now they have actually done it:
In a unanimous vote on Saturday the symbolic Malaysian war crimes tribunal, part of an initiative by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, found the former US President guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Seven of his former political associates, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were also found guilty of war crimes and torture.
Press TV has reported the court heard evidence from former detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay of torture methods used by US soldiers in prisons run by the American forces.
One former inmate described how he had been subjected to electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse over a number of months.
A high ranking former UN official, former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday, who also attended the trial, later told Press TV that the UN had been too weak during the Bush administration to enforce the Geneva Conventions.
He said: “The UN is a weak body, corrupted by member states, who use the Security Council for their own interests. They don’t respect the charter. They don’t respect the international law. They don’t respect the Geneva Conventions…A redundant, possibly a dangerous, and certainly corrupted organization.”
Following the hearing, former Malaysian premier Mahatir said of Bush and others: “These are basically murderers and they kill on large scale.”
It was the second so-called war crimes tribunal in Malaysia.
The token court was first held in November 2011 during which Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were found guilty of committing “crimes against peace” during the Iraq war.
Now will America do what is correct?
Windows to Russia!