I think I saw a reference to this some days ago but didn’t follow it up. Today Captain Ed picked up the story, and Glenn Reynolds linked, so there should be a fair amount of buzz about Amnesty International’s call for the arrest of President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and pretty much any other Republican whom foreign governments can get their hands on.
Yes, it’s true: the official statement by John Kerry and Ted Kennedy donor Bill Schulz, the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, is here. Schulz writes:
If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.
Interesting precedent. General Pinochet, traveling with a visa for the United Kingdom and under a diplomatic passport, went to England to have surgery on his back. While recuperating in the hospital, he was arrested so that he could be put on trial on Spain for offenses allegedly committed in Chile. Human rights activists think that this was a good and honorable action on the part of the English authorities, although the extradition effort ultimately failed.
Schulz continues with a list of American officials that Amnesty thinks should be arrested and put on trial if they leave the U.S.:
Foreign governments that are party to the Geneva Conventions and/or the Convention against Torture
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