Who's Been Held Accountable for the Crimes of Bush's "War on Terror"? Four Italians ... Sort of

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 11:53 AM on November 5, 2009.

I may be wrong, but setting aside a handful of low-level prison guards convicted for brutalizing or killing detainees, I think that despite many well documented violations of both international and various countries’ domestic laws committed in the “war on terror”, the total number of people who have been prosecuted -- not counting those tried in absentia -- is now 4 (correct me in the comments if I’m overlooking something!).  

All were Italians. Two were convicted yesterday in an Italian court and sentenced to three-year terms for kidnapping a man named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off the streets of a liberal democracy, depriving him of any semblance of due process despite its fully functional judiciary and sending him to a country that would torture him for information they believed he was holding. 

His wife, Ghali Nabila, at trial: 

“I found him wasted, skinny — so skinny — his hair had turned white, he had a hearing aid,” Ms. Nabila said, recounting her husband’s condition between prison stays in 2004. 

Wearing a veil that revealed only her eyes, Ms. Nabila at first said she “didn’t want to talk about” any abuse against her husband in prison. But advised by prosecutors that she had no choice, she told the court in tears: “He was tied up like he was being crucified. He was beat up, especially around his ears. He was subjected to electroshocks to many body parts.” 

“To his genitals?” the prosecutors asked. 

“Yes,” she replied. 

This was by no means an isolated incident. The CIA, with its shadowy network of secret prisons, was somewhat routinely flying suspected terrorists to allied countries that would torture them on its behalf. And while some may have been captured on the battlefield others were kidnapped off the ground of a number of countries.

Presumably, the two Italians will serve at least part of those sentences, but one never knows. Two others pled guilty to related offenses in 2007; one received a sentence of one-year-plus, which was later suspended; the other was fined. 

23 American intelligence agents were also convicted in absentia. In the future, they won’t be able to take European holidays for fear of arrest, but they don’t have to worry about being expedited to Italy. They won’t actually face any punishment for their crimes. 

And who knows? Maybe that’s just given that their superiors seem to have complete impunity. One of those convicted admitted that the agents had “broken the law,” but insisted they were being hung out to dry by superiors who weren’t touched by the investigation and who can still go skiing in Val d'Isère if they choose to:  

… we are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorized and approved this," said former CIA officer Sabrina deSousa in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson. 

DeSousa says the U.S. "abandoned and betrayed" her and the others who were put on trial for the kidnapping. She was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison. 

Whatever the case, there’s another, historical aspect to this story that I think is worth noting. 70 years ago, the United States, victorious in World War II, was instrumental in rebuilding its erstwhile European foes, including Italy, as liberal democracies.  

During the postwar era of the “liberal consensus” in Washington, the U.S. was also the driving force in creating a set of institutions -- notably the UN, but others as well -- dedicated to the idea that some rights are universal and that all states should conform to a set of international laws that enshrine that principle.  

The effort was driven in part by the horrors of the two World Wars, but also by geo-politics; advancing the human rights regime offered a bounty of opportunities to shame the “communist bloc” (especially when applied as selectively as possible, which it generally was). 

While Americans pretty much take it for granted that our government would never turn over U.S. citizens for prosecution, the principle of universal jurisdiction means that individual can’t hide behind national borders for serious violations of human rights law. And while the Italian court prosecuted the agents under domestic law, the principle is the key thing -- the whole point is to prevent people from violating basic human rights with impunity.    

So while 70 years ago, Italy was under a fascist dictatorship that had no regard for ideas like human rights, and 60 years ago the U.S. government -- packed with liberal FDR vets and anti-Communist crusaders -- was advancing the idea that nobody was above punishment, the tables have now turned. It’s our intelligence agents kidnapping people off the streets without trial and getting away with it. 

All of which brings to mind some of the theory about how super-powers behave as their influence waxes and wanes. Here’s a few graphs from something I wrote a few years back, when Bush was laughing at the idea of being constrained by the rule of law: 

A hegemonic state is one with enough relative power to shape the international system. Scholars have identified a pattern -- a story arc -- common to hegemonic powers and the U.S. fits the theory to a tee. 

According to Hegemonic Stability Theory, as a great state rises to prominence, it is a "generous" or "benevolent" power -- a rising hegemon. It uses its power to create a system that is conducive to its own interests, but that also benefits lesser states. Think about the Romans building roads and aqueducts throughout the empire, or the Brits clearing the shipping channels of pirates, or the U.S. creating the Bretton-Woods system after World War II. All of those efforts were inspired by self-interest, but also created benefits for others. 

Then there's the "selfish" hegemon -- a hegemon in decline. A falling power spends too much on security, its leaders become obsessed with preserving its position and it stops focusing on mutually beneficial goals and starts looking out for itself. Inevitably, this leads other states to combine forces to check its power, and the country is replaced by a new, rising hegemon that is more attractive to other states to follow than the "me-first" policies of the falling star. 

The irony I noted then is that we hold ourselves above the international legal regime we helped create from a position of power, but ultimately the fact that we do so undermines that very power … 

The key to America's six-decade run [as the world’s leading super-power] was that we disguised our relentless pursuit of our "national interests" with great skill. We kept our iron fist covered in a velvet glove. As an old professor of mine used to say, the definition of real power is the ability to make people do what you want them to do while believing it was their idea in the first place. We've lost that power.

Tagged as: cia, italy, kidnapping, nasr