arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

In their article in The Wall street journal Europe [1], 7-8 December, Rivkin and Casey, who are closely connected to the White House -which eliminates a priori the objectivity of the editorial-, defend the idea of the use of military commissions, in order to try presumed Al Qaeda members, as a consequence of a Military Order signed by President Bush on 13 November.

Strangely enough, they minimalise the dangers of such Military Trials, and these dangers have been the exact arguments they used in previous articles (e.g. [2]) strongly opposing the creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC).

These arguments include the absence of the separation of executive and judiciary powers, the absence of the right to appeal to any other court, and the lack of juries, among others. To which they would like to, inexplicably, see the adding of an introduction of unlimited ‘hearsay' evidence [1]; say, ‘gossip' in layman's terms.

It is clear that the real reasons for these military courts can be found within the advantages the secret and intransparant character of such trials offer to the US-government [3]:
1) avoid the intelligence-gathering methods (including the ones that would be difficult to introduce in Civil courts) from being divulged.
2) preventing the suspects from reading government investigation files and terrorist tracking methods, information that could be used against the States afterwards.
3) making it possible for the Bush administration to try whomever it sees fit, and to define the rules of evidence and proof in the way it suits the US-policymakers best.

In the same article, the authors accuse Europe of short-sightedness, because of its non-extradition policy towards countries which still support the death penalty, like the USA (and e.g. China). They describe this non-extradition policy very colorfully as something completely ludacrous:
"…what is somewhat galling is that, with the zeal of a reformed alcoholic, Europe seeks to eliminate the death penalty from the rest of the world in general, and the United States in particular." [1].

Most European nations have had more than there share of atrocities in recent and not so recent history, but to call it galling that the European union decided, already 20 years ago (1982), to abolish death-penalties and have it made a requirement for being a member state, seems rather extraordinary. Rather it should be applauded as a step in the right direction that these states have decided not to execute their citizens, or not to allow extraditions to regimes that openly support the murdering of wrongdoers.

However, this principle of the so called 'non-refoulement'(*), is not only adopted by Europe, but also by a large majority of abolitionist countries outside of Europe, such as Australia, South-Africa and even Canada.

The global abolitionist trend is putting retentionist countries like the USA into an isolated judicial position. It is preventing President Bush from turning the 'Dead or Alive' status of Al Qaeda members into a mere 'Death or Death Row' status.

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[1] Rivkin, D.B. & Casey, L.A. (Friday-Saturday December 7-8, 2001) Military Tribunals Making Europa safe for al Qaeda. A policy of non-extradition will only invite terrorists to flock to Europe in The wall street journal Europe, Page 6: Editorials & opinion
[2] Rivkin, D.B. & Casey, L.A. (1999) The international Criminal Court vs. the American People in The Heritage Foundation. Backgrounder no. 1249.
[3] Willing, R. (03 November 2001) U.S. explores how to try terrorism suspects in USA TODAY.
[4] Amnesty International Report AMR 51/171/2001 (November 2001) United States of America : No return to execution - The US death penalty as a barrier to extradition, Page 3.

(*) Non-refoulement principle : prohibits sending individuals to another country when there is a serious risk that they would face grave violations of their fundamental human rights as a consequence of that move. [4]

It's rather strange for a terrorist country like the usa to pretend that abolition of capital punishment is something that was done "with the zeal of a reformed alcoholic", just like this decision would have been taken in the last hours of an already much too long meeting where everyone was dead drunk. Maybe they 'd better start thinking what kind of creeps invented the death penalty anyway.

Human rights blah blah blah ...