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U.N. Rights Chief Says Prison Abuse May Be War Crime
By WARREN HOGE
Published: June 5, 2004

UNITED NATIONS, June 4 - The top human rights official for the United Nations said Friday that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers could constitute a war crime, and he called for the immediate naming of an international figure to oversee the situation.

The official, Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting high commissioner for human rights, acknowledged that the removal of Saddam Hussein represented "a major contribution to human rights in Iraq" and noted that the United States had condemned abusive conduct by its troops and pledged to bring violators to justice.

"Everyone accepts the good intentions of the coalition governments as regards the behavior of their forces in Iraq," he said in a 45-page report issued at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.

But Mr. Ramcharan said that after the occupation of Iraq, "there have sadly been some violations of human rights committed by some coalition soldiers." Apparently in a reference to the incidents of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and to cases where Iraqi prisoners have died in detention, he said "willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment" represented a "grave breach" of international law and "might be designated as war crimes by a competent tribunal."

He said it was a "stark reality" that there was no international oversight or accountability for the thousands of detainees, the conditions in which they were held and the manner in which they were treated. To correct this situation, he said, the occupation authorities should immediately appoint "an international ombudsman or commissioner." That person would be charged with monitoring human rights in Iraq and producing periodic reports on "compliance by coalition forces with international norms of human rights and humanitarian law."

A spokesman for the State Department, Adam Ereli, said Friday that the United States had cooperated with the high commissioner and shared his concern with protecting human rights. He said he thought a war crimes charge was unlikely to arise because the United States was already taking action on its own.

"I think the Uniform Code of Military Justice is competent to act on the abuses that occurred,'' Mr. Ereli said. "The question of investigation, prosecution and judgment is something that we're already doing ourselves."

Reed Brody, the political director of Human Rights Watch, expressed disappointment with the report, saying that while it put forward some good recommendations, it failed to criticize "the systematic nature of the policy."

I have never seen a U.N. report bend so far over backwards saying that no one questions the intentions of a government," he said.

"It is not sufficient for the U.S. to monitor itself," he added. "Usually the United Nations seeks to have an independent person. Imagine if this were Russia or the Sudan, would the U.N. be asking them to monitor themselves?"

In its passages about Mr. Hussein's ouster, the report said the invasion of Iraq "removed a government that preyed on the Iraqi people and committed shocking, systematic and criminal violations of human rights."

As gains for human rights since the invasion, it listed freer speech, open political debate and greater participation by women in public life. "One should take into account in weighing what has happened in Iraq the prospects that, as a result of the actions of the coalition governments, Iraq could well be launched on the road to democracy, the rule of law and governance that is respectful of human rights," the report said.

Mr. Ramcharan, a British-educated trial lawyer from Guyana and an adjunct professor of international human rights law at Columbia University, has been a United Nations official for 30 years. He has served as acting commissioner since Sergio Vieira de Mello, the high commissioner, went to Baghdad as chief of the United Nations mission there in May 2003 on what was supposed to be a four-month assignment.

The report on Friday disclosed that Mr. Vieira de Mello, who was killed in the bombing of United Nations Baghdad headquarters last August, had raised concern about the Americans' treatment of detainees in a meeting with the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer III, on July 15, 2003.

The White House's top lawyer warned two years ago that American officials could face prosecution for war crimes because of the unorthodox tactics employed to detain suspected members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

A confidential memo by the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, which was dated Jan. 25, 2002, and was uncovered last month by Newsweek magazine, urged Bush administration officials to declare captives exempt from the Geneva Conventions. Otherwise, it said, Americans might be subject to "unwarranted charges" of committing or fostering war crimes.

Critics have argued that the Bush administration's decision not to grant suspected Qaeda and Taliban fighters prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions created the climate under which the interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib prison occurred.

The report comes at a moment when the United States has been hoping to obtain a Security Council resolution shielding American troops serving in United Nations-approved operations from prosecution before the International Criminal Court. The multinational force remaining in Iraq after the transfer of power to Iraq at the end of this month will be such a United Nations-approved force.

Last month, the United States postponed its submission of the resolution when China indicated it might veto it. In announcing the stance, China's United Nations ambassador, Wang Guangya, said he did not want to support a resolution that might grant impunity to people committing abuses like those uncovered at Abu Ghraib.

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