WASHINGTON - Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cannot be tried on
allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said
Tuesday in a case he described as "lamentable."
In this Friday, Dec. 8, 2006, file photo, outgoing Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pauses during his speech at a town hall
meeting, at the Pentagon. On Tuesday, March 27, 2007, a federal judge
dismissed a lawsuit attempting to hold Rumsfeld responsible for torture in
overseas military prisons. [AP]
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US District Judge Thomas F. Hogan
threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and
Afghanistan. He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions
taken in connection with his government job.
The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from
the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked
inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had
argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the
abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the
constitutional and human rights of prisoners.
"This is a lamentable case," Hogan began his 58-page opinion.
No matter how appealing it might seem to use the courts to correct
allegations of severe abuses of power, Hogan wrote, government officials are
immune from such lawsuits. Additionally, foreigners held overseas are not
normally afforded US constitutional rights.
"Despite the horrifying torture allegations," Hogan said, he could find no
case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as
unprecedented.
Allowing the case to go forward, Hogan said in December, might subject
government officials to all sorts of political lawsuits. Even Osama bin Laden
could sue, Hogan said, claiming two American presidents threatened to have him
murdered.
"There is no getting around the fact that authorizing monetary damages
remedies against military officials engaged in an active war would invite
enemies to use our own federal courts to obstruct the Armed Forces' ability to
act decisively and without hesitation," Hogan wrote Tuesday.
Had the Rumsfeld lawsuit been allowed to go forward, attorneys for the ACLU
might have been able to force the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about
abuses at prisons such as Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop
it.
Hogan also dismissed the charges against other officials named in the
lawsuit: retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, former Brig. Gen. Janis L.
Karpinski and Col. Thomas M. Pappas.
Karpinski, whose Army Reserve unit was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison,
was demoted and is the highest-ranking officer punished in the scandal. Sanchez,
who commanded US forces in Iraq, retired from the Army and said his career was a
casualty of the prison scandal.
The ACLU and Justice Department had no immediate response to the
ruling.