April 27, 2009: Former Milosevic Prosecutor: Bush Officials Must Be Investigated for Torture

Former prosecutor Mark McKeon, part of the international team of lawyers who prosecuted Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, writes that just as in 2001, when Milosevic was facing charges of war crimes for torturing and murdering Bosnian and Kosovar citizens, Bush administration officials must be investigated for war crimes in their advocacy and authorization of US torture of suspected terrorists. At the time, McKeon writes, “there was no doubt that Milosevic should be indicted for his responsibility for the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners. As the head of state at the time those crimes were committed, Milosevic bore ultimate responsibility for what happened under his watch.… And yet, seven years later, here we are debating whether we should hold senior Bush administration officials accountable for things they have done in the ‘war on terror.’” The evidence against Milosevic, as it was against senior officials in his government, was damning, McKeon writes. Now, he notes, the US “cannot expect to regain our position of leadership in the world unless we hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect of others. That means punishing the most senior government officials responsible for these crimes. We have demanded this from other countries that have returned from walking on the dark side; we should expect no less from ourselves.… We cannot expect the rest of humanity to live in a world that we ourselves are not willing to inhabit.” [Washington Post, 4/27/2009]