 /europe
Judge OKs probe of
torture complaint
against Bush
officials
From the Web, March
29, 2009
A senior Spanish judge has ordered
prosecutors to investigate whether key Bush aides should be charged with crimes
over the Guantanamo Bay detention center, a lawyer said Sunday.
Investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon has passed a 98-page complaint to
prosecutors that accuses former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and five
others of being the legal architects of system that allowed torture in violation
of international law, human rights lawyer Gonzalo Boye told CNN.
Prosecutors will review the document to determine if a crime has been committed.
The prosecutor's office will make a decision within five days, said Boye, one of
the report's authors. Garzon accepted the complaint under Spanish law
because there were several Spaniards at Guantanamo who allegedly suffered
torture.
The complaint was filed in March 2008 by Boye and the Association for the Rights
of Prisoners.
It names Gonzales -- who was President George W. Bush's counsel when the
Guantanamo Bay detention center was established -- and other top Bush
administration officials John C. Yoo, Douglas J. Feith, William J. Hayes II, Jay
S. Bybee and David S. Addington.
A former top aide to Colin Powell, who was secretary of state in the early days
of the Bush administration's "war on terror," testified before Congress last
summer that the six officials "colluded" to develop a legal rationale for
allowing detainees to be subjected to harsh treatment.
Lawrence Wilkerson was Powell's chief of staff in President Bush's first term.
Yoo, the author of a memo which critics say authorized torture, also testified
before Congress last year.
The former deputy assistant attorney general said that his role in the
administration had simply been to provide legal advice.
"We were functioning as lawyers. We don't make policy. Policy
choices in these matters were up to the National Security Council or the White
House or the Department of Defense," he said.
Gonzales was Bush's legal counsel at the time and later became attorney general.
Yoo and Bybee were at the Department of Justice, Haynes and Feith worked for the
Department of Defense, and Addington was Vice President Dick Cheney's legal
counsel.
Addington proved difficult to pin down when he testified under subpoena before a
House of Representatives subcommittee June 26 with Yoo, who testified
voluntarily but repeatedly refused to answer questions.
Addington, by then Cheney's chief of staff, delivered a flat "No" in answer to a
question from New York Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler about whether Addington
"contributed to the analysis or assisted in the drafting of the August 1, 2002,
interrogation memo."
But when Nadler followed up with: "You had nothing to do with that,"
Addington again replied: "No. I didn't say I had nothing to do with
it."
Addington never clarified what, if any, his role was.
Garzon, Spain's best-known investigating magistrate, issued the
precedent-setting arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in
1998.
The judge has investigated human rights abuses in former military governments in
Chile and Argentina, Islamic terrorists operating in Spain, the armed Basque
separatist group ETA, as well as major drug traffickers.
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