There’s a lot of overheated rhetoric on all sides about the move by a Spanish magistrate to go forward with the next step for a war crimes prosecution of Bush administration lawyers relating to Spaniards imprisoned in Guantanamo. Julian Davis Mortenson knows about international law issues relating to war crimes–he spent a year as an associate legal officer in the Office of the President at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He has written a thoughtful and balanced piece about some of the issues– ranging from historic resistance to prosecuting those who gave legal advice (the U.S. took one position as to those involved in legal advice for the holocaust, for instance, and Brittain and France the other side) to what exactly the steps taken so far mean in the civil law or European legal system, and the impact this could have on the ability of those targeted to do international travel. Worth reading if you want a general understanding about the issues that may come up.
Thanks for the link; you may be interested in this article on Jay Bybee, the quiet man who signed Yoo’s torture memos, and now a potential indictee in the Spanish courts. Some remarkable quotes.
I tend to fear that a basically decent guy was too ambitious for a Ninth Circuit seat and kept his mouth shut.