ustxtxb_obs_2003_07_18_50_00017-00000_000.pdf

The United States is looking over its shoulder at similar efforts to bring the Bush administration to justice. When the Belgian foreign minister refused to back down on the right of Iraqi citizens to bring charges against Tommy Franks under Belgian laws, Donald Rumsfeld threatened diplomatic rupture. \(Last year when it was suggested that U.S. citizens could be brought to trial before the World Court at the Hague, a handful of conservative representatives introduced legis lation authorizing Washington to bomb the Netherlands to prevent his victims’ propertyincluding their automobiles. The flimflam honed the Captain’s skills at forging documentation, a talent that eventually got him into the auto registration racket; Cavallo ran such programs for Argentine provincial governments and eventually expanded into Central America. Cavallo’s brother Oscar managed the registration program in Guatemala, the destination of most of Mexico’s hot cars. Serpico has been under 24-hour television surveillance while awaiting extradition at Mexico City’s tough Eastern Penitentiary “Plenty of people would be happy if Ricardo Cavallo was unable to testify in a Spanish courtroom,” observes Carlos Slepoy, lead attorney for the Argentine victims. But the Captain’s legal fate in Spain remains uncertain. Judge Garzon will no longer be a part of the prosecution and Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a U.S. partner in the illegal invasion of Iraq, is not eager to bring this case to trial, alleging that Spain has no jurisdiction in the matter. When Pinochet was about to be shipped off to Spain, Chile requested that he be sent home for trial. But Argentina’s just-elected president Nestor Kirchner has made no request that Ricardo Cavallo be tried back home. The Naval captain is one of the few non-Basques to be deported from Mexico to Spain in recent years. Under a joint extradition treaty, dozens of suspected members of the terrorist extradited to Madrid at the request of Garzon. The Judge, a potential Nobel Peace Prize candidate, has waged an unrelenting campaign against ETA, jailing suspects, according to Amnesty International, closing down newspapers and magazines, and canceling the registration of political parties. On the other hand, Baltazar Garzon was a very vocal critic of the Bush-Blair-Aznar aggression against Iraq and it has been suggested that he may seek to bring them to justice for war crimes committed during the invasion and occupation. Nineteen Iraqis have charged the U.S. commander in Iraq, Tommy Franks, with similar violations of human rights before a Belgium court. Although the Mexican Supreme Court is not known for ground-breaking decisionslast year, it nullified a landmark Indian Rights law that would have granted autonomy to the nation’s 10-20 million indigenous peoplesthe Cavallo extradition considerably brightens this country’s tarnished international human rights profile. Nonetheless, the investigation into Mexico’s own dirty war of the 1970s has lagged as judges turn down indictments of police and military personnel on the grounds that the abuses were committed so long ago that they are no longer prosecutable. Even as the Mexican court extradites Cavallo across the water to face the music, Mexico casts its ballot at the United Nations Security Council in favor of granting U.S. troops accused of war crimes immunity from prosecution by the newly-created International Penal Tribunal, a vote that “satisfied” U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell when he met recently with Mexican foreign minister Luis Derbez. Relations between Washington and Mexico City have been frosty for months, ever since Mexican President Vicente Fox refused to back the United States in the Iraqi debacle, and the June 12th Security Council vote on U.S. impunity from war crimes prosecution is seen as a way for Fox to worm himself back into George W. Bush’s good graces. But despite the UN vote, the United States is looking over its shoulder these days at similar efforts to bring the Bush administration to justice with respect to Iraq. When Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel refused to back down on the right of Iraqi citizens to bring charges against Franks under his country’s laws, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld threatened diplomatic rupture. \(Last year when it was suggested that its citizens could be brought to trial before the World Court at the Hague, a handful of conservative U.S. congressional representatives introduced legislation authorizing Washington to bomb the Netherlands to As the United States launches new “preemptive wars” against the world’s people, its officials and troops lay themselves open to fresh charges of war crimes. But as the prosecutions in Belgium, Mexico, and Spain suggest, impunity is not guaranteed. John Ross is in San Francisco, recovering from recent eye surgery. His plans to travel to Palestine are still alive, if postponed \(see 7118103 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 17