Links

US War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

– Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Contents

• Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950
• United Nations Charter
• The Fourth Geneva Convention
• US War Criminals since 1950

Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950

Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal. Adopted by the International Law Commission of the United Nations, 1950.

Principle I

Principle II

Principle III

Principle IV

Principle V

Principle Vl

1. Crimes against peace:
   1. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
   2. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
2. War crimes:
   Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or illtreatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
3. Crimes against humanity:
   Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII

– Nuremberg Principles from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

United Nations Charter

Article 2

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.

Article 33

1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.
2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means.

– United Nations Charter from the United Nations.

The Fourth Geneva Convention

Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

   To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

   1. Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
   2. Taking of hostages;
   3. Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
   4. The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

   An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

   The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

   The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

Article 33

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Article 34

The taking of hostages is prohibited.

Article 49

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.

Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons do demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.

The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.

The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.

The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

– The Fourth Geneva Convention

US War Criminals since 1950

War Criminal	Crime
Dwight David Eisenhower	Overthrow of the government of Guatamala (1953). See American-backed Genocide of the Guatemalan People.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy	The invasion of Cuba (1959). See Bay of Pigs. The invasion of Vietnam (1961). See Vietnam 1945-1963.
Lyndon Baines Johnson	The relentless bombing of North Vietnam in Operation "Rolling Thunder" (1965-1968). The bombing of Laos: “The US Air Force, between 1965 and 1973, rained down more than two million tons of bombs upon the people of Laos, many of whom were forced to live in caves for years in a desperate attempt to escape the monsters falling from the sky.” – American Genocide of the Laotian People. The invasion of the Dominican Republic (1964). See American Subversion and Tyranny in the Dominican Republic.
Richard Milhous Nixon	Secret "carpet bombings" of Cambodia (1969-70). See American Genocide of the Cambodian People.
Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.	Participation in the Indonesian invasion of East Timor (1975). “Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops, with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The United States consistently supported Indonesia's claim to East Timor (unlike the UN and the EU), and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable degree, at the same time supplying Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed to carry out the job.” – American-backed Genocide of the People of East Timor. See also Gerald Ford: A bloodstained 'healer' by Richard Becker, 05 January 2007.
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.	Continued to support Indonesia despite the genocide in East Timor. See also The Truth About Jimmy Carter by James Petras, 08 July 2004.
Ronald Wilson Reagan	The Reagan administration's 1983 invasion of Grenada was a clear-cut violation of the UN Charter articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 as well as of articles 18, 20, and 21 of the Revised OAS Charter for which there was no valid excuse or justification under international law. As such, it constituted an act of aggression within the meaning of article 39 of the United Nation's Charter. See American Subversion and Invasion of tiny Grenada. Mining Nicaraguan Harbors (1984), violating the rules of international law set forth in the 1907 Hague Convention on the laying of Submarine Mines, to which both Nicaragua and the United States are parties, and the support of terrorist attacks on Nicaragua. See American Terrorism of the Nicaraguan People. The support of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (1982). See The Israeli invasion of Lebanon 1982.
John Dimitri Negroponte (US Ambassador to Honduras under Reagan, Deputy Secretary of State under Bush-43.)	“John Negroponte was in charge of the U.S. Embassy when, according to a 1995 four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, hundreds of Hondurans were kidnapped, tortured and killed by Battalion 316, a secret army intelligence unit trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.” – In From the Cold War: John Negroponte by Terry J. Allen, 02 April 2001. See also John Negroponte: Dorian Gray goes to Iraq by Toni Solo, 30 April 2004. and Negroponte's New Gig by Saul Cohen, 12 January 2007.
George Herbert Walker Bush	The invasion of Panama (1989). See American Invasion of Panama. The destruction of Iraq's infrastructure such as water purification plants for which there was absolutely no military justification (1990). See United States War Crimes Against Iraq.
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton	The destruction of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan (1998). See Year later, US attack on factory still hurts Sudan. The terrorism of the Yugoslavian people. “For 78 days and nights in the Spring of 1999, United States Air Force and Navy pilots rained death indiscriminately upon women and children, old men and women shopping in market places, passengers in trains, people in cars and buses, people in schools, patients in hospitals – anyone and everyone – everywhere in Yugoslavia.” – American/NATO State Terrorism of the Yugoslavian People.
George Walker Bush	Ordered a War of Aggression against Iraq and the bombing of civilian areas such as Baghdad, and is responsible for the torture and murder of civilians (2003-present). See Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates by Arundhati Roy, 02 April 2003, and Torture and Lies as Policy: America's Criminal Occupation by Roger Normand, 30 June 2004.