A best legal statement on some of the current legal issues is below. Ann Ginger is _the_ foremost expert on international human rights law.
Charles Brown
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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, P.O. Box 673, Berkeley, CA 94701-0673 Tel 510-848-0599 Fax 510-848-6008 email mcli at igc.org Web: www.mcli.org Editor: Jim Syfers, 208 Malaga St., Sonoma, CA 95476 STATEMENT OF THE INSTITUTE ON THE EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH
The Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute is an organization dedicated to publicizing and using the fundamental principles of the U.S. Constitution, the United Nations Charter and other human rights treaties. We join everyone in mourning the lives that were lost on September 11 and sympathize with the survivors.
We urge the U.S. Government to comply with inter- national law and to make use of the wisdom embodied in the law. There can be no justification for terrorism. Yet the root causes of this terrorism lie deep in the unresolved political issues of the last century, issues of basic justice and human rights that cannot be settled by military force.
Thus the bombing of Afghanistan, and the use of ground troops, can do little or nothing toward ending terrorism and is more likely to increase it. The bombing violates international law and to date has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians, including Afghan national employees of the UN removing land mines, and the destruction of Red Cross/Red Cresent food warehouses, adding a further tragedy to those of New York and Washington, D.C.
The only organization in place that can work effectively for the peaceful resolution of the deep political/economic issues that lie behind the use of terrorism in the United States and elsewhere is the United Nations, the organization our country helped to create for that purpose. It must be allowed to carry out this purpose.
We applaud the US Government for initially complying with the UN Charter by reporting the suicidal attacks to the Security Council, and for belatedly paying its UN dues. But the US should not have rejected UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's request that US military action be subject to Security Council discussion, modification and vote. As Nobel peace prize winner Annan has said, the UN "alone can give global legitimacy to the long-term struggle against terrorism."
There are a number of remedies available under the UN system, including the establishment of an ad hoc international criminal tribunal, which can seek extradition and try suspects within the bounds of due process, as they are doing in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, which the U.S. supported. The U.S. can also sue Afghanistan in the International Court of Justice for harboring terrorists, setting forth the facts for all to read. The Security Council can sanction banks that fail to freeze terrorist assets and can provide forces to assist in arresting suspects.
We urge the U.S. to comply with the universally recognized humanitarian law governing armed conflict developed over the centuries. Even when one side purports to be acting in self-defense against illegal aggression, that side does not gain the right to to violate these laws.