Why arrest kissinger

It's difficult not to confuse political, moral and historical responsibility for great human suffering with criminal liability. But its one thing to say that Henry Kissinger's policies led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

It's another to say that, in a strict legal sense, he is criminally responsible for those deaths. Despite the title of his book, Hitchens doesn't try to separate the politically wrong from the criminally wrong or to make the legal case against Kissinger.

But there is a way to make a legal case. Traditional criminal law principles, as ratified by the Yugoslavia and Rwanda war crimes tribunals, hold that someone may be held liable as an accomplice if he consciously contributes to the perpetration of the crime in a material and substantial way. Under this standard, it would not be impossible to show that a U. It will cost many thousands of pounds but we will find some way to sort that out. Tatchell, protesting about Mugabe's anti-gay rhetoric, called him a "murderer" and "torturer," and tried to make a citizen's arrest.

In , Tatchell again caused controversy when he mounted the pulpit in Canterbury Cathedral during the archbishop's traditional Easter Sunday sermon. Search CNN. A Time Warner Company.

All Rights Reserved. Dr Kissinger replied: "No one can say that he served in an administration that did not make mistakes. The decisions made in high office are usually decisions so it is quite possible that mistakes were made. The issue is whether 30 years after the event courts are the appropriate means by which determination is made. He said he thought the principle of international jurisdiction represented progress in the search for justice, but he argued that the process would be undermined if decisions were left to individual judges who were being given information by individual groups.

But there are around 4, going out every day, many of which are simply administrative, and they all have the Secretary of State's name on them.

That excuse is unlikely to deter Baltazar Garzon, the Spanish judge who applied for the extradition of General Pinochet, or Sophie-Helene Chateau, a French magistrate investigating the deaths of French citizens in Chile under General Pinochet. They are both now gunning for Dr Kissinger and intend to compel him to give evidence in court.

Surrounded by bodyguards in the bowels of the old auditorium, he was asked if he would like to discuss the allegations being made against him. His answer was barked out unequivocally: "No!