Law professor advises "reserve judgment on Fallujah shooting"

Cuban_Liberal

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Tue Nov-23-04 08:34 AM
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Law professor advises "reserve judgment on Fallujah shooting"

Edited on Tue Nov-23-04 08:40 AM by Cuban_Liberal

I attended a forum on campus last night, the subject of which was "War Crimes in Fallujah?". The speaker was Dr. Cynthia Buys, visiting professor of international and military law at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, a distinguished scholar who has studied and taught about the Geneva Convention and who has also served as a consultant to the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. Dr. Buys began her presentation by reminding the attendees that under the Geneva Convention, there are specific guidelines that spell out the rules of war.

"The Geneva Convention is an international treaty signed in 1949 largely in response to the atrocities that occurred in World War II," Buys said. "The most relevant article that deals with the situation in Fallujah that we all saw on television states that members of the armed forces who are wounded or sick shall be respected and protected in all circumstances and treated humanely. Any attempt on their lives shall be strictly prohibited. If what we've seen is accurate, then the man that was wounded would be protected by this particular article."

However, Dr. Buys stressed the three-and-a-half minute video clip falls far short of showing the entirety of the circumstances involved in the shooting.

"In other words, I also heard news reports that during the previous 24 hours, a fellow U.S. soldier who belonged to this same unit approached a person who was lying down or somebody who the soldier thought was sick or wounded and that person was booby trapped with a bomb. That bomb exploded, killing that soldier and wounding others nearby," Buys said. "I would like to remind everyone here that there is also a rule of law that says you are not supposed to use ruses, either. Those that are militarily appropriate can be used, but pretending to be wounded in order to draw soldiers to you would also be looked upon as an unlawful use of the rules of war, and anyone witnessing such an occurrence would quite properly consider what they had witnessed in subsequent situations of a similar nature.

"At this time we simply can't know all the circumstances under which the soldier was operating. We don't know exactly what he saw, or if the person he shot and killed moved and made some gesture that he considered threatening or inappropriate. We don't know the full story yet, and it is wrong for us to adjudge the soldier in question as either guilty or innocent based upon the limited amount of information available at this time. However, should the ongoing investigation ultimately produce proof that the person who was shot was both unarmed and not in any way threatening the soldier in question, then he shouldn't have been shot and a crime was committed under the Geneva Convention.

"I think right now that the most appropriate action is to allow the ongoing investigation to proceed and determine what all the circumstances are, and what the U.S. soldier saw," she said. "Until that has been done, any judgment regarding whether or not a war crime has been committed is based upon a less-than-complete understanding of the facts and is, at best, premature.

Dr. Buys expressed confidence in the ability of military investigators to do a thorough criminal investigation and reach a legally-appropriate decision as regards possible criminal charges. "Lets be realistic about this situation. It was captured on tape and broadcast worldwide on television. The whole world knows that there was a shooting in that mosque, and only the worst sort of fool would even attempt to be less than thorough or candid about what happened. There will be no cover up or whitewash," she predicted.