The Canadian government used a claim of diplomatic immunity Monday to
block torture charges laid under the Canadian Criminal Code against
President George W. Bush. The charges had been laid by Gail Davidson of
LAW on the occasion of Bush's visit to Canada on November 30. They
concerned the well-known abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, photos of which
shocked the world earlier this year, as well as similar abuses at
Guantánamo Bay that have emerged more recently. On behalf of LAW,
Davidson was seeking to fix a date for a hearing into the charges and
came armed with evidence, but Judge William Kitchen acceded to the
Attorney General's objections and declared the charges ?a nullity'. "Of
course, they're not a nullity", said Professor Michael Mandel, co-chair
of LAW, who criticized the decision as "irregular in procedure and
wrong in substance." "These charges were properly laid and backed up by
powerful evidence. The government didn't deny that evidence because it
couldn't deny it. Diplomatic immunity is purely procedural. It doesn't
affect the validity of the charges, only whether they can be proceeded
with, for the time being, in a foreign court, in this case a Canadian
court. Even if Bush has immunity, it's only temporary and it won't
shield him or anyone in his administration from Canadian law, or any
other law, when they leave office. That the Canadian government would
try to hush this up by hiding Bush behind diplomatic immunity was only
to be expected. Paul Martin invited Bush here to ingratiate himself
with the President, despite the President's crimes against our laws and
against international law, despite even his inadmissibility as a war
criminal under Canada's immigration laws -- above all, despite the
unending human disaster the President's 'war of choice' has brought to
the people of Iraq." [more