| PHANTOMS OF NUREMBERG AND GUANTANAMO (1)
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         Guénaël Mettraux wrote an article published at the New York Times defending A Nuremberg for Guantánamo for the detainees at the military prison of Guantanamo, Cuba. As far as I am concerned, it’s an article failed in many aspects, full of misunderstandings which an unprepared citizen is unable to understand; besides the author’s memory of Nuremberg is not clear at all.

.         Guantanamo does not postulate the solutions of the International Military Court of Nuremberg, at any ground – factual or juridical. We are in another stage of civilization; a stage who demands justice, not vengeance. There is not any conundrum between the facts which lead to the International Military Court of Nuremberg and the situation of Guantanamo’s detainees: there are positive norms to deal with the Guantanamo affair, as much as we considered the substantial (Nuremberg faced the problem of leges imperfectae, the absence of punishable rules of some crimes that the accused had to deal at the military Court) or the adjective or formal aspects of it: there are norms and the United States of America have courts with competence to judge them.

             The creation of international courts cannot be, and it is not, a panaceia for every problems dealing with complex political situations. The institution of these courts ad hoc is an attempt against Law and the principles of penal law that cannot be accepted by the citizens of the World. If the Obama Administration is facing a political dilemma, that is a ethical problem of political praxis. Justice is another thing. Human rights, even for accused of unspeakable crimes, are another thing. The Rule of Law must be enforced on this matter; the norms (rules and principles of United States criminal Law) must prevail over politics. I do agree with M.I. Guénaël Mettraux in one thing: to keep the detainees without a fair trial or to deliver them to undemocratic governments are unacceptable at all. The same must be said of an assumption of a jurisdictional non liquet or the creation of an International Military Court ad hoc. That would be the bankruptcy of American judicial system and an ostensive violation of fundamental principles of Law, such as the rights of defense (and we must have in presence that penal Law is not only substantial laws but adjective laws as well) and territorial competence.

.         Another aspect that seems to be forgotten by author is that in the International Military Court of Nuremberg the twenty-two defendants were the Gang of Hitler (as Winston Churchill called them), la crème de la crème of III Reich regime — those targeted to be the example for the future. In regular courts about 300.000 Germans were put at trial, and about 50.000 executed. The soviets, for example, got 180.000 detainees and seized “discretely” 42.800 of them (it was URSS Guantanamo’s, in a far worst scale). 

          Nuremberg was only one face of a story of vengeance against Germany and the German people, and the all history is untold to the people. If we take a look at the negotiations about who would be sent to trial at Nuremberg’s Court we will necessarily got to a conclusion: it was a political Court. And the American and the citizens of the World want a judicial court to judge those who are responsible of terrorism and the horrors of it, particularly on 9/11. And it must be a fair trial, a fair trial demanded by the Rule of Law and the decency of humanity. A fair trial means a fast one too. The rescue of the moral example of the United States of America on this matter lies on this: the judicial must have and use the power and the authority endorsed by the Constitution.

         The International Military Court of Nuremberg was an exception, and we cannot live on the grounds of exception and politics of exception; we must live under the umbrella of the Rule of Law. The exception, on International Law, is becoming a rule, ant that is a great danger for the citizens of the World. I am astonished and worried when I realize that lawyers of criminal accused at International Courts thinks as Guénaël Mettraux. He forgot history, fundamentals of Law and his mediator’s position as a defendant’s lawyer and, most of all, the nature of the Court set at Nuremberg.

.          But there is another question that emerge of Guénaël Mettraux proposal: why judges of countries as Spain, for example Judge Baltazar Garzon and other countries with universal jurisdiction, do not ask United States of America to send the Guantanamo’s detainees to trial them of crimes against humanity? America agrees to send some of them, those found not guilty, to Europe. If it is so, why not to send those who are accused of terrorism to be judged there? It could be a better solution than a new Nuremberg… but that would be a liability of incompetence of American judicial system. And I am not talking about the natural judge’s principle, no. It is more, but more than that…
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(1)  I wrote this article some months ago, but it was lost in another computer's disc.