US group again seeks charges against Rumsfeld

NEW YORK, Nov 10 (Reuters) The US-based Center for Constitutional Rights again will seek criminal charges against outgoing US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a German court over detainee treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.

The complaint also will name Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former CIA director George Tenet, high-ranking military officers and others.

The center hopes German prosecutors will take up the case under Germany's universal jurisdiction law, which allows them to pursue certain cases originating anywhere in the world, a spokeswoman said today.

Rumsfeld resigned on Wednesday after nearly six years on the job after the opposition Democratic Party regained control of both houses of the US Congress from the Republicans amid voter discontent with the war in Iraq.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is challenging what it considers US torture and indefinite detention of detainees in several court cases. In 2004, the center had asked German prosecutors to file a criminal case against Rumsfeld over the US military abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

German prosecutors dropped that case.

Now the center will try again, this time adding a plaintiff who was detained at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the spokeswoman said.

The complaint will be forwarded to German federal prosecutors on Tuesday, she said.

Private citizens can file criminal complaints in Germany but it is up to prosecutors to decide whether to pursue charges, the center said.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.

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