Summons for Criminal Investigation – Henry Kissinger: “We wish to draw your attention to Kissinger’s comprehensive, unparalleled record of serious international crimes and the need for prosecutorial action”.

On Dec 6, 2016, Fredrik S. Heffermehl and Tomas Magnusson, founding members of Nobel Peace Prize Watch (“Lay Down Your Arms” association) sent the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Head of International Prosecutions Unit, Oslo (Norway) a letter headed: “Summons for Criminal Investigation – Henry Kissinger”.

They write:
“… former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor of the USA, Henry Kissinger, will be in Norway in the second week of December 2016. He is invited as an honored guest by respected institutions, The Norwegian Nobel Committee and the University of Oslo, to share his views on US foreign policy, by all appearances not to regret or repent, or be held to account.
The discrepancy between the world of Kissinger and the peace by global disarmament and co-operation, the demilitarized “fraternity of nations” ideas, the Nobel committee was supposed to promote, is so glaring that it defies comment.
The same applies to the University of Oslo.
We wish to draw your attention to Kissinger´s comprehensive, unparalleled record of serious international crimes and the need for prosecutorial action”.

After listing a great deal of documentation, the signatories recall:
“…The menu of crimes ordered or organized by Kissinger: war crimes, torture, aggression, subversion, interference and interventions in violation of international law is without end”.

and they solicit the Prosecutors to intervene:
“Norway should prosecute to uphold international law. Norway´s wide rules on universal jurisdiction should not pose any problem with the apprehension, questioning and trial of Mr. Kissinger.
The rules in Norwegian and international penal law defining international crimes, war crimes, torture etc. have been thoroughly dealt with by the late professor of law at the University of Oslo, Ståle Eskeland”…

Quoting the post WWII Nuremberg statement whereby “Nations do not commit international crimes, but persons, individuals, acting for the state do”, the signatories continue:
“The responsibility of national prosecutors to take action against the gravest international crimes are the result of a long development where it is seen in the interest of the world community that all countries co-operate to end impunity. If Western political and military leaders shall continue to enjoy impunity this is bound to do serious harm to law and order in the world”.

Recalling how Kissinger managed to escape previous attempts to prosecute him, they ask a very direct question:
“Has Norway guaranteed safe passage to Kissinger?
It is a fact that Mr. Kissinger is very careful about foreign travel. His travel to Norway raises an awkward question: has he decided to go to Norway because he has been promised safe passage, or is he so confident about Norway as a loyal subordinate that he takes it for granted? Neither alternative is very honorable to a presumed independent country.”

They insist on the issue by recalling the recent behavior of the Norwegian Government towards Edward Snowden:
“If Kissinger will enjoy automatic impunity it stands out in shameful contrast with denying protection to whistleblower Edward Snowden for a stay of two days to receive the Ossietzky prize from Norwegian PEN. Can Norway really have offered protection to one who has committed the most serious international crimes and at the same time denied it to one who has exposed grave crimes against the US Constitution?”

Then the letter recalls the unfortunate fact that Kissinger was awarded the Nobel prize in 1973:
“It was more than a paradox when, in her Dec. 10, 1973, speech in honor of Kissinger, the Nobel chair Aase Lionæs offered the very true comment: ‘Peace must be based on rules to which all states, at any rate the great powers, adhere in their conduct’: True, there will neither be peace nor justice if in the law between nations continues to be like cobwebs, strong enough to detain only the weak and too weak to hold the strong.
The International Criminal Court, ICC, is presently in serious danger of being destroyed by the attitudes of hegemonic Western powers. Its application of justice has become so lopsided that Third World countries are starting to withdraw. They cannot be expected to accept forever the guaranteed impunity of the war criminals of powerful nations. A potential collapse of this essential institution ought to concern all tasked with law enforcement and the protection of citizens all over the world against terror and lawlessness”.

Attached is a thorough documentation of the personal involvement of Henry Kissinger in:
1. The deliberate mass killing of civilian populations in Indochina.
2. Deliberate collusion in mass murder, and later in assassination, in Bangladesh.
3. The personal suborning and planning of murder, of a senior constitutional officer in a democratic nation — Chile — with which the United States was not at war.
4. Personal involvement in a plan to murder the head of state in the democratic nation of Cyprus.
5. The incitement and enabling of genocide in East Timor
6. Personal involvement in a plan to kidnap and murder a journalist living in Washington, D.C.

A quotation from the book “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” by Christopher Hitchens, Basert på førsteutgaven (Verso, 2001) follows:
“… Most serious of all, though, was the suit filed in Federal Court in Washington, DC, on 10 September 2001. This suit is brought by the surviving members of the family of General Rene Schneider of Chile (see my pages 84-101 and 203). It charges Kissinger and others with “summary execution” of the General; in other words, but in a civil case, with murder and international terrorism. The date of the lawsuit may seem unpropitious to some, but in fact the hideous aggression against American civil society that occurred the following day has laid greater emphasis than ever on the need for a single standard, and one day a single international court, for the hearing of crimes against humanity, state-sponsored murder and international nihilism.
In the same period, the National Security Archive and others compelled Kissinger to return 50,000 pages of the public documents he had illegally abstracted when he left office (see my page 116-17) and to have these returned to the scrutiny of scholars and historians (and victims).”.

The letter is c0-signed by:
– Richard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University, USA.
– Erni and Ola Friholt, Peace movement activists, Orust, Sweden
– Jon Hellesnes, Professor emeritus of philosophy, Tromsoe, Norway
– Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Ph.D., Author, Bondi Beach, NSW 2026, Australia
– Gunnar Nerdrum, attorney-at-law, Tromsoe, Norway
– Jan Oberg, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, Lund, Sweden
– Antonio Carlos da Silva Rosa, M.A., editor, researcher. Porto, Portugal/São Paulo, Brasil
– Sven Ruin, human rights activist, Köping, Sweden
– David Swanson, author, World Beyond War, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
– Ola Tellesbø, Attorney-at-law, Norway
– Kenji Urata, Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law, Waseda University, Japan
– Gunnar Westberg, Prof. emeritus, Sahlgrenska academy, Göteborg, Sweden