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Following are excerpts from a TV debate about whether President Bush is a war criminal, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on December 24, 2008.
Interviewer: Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic killed several thousand people – or rather, was accused of this – and was dragged to the International Criminal Court [ICC], where he was killed, and no one knows how. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was also accused of some killings, and his head was chopped off. Now, the Sudanese president is wanted by the international justice system to stand trial on unsubstantiated accusations. A few people killed Rafiq Al-Hariri, and the whole world is up in arms over one Lebanese MP. Libya paid billions of dollars in compensation for a few American heads. So why not place on trial the man labeled by the German justice minister "the Hitler of our times," who killed millions of people and children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, and Lebanon?
[...]
Dr. Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf, expatriate Libyan lawyer and ICC member: We must draw a distinction between Bush and the Arab rulers.
Interviewer: How come? Doesn’t Bush deserve to be placed on trial?
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: I will answer this question. The Arab rulers are the ones who attack their own people, killing them, massacring them, and getting them involved in unwinnable wars. Yet these rulers are never held accountable – from Abd Al-Nasser to Assad, and all these rulers.
[...]
Deputy Secretary-General of the Arab Lawyers Association Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: I'm sad to say that the things he said are contradictory, fictitious, and meaningless. I don't know what exactly my colleague is saying. You asked him a question about the crimes perpetrated by the Nazi of our times, George Bush, and his neo-Nazi comrades, who have destroyed the world, along with their own country, America, as we are now seeing. But he evades the question by saying that the Arab rulers should stand trial.
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: The Arab rulers should stand trial first...
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: Don't interrupt me. We are not dealing with the question of trials for Arab rulers here.
[...]
Today, Iraq has regressed to pre-Middle Ages times as a result of the barbaric Nazi destruction by the U.S. administration, under the leadership of the war criminal Bush. In the Arab Lawyers Association, we have been preparing for the past four years to try him as a war criminal. We have founded the Arab Center for War Crimes Documentation especially for this purpose – for him, his colleagues, and his ilk. We are counting the minutes until he will no longer have that false, colonialist, so-called immunity he enjoys in his capacity as president of the United States. Once he leaves office, we will go after him. You and everybody else know that there is no statute of limitations on war crimes. We will continue to go after Bush and his ilk until justice is done. Hitler never imagined that he might be defeated. He never imagined that he might stand trial. He never imagined that he would be driven to suicide in order to avoid trial. A worse fate awaits George Bush in the future.
Interviewer: What’s your response?
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: He is talking about things that have nothing to do with law. As a lawyer...
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: What do you mean by that?
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: I'm a lawyer. I have diplomas, I have three Ph.D.s, I'm known worldwide, and I am a member of the ICC, so don't even go there. From a legal perspective...
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: Listen, you are a lawyer, but so am I. You present yourself as an ICC member, so you should know that I am a member of the ICC.
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: You are not, liar. You are a member of the Lawyer Association...
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: No, I'm not... You are lying. I challenge you before millions of viewers.
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: Go ahead and challenge, liar...
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: You fled from Libya... You fled from Libya...
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: What do you mean by that...
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: You want to place Arab rulers on trial? Go fight your rulers in Libya. You fled. Go and fight.
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: Fight who?
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: You are fighting from Paris?!
[...
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: Bush came in order to liberate Iraq from a tyrannical regime. When Saddam was arrested, I called upon the Iraqi government to place his wife and daughters on trial.
[...]
From the bottom of my heart, I congratulate Iraq, because it will become a democratic country. I justify the invasion of Iraq. I consider it liberation, not invasion. Our problem is that colonialism was better than our current regimes.
Interviewer: So, Bush is better...
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: As far as I am concerned, the Western presence is better than these rulers.
[...]
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: If Muntazar Al-Zaidi, the Arab fighter who made all Arabs and Muslims proud, threw a shoe at the war criminal George Bush, as an act of resistance and defense of his occupied country, when he faced the head of the occupation – then we support him and will throw everything we have, even this... We will throw everything at the face of the collaborators with Bush and the occupation.
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: This proves that you are a vulgar, stupid man with a shoe mentality.
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: These are the collaborators with George Bush and the Americans, collaborators with the neo-Nazis. Eventually, they will face trial and he held accountable. He might have fled Libya, but we will hunt him down in France, or even at the end of the world.
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: This is a threat, and I will sue you today.
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: Go to...
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: You animal...
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: You collaborator, go to...
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: This is the language and culture of shoes.
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: You are a disgrace to international law!
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: Me a disgrace?!
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: By the way, I've crossed your name off the ICC.
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: This show is being recorded, and I will sue you.
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: I will hunt you down, you collaborator!
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: I didn’t hit you, but you said that you would hunt me down. This is recorded.
Interviewer: I thank you both.
Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: It's globally recorded, and if anything happens to me, you'll be held responsible.
Interviewer: All that is left is to thank our guests, Libyan lawyer Dr. Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf, member of the ICC, and 'Abd Al Azim Al-Mughrabi, Deputy Sec.-Gen. of the Arab Lawyers Association. We will meet again next Tuesday. Until then, I, Faysal Al-Qassem, bid you farewell from Doha. Goodbye. Thank you... Thank you... Would you two like to shake hands?
Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi and Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: No way!
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