Paris - Four human rights organisations have filed a complaint in a Paris court against former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld charging him with torture, the website of the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur reported on Friday.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the French League for Human Rights (LDH), the US-based Centre for Constitutional Righst (CCR) and Germany's European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) said in a statement that they accused Rumsfeld of being behind the torture of prisoners at the American prisons at Guantanamo, in Cuba, and Abu Ghraib, in Iraq.
The lawyer for the four organisations, Patrick Baudouin, said the complaint had been filed with the state prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, who had the jurisdiction to pursue it because Rumsfeld was currently in France.
A number of similar complaints against Rumsfeld have been filed in other countries, such as Sweden, Argentina and Spain. A complaint filed in Germany in 2005 was rejected. - Sapa-dpa