Stephen Funk - Controversy

Controversy

It is noteworthy that the United States punished him "for refusing to report to his unit during the Iraq war," during the period of his "unauthorized absence" (Feb 9, 2003 to April 1, 2003), which occurred before the May 22, 2003 adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483. (That resolution affirmed that the United States and the United Kingdom had responsibility for Iraq as the "occupying powers under unified command.")

This sequence of events means that United States punished Stephen Funk for refusing to "report to his unit during war" not sanctioned by the United Nations. This fact has major implications in international law: In an interview given on August 25, 2006, about the “2003 invasion of Iraq,...,...said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.” Ferencz is qualified to make comparisons to the Nuremberg Trials because he, himself, was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the twelve military trials held by the U.S. authorities at Nuremberg, Germany. One of the legal principles used during those trials was Nuremberg Principle IV which deals with the responsibility of individuals. It states, "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him." The precedents and principles of international law that were set during the Nuremberg Trials have legal relevance to all subsequent cases, including that of Stephen Funk.