Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for war crimes over her role in destroying Libya: US journalist

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for war crimes over her admission under oath that she played a part in destroying Libya, an American political commentator and journalist says.

Don DeBar made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on Clinton’s appearance before a congressional committee to testify about an attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi in 2012.

The frontrunner Democratic presidential candidate tried to deflect Republican criticism of her handling of the deadly 2012 attack during a testy 11-hour hearing before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Thursday.

She accused the Republicans of playing politics over the attack at the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi that left four US diplomats, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, dead.

“The most interesting part of the Hillary Clinton Republican committee show yesterday – and it is a show, a sideshow – was when one of the Republican members of Congress actually tried to get rid of the sideshow and deal with the actual issue at hand, which is not Benghazi but Libya proper, and particularly Hillary Clinton’s role in destroying that country,” DeBar said.

“Representative [Peter] Roskam opened his interrogatory of Clinton by asking whether her statement that was captured on camera when she was getting ready for an interview – ‘We came, we saw, he died’ – about the murder of Muammar Gaddafi represented her policy towards Libya,” he added.

“And in denying that it represented policy she - under oath - essentially admitted to the fact pattern of US policy being regime change in Libya and the killing of Gaddafi. Both are war crimes, both are prosecutable acts at the International Criminal Court, and her statements were made under oath,” the analyst stated.

“And the thing I am looking at next, I am very interested in seeing what statements were made by the Obama administration under oath in their response papers to a lawsuit that was brought under the war powers act back in 2011 by Dennis Kucinich and nine other members of Congress seeking to make the US government stop this war on Libya because it had not been authorized by Congress at that point, to see if any of those pleadings contain an absolute denial under oath of the US having as an aim either regime change or the killing of  Gaddafi,” DeBar said.

“And if I do find that - and I have copies of the pleadings - then basically I am going to be in possession of the two contrary statements taken under oath, one from Clinton saying that the policy was regime change and the killing of  Gaddafi,  and one from the White House saying that it was not the policy. And then someone, somewhere - some court, somebody - has to resolve that contradiction,” he said.

“But she was fairly clear, a lot clearer than I have seen people get convicted on in terms of making self-incriminatory statements, that the US policy was satisfied when Gaddafi was killed, and that was what she was expressing gratitude over,” the journalist concluded. 

On Thursday, Clinton was also questioned about her decision to get the US militarily involved in Libya. Republicans blamed her Libya policy for the current mess there. 

According to CNN, up to 35 CIA operatives were working in Benghazi during the attack on September 11, 2012, but it has never reported how many of them died or were injured.

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