Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI

[Lkr]

 

RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.

 

Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

 

The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7094310.ece

 

For some reason I can't see it actually working

[YugoRocketsFan]

Would be hilarious if they did.

[Redneck]

There is a difference between Pinochet and Benedict that these two are over looking. Benedict is the officially recognized head of state of the Vatican, he has head of state immunity. If the British allow this to go through they will open up a gigantic international [expletive] storm. It would also set a very bad presidence and could lead to wars. The Vatican doesn't have the military might to do anything to Britian, and I'm not sure Italy, Spain, France, Mexico or any of the other Catholic countries would do anything. But the presidence is what worries me.

 

What we in the west call a human rights violation may not be a human rights violation in another part of the world and vice versa. For arguments sake lets say on an official state visit the Saudi's arrest the head of state of Denmark because the Saudi's are offended by the Danish Muhammed cartoons and consider that to be a human rights violation. You now have a huge international incident, and the potential for a war. Or what if on an official state visit a country like Haiti has George W. Bush arrested for the Iraq war. The US, regardly of who is in power here, simply would not tolerate that and would likely send some form of expedionary force into Haiti. This would lead to paranoia amongst world leaders, and could prevent leaders such as Kim Jong-Il(or Kim Jong-Un when he takes power) and Mahmoud Amadinajad from sitting down with world leaders to work things out.