Bush
Former US president George W. Bush: wanted for crimes against humanity
A criminal court in Canada has blocked an attempt by a human rights group to prosecute former US president George W. Bush for war crimes.

The Canadian Center for International Justice filed a private four-count complaint and received a January 9 hearing date at the British Columbia Provincial Court in Surrey, The Associated Press reported.

The complaint was issued on the same day when Bush was in Vancouver for a speech, along with his predecessor Bill Clinton.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three former Guantanamo detainees and one man who has been imprisoned there without any charge for more than nine years.

The three men whose claims of torture were cited in the complaint are Hassan Bin Attash, a Yemeni still held in Cuba; Muhammed Khan Tumani, a Syrian whom the US resettled him in Portugal; and Sami al-Hajj, a Sudanese al Jazeera employee now based in Doha, Qatar.

The fourth was former German prisoner Murat Kurnaz, who said, "I believe George Bush is a criminal, and he has to pay for this, what he did."

Amnesty International and the New York Center for Constitutional Rights also called on the Canadian government to arrest Bush and either prosecute or extradite him for torturing the prisoners.

Bush made a visit to Canada on Thursday despite the torture complaint case, which led to the protest of hundreds of Canadians, demanding his arrest.

In February, however, he was forced in to cancel a plan to speak at a gala fundraiser in Geneva ahead of a similar torture complaint.