Russell To Have Johnson ‘Tried’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31081, 9 June 1966, Page 17

Russell To Have Johnson ‘Tried’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) HONG KONG, June 8. The British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, has told the Vietnamese people he is preparing a war crimes tribunal to try President Johnson and other United States leaders for “brutal treatment of the people of Vietnam for 12 years.”

The North Vietnam news agency, monitored in Hong Kong, said Lord Russell revealed the plan in a message to the Vietnamese people dated May 24 and broadcast by the Viet Cong’s Liberation Radio.

The philosopher said he was preparing a war crimes tribunal which would try in their absence, President Johnson, the Defence Secretary, Mr Robert McNamara, the Secretary of State, Mr Dean Rusk, the Ambassador, Mr Henry Cabot Lodge and other

“criminals responsible for the use of gas and chemicals, the torture and mutilation, the napalm . . . the terrible bombardments and the brutal treatment of the people of Vietnam for 12 years." In London, Lord Russell’s secretary, Mr Ralph Schoenmann, said the philosopher had written to various world figures in law and literature,

inviting them to join a panel of judges for a trial on the lines of the Nuremberg war crimes hearings after the Second World War. Mr Schoenmann said the French writer, Francois Mauriac, had agreed in principle with Lord Russell’s idea that the United States leaders should be tried.

Others approached included United States'Negro leaders and the French philosopher. Jean-Paul Sartre, but none of them had replied yet and Mr Schoenmann preferred not to mention any more names while .the project was Stitt being prepared.

Mr Schoenmann said Lord Russell had tape-recorded four broadcasts to be put out by North Vietnam, two of them over the Liberation Radio.

One broadcast included an appeal to United States soldiers to refuse to fight and to volunteer evidence for the proposed tribunal. The North Vietnam news agency said Lord Russell’s message said their courage had inspired in the United States “a great tide of popular resistance to Johnson’s war.”

The National Liberation Front (political arm of the Viet Cong) had aroused the support of people in every country.

“You are the world’s soldiers for justice, a permanent reminder of the heroism of which men and women are capable when dedicated to a noble ideal,” he said.