WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- A retired engineer is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his case, after refusing to pay a federal fine for humanitarian sanctions-busting.
Bert Sachs was fined $10,000 for traveling to Iraq in 1997, taking medicines as part of a humanitarian effort in violation of U.S. sanctions against the regime of Saddam Hussein, but has refused to pay, arguing that the sanctions were illegal.
"It was not hard to show that U.S. policies lethally targeted civilians, using famine and epidemic as tools of coercion, violating international law," he said in a statement Tuesday.
U.S. courts have declined to invalidate the embargo, ruling in effect, Sachs argues "if Congress wants to violate customary international law it may do so and the U.S. courts are powerless to stop it.
"I hope the Supreme Court will decide otherwise," the statement concludes.
"This quiet American is the kind of American hero that this country should want to be remembered for," commented former senior U.N. official Denis Halliday. "Bert Sacks will represent before the Supreme Court the very best the U.S. has to offer. Let us hope that in their combined wisdom, [the justices] can recognize his vision of what this country could be."
