Military To Give Detainees Geneva Treatment
The US military has issued a new policy granting detainees full Geneva Convention rights under common article 3. I rather doubt much will change in the way the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are being treated.
The White House confirmed on Tuesday that the Pentagon had decided, in a major policy shift, that all detainees held in US military custody around the world are entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.
The FT has learned that Gordon England, deputy defence secretary, sent a memo to senior defence officials and military officers last Friday, telling them that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions – which prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners and requires certain basic legal rights at trial – would apply to all detainees held in US military custody.
This reverses the policy outlined by President George W. Bush in 2002 when he decided members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban did not qualify for Geneva protections because the war on terrorism had ushered in a “new paradigm…[that] requires new thinking in the law of war”.
The policy U-turn comes on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling last month that the military commissions Mr Bush created to try prisoners at Guantanamo Bay contravened both US law and the Geneva Conventions.
The White House had argued that Mr Bush, as commander-in-chief, had the authority to convene the military commissions. Critics who rejected this interpretation said the commissions were unjust because, for instance, defendants were unable to see all the evidence levelled against them.
My reading of common article 3 would agree with the original interpretation the White House took. The detainees were illegal combatants under the original intent of the article. I'm of the belief that the Geneva Conventions desperately need to be rewritten to cover this new kind of war that was never envisioned when they were last amended.
By Roland Hesz, July 12, 2006 @ 3:08 am
Most of the detainees in Guantanamo are innocent, caught up in a frenzied, over-hyped hunt for terrorists or whoever came by to meet the required number of prisoners.
The first sweep was a disaster, and despite evidences the US army is reluctant to release the innocent ones.
And, btw, the things they done at gitmo is not about the prisoners beign terrorists, illegal combatants - like the US army in Iraq -, but about a bunch of sick, pervert people, giving the americans and humanity in general a bad name.
Even if you torture a terrorist, there will be only one thing: you will become less than a human being, maybe sinking lower than the terrorist.
Not worthy of being called a human.
And then, please stop calling yourselves “true christians”.
That is nothing more than mocking the true ones.