Under the Geneva Convention, isn't it illegal to...
- Thread starter VegasGuy
- Start date
I think non-regulars are not covered at all. And, I don't think they should be covered by the Constiution, as they are neither citizens, residents nor were captured in the US. But I'll check.
Update -
Update -
Last edited:
No. What I am saying is that the Geneva Convention does not cover those in Gitmo at all. The convention only covers acknowledged, state aligned combatants. Those in Gitmo are just guys with guns.
In short, under the convention and consititution, they are neither fish nor fowl.
The “bush crime family’ got smacked down on JUNE 29, 2006 by the Supremes in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in a 5 -3 decision, on several of their self-created, “The President is a King” fascist assertions, as it pertains to “enemy combatants”.
Read the full decision HERE
The Bushits had asserted that they were above the law, and that the President, acting as “The Unitary Executive” has dictatorial powers which supersede all other branches of the US government and any international treaty or conventions (including GENEVA) that the United States was a signatory to.
In other words the Bushits were saying to the world ‘FUCK – YOU’ we’re in complete control.
Fuck the professional military Jag officers. Fuck-You John McCain. Fuck the US Senate. Fuck Geneva.
The Unitary Executive notion can be found in the infamous August 2002 bush torture memo.
READ the torture memo HERE
The torture memo in part says :
"In light of the president's complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority in these areas," the memo said. Prohibitions on torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority. . . . Congress may no more regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield." The same would go for "federal officials acting pursuant to the president's constitutional authority."
The Supreme Court found that
(1) The Supreme Court held that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to all detainees captured in military conflicts, including Al Qaeda members or other "Enemy Combatants," and not merely (as the Administration asserted) to soldiers who fight for established countries which are signatories to the Conventions.
Article 3 requires that detainees be tried by a "regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples," and the Court ruled [Sec. VI(D)(iii)] that the military commissions established at Guantanamo violate that requirement because they are not regularly constituted tribunals but instead are specially constituted courts in the absence of any emergency. Thus, under the Geneva Conventions, any and all detainees captured in armed conflict can be tried only by a "regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
You can read the rest for yourself.
This rebuke by the Supremes was why “the bush crime family” had to ram the MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT through the congress in December 2006. The Bushit Military Commissions Act also striped away the right of Habeas Corpus, which has been the core of western judicial law since the year 1000.
The legality of the 2006 MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT, and specifically the elimination of Habeas Corpus is headed back to the Supremes. Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled.
Stay tuned.
<font size="5"><center>In voiding suit, appellate court
says torture is to be expected</font size><font size="4">
<u>Detainees</u> captured in Afghanistan <u>are not</u> recognized as <u>"persons''</u>
under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act <u>because they were
aliens held outside the United States</u></font size></center>
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Friday threw out a suit by four British Muslims who allege that they were tortured and subjected to religious abuse in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a ruling that exonerated 11 present and former senior Pentagon officials.
It appeared to be the first time that a federal appellate court has ruled on the legality of the harsh interrogation tactics that U.S. intelligence officers and military personnel have used on suspected terrorists held outside the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The detainees allege that they were held in stress positions, interrogated for sessions lasting 24 hours, intimidated with dogs and isolated in darkness and that their beards were shaved.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the detainees captured in Afghanistan aren't recognized as ``persons'' under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were aliens held outside the United States. The Religious Freedom Act prohibits the government from ``substantially burdening a person's religion.''
The court rejected other claims on the grounds that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had certified that the military officials were acting within the scope of their jobs when they authorized the tactics, and that such tactics were ``foreseeable.''
``It was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably `seriously criminal' would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants,'' Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in the court's main opinion.
Judge Janice Rogers Brown dissented with parts of the opinion, saying that ``it leaves us with the unfortunate and quite dubious distinction of being the only court to declare those held at Guantanamo are not `person(s).'
'`This is a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human,'' Brown wrote.
After being held for more than two years, the four men were repatriated to Britain in 2004, where they were freed within 24 hours without facing criminal charges, said Washington lawyer Eric Lewis, who represented them along with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
Three of the men — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed — say they traveled to Afghanistan from Pakistan in October 2001 to provide humanitarian relief but were seized by an Uzbek warlord in northern Afghanistan the next month and sold to U.S. troops for bounty money. The three said they were unarmed and never engaged in combat against the United States.
The fourth, Jamal al Harith, said he'd planned to attend a religious retreat in Pakistan in October 2001 but was ordered to leave the country because of animosity toward Britons. When he tried to drive a truck home via Iran and Turkey, he says, his truck was hijacked at gunpoint and he was handed over to the Taliban, who jailed him and accused him of being a spy. When the Taliban fell after the U.S.-led invasion, he was detained and transported to Guantanamo.
The detainees filed suit in October 2004 against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, and nine other senior military officers. They allege that the Pentagon officials violated the Alien Tort Statute, the Geneva Conventions, the religious freedom law and the Constitution with their harsh treatment.
In upholding a lower court's rejection of all the claims but those under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the circuit court said that the interrogation tactics, which Rumsfeld first authorized in 2002, were ``incidental'' to the duties of those who'd been sued.
``It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency,'' said Lewis, the detainees' attorney, ``when a court finds that torture is all in a day's work for the secretary of defense and senior generals. . . . I think the executive is trying to create a black hole so there is no accountability for torture and religious abuse.''
Lewis said his clients intended to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.
McClatchy Newspapers 2008
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/24654.html
says torture is to be expected</font size><font size="4">
<u>Detainees</u> captured in Afghanistan <u>are not</u> recognized as <u>"persons''</u>
under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act <u>because they were
aliens held outside the United States</u></font size></center>
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, January 11, 2008
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Friday threw out a suit by four British Muslims who allege that they were tortured and subjected to religious abuse in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a ruling that exonerated 11 present and former senior Pentagon officials.
It appeared to be the first time that a federal appellate court has ruled on the legality of the harsh interrogation tactics that U.S. intelligence officers and military personnel have used on suspected terrorists held outside the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The detainees allege that they were held in stress positions, interrogated for sessions lasting 24 hours, intimidated with dogs and isolated in darkness and that their beards were shaved.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the detainees captured in Afghanistan aren't recognized as ``persons'' under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because they were aliens held outside the United States. The Religious Freedom Act prohibits the government from ``substantially burdening a person's religion.''
The court rejected other claims on the grounds that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had certified that the military officials were acting within the scope of their jobs when they authorized the tactics, and that such tactics were ``foreseeable.''
``It was foreseeable that conduct that would ordinarily be indisputably `seriously criminal' would be implemented by military officials responsible for detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants,'' Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in the court's main opinion.
Judge Janice Rogers Brown dissented with parts of the opinion, saying that ``it leaves us with the unfortunate and quite dubious distinction of being the only court to declare those held at Guantanamo are not `person(s).'
'`This is a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human,'' Brown wrote.
After being held for more than two years, the four men were repatriated to Britain in 2004, where they were freed within 24 hours without facing criminal charges, said Washington lawyer Eric Lewis, who represented them along with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
Three of the men — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed — say they traveled to Afghanistan from Pakistan in October 2001 to provide humanitarian relief but were seized by an Uzbek warlord in northern Afghanistan the next month and sold to U.S. troops for bounty money. The three said they were unarmed and never engaged in combat against the United States.
The fourth, Jamal al Harith, said he'd planned to attend a religious retreat in Pakistan in October 2001 but was ordered to leave the country because of animosity toward Britons. When he tried to drive a truck home via Iran and Turkey, he says, his truck was hijacked at gunpoint and he was handed over to the Taliban, who jailed him and accused him of being a spy. When the Taliban fell after the U.S.-led invasion, he was detained and transported to Guantanamo.
The detainees filed suit in October 2004 against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, and nine other senior military officers. They allege that the Pentagon officials violated the Alien Tort Statute, the Geneva Conventions, the religious freedom law and the Constitution with their harsh treatment.
In upholding a lower court's rejection of all the claims but those under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the circuit court said that the interrogation tactics, which Rumsfeld first authorized in 2002, were ``incidental'' to the duties of those who'd been sued.
``It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency,'' said Lewis, the detainees' attorney, ``when a court finds that torture is all in a day's work for the secretary of defense and senior generals. . . . I think the executive is trying to create a black hole so there is no accountability for torture and religious abuse.''
Lewis said his clients intended to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.
McClatchy Newspapers 2008
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/24654.html
<font size="4" color="#333333">
We all know that Stress Positions are ‘Good for us’!
What a wonderful way to exercise our muscles!
We all know that being rendered (Extraordinary Rendition) is a good way to experience an unexpected vacation!
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
<hr noshade color="#0000FF" size="10"></hr>
Download and watch the PBS Frontline International program <font color="#FF0000"><b>Extraordinary Rendition</b></font>
<font size="3">Download links
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8i18nr
OR
http://rapidshare.com/files/8329998..._Extraordinary_Rendition_rapid.part1.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/8330356..._Extraordinary_Rendition_rapid.part2.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/8329522..._Extraordinary_Rendition_rapid.part3.rar.html
</font>
Watch a simulation of how 'Stress Positions' are utilized below. The orders for "stress positions' and water torture (waterboarding) come directly from the Bushit Oval Office.
Read : ORDERS CAME DIRECTLY FROM THE TOP
[flash]http://www.youtube.com/v/lnyDzQKlcvw&rel=1[/flash]
</font>
<font face="arial black" size="5" color="#d90000">
Taxonomy of Torture: Stress positions</font><font face="tahoma' size="4" color="#0000FF"><b>
A detail from the Taxonomy of Torture from the US Defense Department</b></font>
<font face="verdana" size="3" color="#000000">
<b>Name:</b> “Stress positions, like standing”
<font size="4">
<b>Source:</b> Decision Memorandum from Defense Department General Counsel William Haynes II to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for commander, U.S. Southern Command, Dec. 2, 2002; CIA KUBARK manual </font>
<b>Description:</b> Posing a detainee in an erect standing position for a period of several hours. No restraints or external devices are used. Variations of this technique include the extension of one's arms outward to the side. In an addendum to his memo approving this technique, Rumsfeld asked, <i>"I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"</i>
According to one Army intelligence officer with personal knowledge of these practices, soldiers in the field developed harsher variations of the stress technique. In one position reportedly improvised by soldiers in the field, known as a "short shackle," detainees are bound at the wrist and ankle with metal or plastic handcuffs and then doubled over with their wrists bound to their ankles, either while lying on the ground or sitting.
Other stress positions documented by Army investigators include the suspension of detainees from a shackle in the ceiling, with the arms extended, sometimes without their feet touching the ground. This practice bears a striking resemblance to the "strappado" first used in the 13th and 14th century during the Italian Inquisition, in which victims were suspended from the ceiling with a system of ropes and weights to induce pain in a series of five degrees of increasing intensity. Army investigators found that a version of strappado was used on Mullah Habibullah and Dilawar at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.
Physical, Psychological, or Other Effects: In 1956, the CIA commissioned two Cornell Medical Center researchers to study Soviet interrogation techniques, including standing for extended periods of time. They concluded, "The KGB simply made victims stand for eighteen to twenty-four hours—producing 'excruciating pain' as ankles double in size, skin becomes 'tense and intensely painful,' blisters erupt oozing 'watery serum,' heart rates soar, kidneys shut down, and delusions deepen.
<b><font color="#0000FF">In 1999, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled the use of sleep deprivation and stress positions to be forms of torture. Specifically, that court forbade Israeli security agencies from using the "shaback" position, in which a detainee's hands are tied behind the back of a chair in a painful position while he is hooded; and the "frog crouch," in which a detainee is forced to crouch on his toes with his hands bound behind his back for a long period of time.</b></font>
<b>Locations Used:</b> Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, CIA "black sites", Africa
<b>Legal Opinion: <font color="#0000FF"> These tactics violate Geneva's proscriptions against physical abuse and probably against humiliating and degrading treatment. FM 34-52 recognizes this by stating that it is physical torture to force "an individual to stand, sit, or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time." </b></font>
In 1978, the European Court of Human Rights decided in a case from Northern Ireland that "five techniques" used to interrogate suspected Irish Republican Army members were unlawful. The techinques were "wall-standing" (a stress position); hooding; subjection to noise; sleep deprivation; and deprivation of food and drink. The court held that such tactics were not torture under the European human rights convention but constituted "inhuman and degrading treatment," a standard analogous to the one in the CAT and ICCPR. <font color="#0000FF"><b>In light of this decision, International Law would likely prohibit the stress positions that the U.S. has used and is currently using.</b></font>
<b>Signed:</b> Defense Department General Counsel William Haynes II
</font>
<p><hr noshade color="#FF0000" size="14"></hr><br>
We all know that Stress Positions are ‘Good for us’!
What a wonderful way to exercise our muscles!
We all know that being rendered (Extraordinary Rendition) is a good way to experience an unexpected vacation!
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
The US doesn’t Torture. The US doesn’t Render. …..repeat
<hr noshade color="#0000FF" size="10"></hr>
Download and watch the PBS Frontline International program <font color="#FF0000"><b>Extraordinary Rendition</b></font>
<font size="3">Download links
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8i18nr
OR
http://rapidshare.com/files/8329998..._Extraordinary_Rendition_rapid.part1.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/8330356..._Extraordinary_Rendition_rapid.part2.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/8329522..._Extraordinary_Rendition_rapid.part3.rar.html
</font>
Watch a simulation of how 'Stress Positions' are utilized below. The orders for "stress positions' and water torture (waterboarding) come directly from the Bushit Oval Office.
Read : ORDERS CAME DIRECTLY FROM THE TOP
[flash]http://www.youtube.com/v/lnyDzQKlcvw&rel=1[/flash]
</font>
<font face="arial black" size="5" color="#d90000">
Taxonomy of Torture: Stress positions</font><font face="tahoma' size="4" color="#0000FF"><b>
A detail from the Taxonomy of Torture from the US Defense Department</b></font>
<font face="verdana" size="3" color="#000000">
<b>Name:</b> “Stress positions, like standing”
<font size="4">
<b>Source:</b> Decision Memorandum from Defense Department General Counsel William Haynes II to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for commander, U.S. Southern Command, Dec. 2, 2002; CIA KUBARK manual </font>
<b>Description:</b> Posing a detainee in an erect standing position for a period of several hours. No restraints or external devices are used. Variations of this technique include the extension of one's arms outward to the side. In an addendum to his memo approving this technique, Rumsfeld asked, <i>"I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"</i>
According to one Army intelligence officer with personal knowledge of these practices, soldiers in the field developed harsher variations of the stress technique. In one position reportedly improvised by soldiers in the field, known as a "short shackle," detainees are bound at the wrist and ankle with metal or plastic handcuffs and then doubled over with their wrists bound to their ankles, either while lying on the ground or sitting.
Other stress positions documented by Army investigators include the suspension of detainees from a shackle in the ceiling, with the arms extended, sometimes without their feet touching the ground. This practice bears a striking resemblance to the "strappado" first used in the 13th and 14th century during the Italian Inquisition, in which victims were suspended from the ceiling with a system of ropes and weights to induce pain in a series of five degrees of increasing intensity. Army investigators found that a version of strappado was used on Mullah Habibullah and Dilawar at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.
Physical, Psychological, or Other Effects: In 1956, the CIA commissioned two Cornell Medical Center researchers to study Soviet interrogation techniques, including standing for extended periods of time. They concluded, "The KGB simply made victims stand for eighteen to twenty-four hours—producing 'excruciating pain' as ankles double in size, skin becomes 'tense and intensely painful,' blisters erupt oozing 'watery serum,' heart rates soar, kidneys shut down, and delusions deepen.
<b><font color="#0000FF">In 1999, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled the use of sleep deprivation and stress positions to be forms of torture. Specifically, that court forbade Israeli security agencies from using the "shaback" position, in which a detainee's hands are tied behind the back of a chair in a painful position while he is hooded; and the "frog crouch," in which a detainee is forced to crouch on his toes with his hands bound behind his back for a long period of time.</b></font>
<b>Locations Used:</b> Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, CIA "black sites", Africa
<b>Legal Opinion: <font color="#0000FF"> These tactics violate Geneva's proscriptions against physical abuse and probably against humiliating and degrading treatment. FM 34-52 recognizes this by stating that it is physical torture to force "an individual to stand, sit, or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time." </b></font>
In 1978, the European Court of Human Rights decided in a case from Northern Ireland that "five techniques" used to interrogate suspected Irish Republican Army members were unlawful. The techinques were "wall-standing" (a stress position); hooding; subjection to noise; sleep deprivation; and deprivation of food and drink. The court held that such tactics were not torture under the European human rights convention but constituted "inhuman and degrading treatment," a standard analogous to the one in the CAT and ICCPR. <font color="#0000FF"><b>In light of this decision, International Law would likely prohibit the stress positions that the U.S. has used and is currently using.</b></font>
<b>Signed:</b> Defense Department General Counsel William Haynes II
</font>
<p><hr noshade color="#FF0000" size="14"></hr><br>
<font size="5"><center>Supreme Court rules Guantanamo prisoners
have right to sue in U.S. courts</font size></center>
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday, June 12, 2008
WASHINGTON — A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Guantanamo Bay detainees can challenge their extended imprisonment in federal court, and struck down as inadequate an alternative review system that Congress set up.
Repudiating a key tenet of the Bush administration's war-on-terrorism policy, the court's 5-4 majority concluded that foreigners held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, retain the same rights as U.S. residents to seek writs of habeas corpus. The landmark ruling will permit several hundred accused enemy combatants to see the evidence that justifies their captivity.
"Some of these petitioners have been in custody for the past six years with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. "Their access to the writ is necessary to determine the lawfulness of their status, even if, in the end, they do not obtain the relief they seek."
The long-awaited ruling in the combined cases known as Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States is the latest in a string of judicial defeats for the Bush administration. It marks the third time in four years that the Supreme Court has repudiated the administration's efforts to exclude foreign prisoners from traditional legal protections.
The twin cases, which Kennedy noted "lack any precise historical parallel," also mark the first time in U.S. history that constitutional habeas corpus rights have been extended to alien fighters detained overseas. The ruling covers some 270 men currently held at Guantanamo. It doesn't directly address the 20 or so men who now are facing trials before separate military commissions.
"It's been a long struggle," said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the first lawsuits challenging the detentions. "It's a major vindication."
David Cynamon, the lead attorney for a detainee named Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad al Odah, added that the ruling was a "complete victory not only for our clients but for all Americans and citizens the world over."
The court's conservative wing — comprising Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented, at times with sharp words of its own.
"The nation will live to regret what the court has done today," Scalia warned.
Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the department was disappointed in the decision and would review it. Carr noted that the decision didn't touch directly on the military commissions now under way.
Al Odah, a Kuwaiti native, Algerian native Lakhdar Boumediene and their fellow detainees were seized abroad and have never been held on the U.S. mainland. The long-awaited ruling doesn't question the Bush administration's authority to detain the men. Instead, it resolves a long-running fight over what legal protections cover them.
In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the Guantanamo Bay detainees had a right to challenge their detentions under a statute passed by Congress. Congress responded by stripping federal courts of their jurisdiction, thereby blocking further habeas corpus petitions. The Supreme Court next ruled that the 2005 law didn't apply retroactively to Guantanamo Bay petitions that already had been filed.
Congress returned with the Military Commissions Act of 2006, blocking all Guantanamo habeas corpus cases.
In Latin, habeas corpus means "produce the body." A legal principle dating perhaps as far back as the 13th century, it enables prisoners to demand in court the legal justification and factual basis for their detentions.
"The (Constitution's) framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty," Kennedy wrote, amid a lengthy historical recitation in his 70-page opinion, "and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom."
The Bush administration contended that the men don't have habeas corpus rights because they're foreigners and aren't imprisoned on U.S. soil. The United States has leased the 45-square-mile Guantanamo Bay property from Cuba since 1903, and the court noted that the United States maintains an "objective degree of control" over the overseas facility.
"Our basic charter cannot be contracted away like this," Kennedy wrote. "The Constitution grants Congress and the president the power to acquire, dispose of and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply."
While traveling in Italy, Bush said: "We'll abide by the court's decision. That doesn't mean I have to agree with it. It's a deeply divided court, and I strongly agree with those who dissented."
One key White House ally, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, added that the court's ruling was "tremendously dangerous and irresponsible," and he complained that the civilian justices didn't understand military necessity.
Currently, the Guantanamo prisoners go through three-member combatant status review tribunals. These panels determine whether the detainees are properly considered enemy combatants. The military panels can rely on classified evidence that isn't given to the prisoners. The prisoners have "personal representatives," but not lawyers. The tribunals' officers are required to assume that the government's information is genuine and accurate
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit then can review the tribunal's proceedings. The combatant status tribunals can continue under the court's ruling. Now, though, the prisoners also will be able to challenge their detentions through the traditional habeas corpus route of going to a single federal judge. The court's majority concluded that the narrower review process is "an inadequate substitute" for the traditional habeas corpus review.
"The detainee has limited means to find or present evidence to challenge the government's case against him," Kennedy noted, further noting that the tribunals aren't permitted to release prisoners even if evidence is found to be insufficient. Federal courts can, however.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201/story/40872.html
I think the decision is bullshit, and here's why.
The Geneva conventions were put into place inter alia, to help prevent massacres of civilians under the guise of rooting out insurgents/terrorists/interlopers/outside aggitators etc. by mandating that the force must have a clearly recognized symbol on thier uniforms. As a matter of fact, during WWII, the Nazis started to wear civilian clothes to try to blend in with the Germans, and they were ordered to be lined up and shot. The Allieds did this because they needed to stop that practice, or start shooting anyone they suspected of being Nazi soldiers. The practice worked, and probably many civilians didn't die at the hands of soldiers. Many of the Al-Queda combatants hide themselves around civilians for the same purpose those Nazis did, and should not be afforded any protections under the Conventions. Just like the U.S. , they cannot have it both wayss, either you follow the convention, or you don't.
The Geneva conventions were put into place inter alia, to help prevent massacres of civilians under the guise of rooting out insurgents/terrorists/interlopers/outside aggitators etc. by mandating that the force must have a clearly recognized symbol on thier uniforms. As a matter of fact, during WWII, the Nazis started to wear civilian clothes to try to blend in with the Germans, and they were ordered to be lined up and shot. The Allieds did this because they needed to stop that practice, or start shooting anyone they suspected of being Nazi soldiers. The practice worked, and probably many civilians didn't die at the hands of soldiers. Many of the Al-Queda combatants hide themselves around civilians for the same purpose those Nazis did, and should not be afforded any protections under the Conventions. Just like the U.S. , they cannot have it both wayss, either you follow the convention, or you don't.
If we were talking 'conventional warfare' as we knew it prior to September 11, 2001, I would probably agree with you. Without question warfare has changed, at least for the time being, and that assymetrical warfare, a al Al Qaeda, doesn't conform to our previously agreed to and accepted norms.
We cannot, and Al Qaeda and its look-a-likes, copy cats and imitators, etc., would not accept, traditional battlefield uniforms. Are we, therefore, to line up and shoot civilians merely because they dress like Al Qaeda, et al.? - I hope not. If so, we will have far more people to be on the lookout for than those on our present list today.
All the Court did was give enemy combatants -- held at Guantanamo -- the protections of Habeas Corpus. I don't think anyone disagrees with the statement that - if the same combatants were held on what is traditionally known as U.S. soil, they would be able to use a writ of Habeas Corpus. The Government has maintained that Gitmo is NOT U.S. soil, therefore, the Constitutional provision of Habeas Corpus does not apply. Maybe not, but:
QueEx
We cannot, and Al Qaeda and its look-a-likes, copy cats and imitators, etc., would not accept, traditional battlefield uniforms. Are we, therefore, to line up and shoot civilians merely because they dress like Al Qaeda, et al.? - I hope not. If so, we will have far more people to be on the lookout for than those on our present list today.
All the Court did was give enemy combatants -- held at Guantanamo -- the protections of Habeas Corpus. I don't think anyone disagrees with the statement that - if the same combatants were held on what is traditionally known as U.S. soil, they would be able to use a writ of Habeas Corpus. The Government has maintained that Gitmo is NOT U.S. soil, therefore, the Constitutional provision of Habeas Corpus does not apply. Maybe not, but:
We have held that territory under so-called lease since 1903 (105 years). Does a-n-y-o-n-e seriously believe that Castro may cancel or otherwise abrogate the lease and the U.S. would simply retreat? If its Cuban soil, hell, fuck a lease, couldn't they simply tell us to pack up and get the fuck out? - and, would we leave?
Gitmo is "tantamount" to being U.S. soil, or, to use the civil rights cases lingo, Gitmo is de facto U.S. property (our property in fact) even if it may not be de jure U.S. Property (U.S. property by law). It sure as hell isn't Cuban. I'm not arguing that we should abandon Gitmo (as a base); but I am also not comfortable with the government, especially in the hands it presently stands, to allow it a place where it may hold foreign nationals against their will AND without the possibility of proving they don't belong. Hell, LOL, they didn't have the power to prove they weren't foreign.QueEx
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You've changed my mind to the extent of proving citizenship/residency. AFter that, fuck 'em.
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