Pentagon: 61 ex-Guantanamo inmates return to terrorism

Dilawar, who died on December 10, 2002, was a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver and farmer who weighed 122 pounds and was described by his interpreters as neither violent nor aggressive.
When beaten, he repeatedly cried "Allah!" The outcry appears to have amused U.S. military personnel, as the act of striking him in order to provoke a scream of "Allah!" eventually "became a kind of running joke," according to one of the MP's. "People kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,'" he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."

The Times reported that:

On the day of his death, Dilawar had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
"A guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying. Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen.
It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

Is this from the people who claimed Iraq had wmd? i think if I had been imprisoned without trial, tortured and abused, then I would possibly have a touch of anger towards my jailors. I notice none of these 61" terrorists" have actually been tried,

I think it would be a good idea if America adopted the idea of innocent until proven guilty.

Oralloy wrote:

...c) Spies and unlawful combatants (can be detained until the end of the war without need for criminal charges, can be held incommunicado without need for criminal charges, can be prosecuted for being a spy/unlawful combatant, can be prosecuted for merely engaging in combat, and can be prosecuted for war crimes)...

They should be prosecuted. If there is no evidence of the unlawfulness of their
combat, then they should not be detained.

No.

If you treat them as Prisoners of War, they should enjoy the protections of the Geneva Convention regulating the treatment of Prisoners of War.

However, if you don't treat them as Prisoners of War, but rather detain them as criminals or terrorists, then they should enjoy the protections of detainees under the US criminal justice system.

Woiyo9 wrote:

They are being treated as POW's in Guantanamo.

As far as I know, they've never officially been designated Prisoners of War.

Common Article 3 doesn't talk about an "armed conflict", but about an "armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties".

Common Article 3 doesn't even mention the term "Prisoner of War".

Common Article 3 does not confer POW status upon anybody.

I don't have a problem with treating the detainees as POWs. It's just not what this administration has done.

In fact, this administration has fought tooth and nail to avoid the detainees being designated POWs.

Holding somebody as a POW has a certain meaning, and that's not "detaining somebody we label 'enemy combatant' until the end of times".

There's a definition of the rights of POWs and of the limits of POW status, and even though the United States have signed and ratified the treaties which outline those rights and limits, this administration has at no point treated the inmates of Guantanamo accordingly, and has stated often enough that it had no intention whatsoever of doing so.

Woiyo9 wrote:

Still think closing Guantanamo is a good idea?

Depends on the alternative.

We have the right to prevent captured enemy soldiers from returning to battle.

The norm that "it is wrong to execute the enemy without quarter" evolved in concert with the principle that "captured enemy soldiers can be detained until the end of the war, to prevent them from returning to combat".

If the left succeeds in denying America the right to detain captured enemy soldiers until the end of the war, that will remove any legal prohibitions against us simply killing them in cold blood.

So, if the alternative to Guantanamo is to simply massacre the detainees, I'm fine with closing Guantanamo.

If the alternative to closing Guantanamo is to just let captured enemy fighters return to the battlefield, then no, that is a very bad idea (and it will result in the military switching to the aforementioned "no quarter" stance even if they don't admit it).

If you refer specifically to Geneva 3 of 1949, that does not apply to spies and unlawful combatants.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

Maybe if they are detained as criminals.

But there is no requirement to do so if they are detained as unlawful combatants.

oralloy wrote:

If you refer specifically to Geneva 3 of 1949, that does not apply to spies and unlawful combatants.

The Third Geneva Convention does apply to spies and unlawful combatants. It affords them the same protections as Prisoners of War, unless otherwise determined by a competent tribunal:

Quote:

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

oralloy wrote:

Maybe if they are detained as criminals.

But there is no requirement to do so if they are detained as unlawful combatants.

But there is a requirement to determine whether they are POWs or unlawful combatants. No competent tribunal, no "unlawful combatant" status. No "unlawful combatant" status, therefore equal protections as POWs.