American POWs in Iraq

I am comforted to know the ones behind razorwire pose no threat.

Timber,

That convention was held from 21 April to 12 August, 1949
and the treaty came into force on 21 October 1950. The broadcasting on TV wasn't a big issue those days. Maybe they have to update it.

EXCUSE ME! The Commonwealth of Australia (not the 52nd State of the Union) ratified the 1949 Geneva Conventions on Oct. 14, 1958. The UK signed on Sept. 23, 1957. Both of these states are ALSO party to the additional protocols of 1977, something that the US is NOT (along with the democratic nations of Iraq, Iran, Thailand, Myanmar, Pakistan, etc).

Teens held in Guantanamo

Three youths under the age of 16 are being held in the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the US military has revealed - sparking renewed anger among human rights groups.
The teenagers, between the ages of 13 and 15, were captured while fighting US troops in Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported.

Because of their age they are kept in cells separate from the adult detainees, they receive mental health counselling, and efforts are being made to contact their home nations, US Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson told the paper.

However they are still considered "enemy combatants" - the US classification for Guantanamo detainees - as they were captured as "active" fighters against US forces, he added.

"We did have to adapt and make some special considerations and look at how we're going to handle them with regard to the rest of the detention population," Colonel Johnson said.

"But we have to face the hard reality that there are some places in the world where child combatants are used to further a cause."

One of the youths has been identified by Canadian media reports as a Canadian citizen wanted by the US over a grenade attack in Afghanistan which killed a US soldier.

Legal battles

Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay still holds about 660 detainees from more than 40 countries, mostly arrested in during the 2001 bombing campaign in Afghanistan following the 11 September attacks in the US.


That the US sees nothing wrong with holding children at Guantanamo and interrogating them is a shocking indicator of how cavalier the Bush administration has become
Amnesty International spokesman Alistair Hodgett
Washington describes them as unlawful combatants who can be held indefinitely without trial, meaning they are not accorded the rights of prisoners-of-war as defined by the Geneva Convention.
Attempts by human rights lawyers in the US and abroad to reclassify the detainees' status or get them access to legal representation have consistently been rebuffed by US courts.

The US has countered that the detainees are providing them with intelligence on Afghanistan's former Taleban authorities and Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

'Cavalier' attitude

However news of the teenage combatants has angered civil rights campaigners, drawing condemnation from Amnesty International.

"That the US sees nothing wrong with holding children at Guantanamo and interrogating them is a shocking indicator of how cavalier the Bush administration has become about respecting human rights," spokesman Alistair Hodgett told the Associated Press news agency.

Since the first group of detainees was sent to the camp in January 2002, several inmates have attempted suicide, and several have been released for lack of evidence.

Afghan prisoners released from US detention in Guantanamo Bay have spoken of being kept in small cages and interrogated dozens of times to try to prove links to al-Qaeda or the Taleban.

However they also said conditions at the camp were immeasurably better to those in Afghan prisons.