Guantanamo policy change!

Garp · 11 Jul 2006 at 16:19

At long last the US government has changed its policy, and all of its detainees, including those at Guantanamo Bay are to receive the minimum rights granted through the Geneva convention.

US detainees to get Geneva rights
Breaking news graphic
All US military detainees, including those at Guantanamo Bay, are to be treated in line with the minimum standards of the Geneva Conventions.

The White House announced the shift in policy on Tuesday, almost two weeks after the US Supreme Court ruled that the conventions applied to detainees.

President Bush had long fought the idea that US detainees were prisoners of war entitled to Geneva Convention rights.

The defence department outlined the new policy to staff in an internal memo.

The new policy says all military detainees are entitled to humane treatment and to certain basic legal standards when they come to trial, as required by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

The Bush administration has come under intense and sustained international criticism for its treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The military has been using the site to house hundreds of detainees, many believed to have been picked up off battlefields in Afghanistan.

When the detention centre was established in 2002, President Bush ordered that detainees be treated "humanely, and to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva".

Court steps in

At the end of June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that the Bush administration did not by itself have the authority to order that the detainees be tried by military commission.

It said its decision was based on both US military law and the Geneva Conventions - asserting for the first time in US law that the detainees were entitled to Geneva protections.

But the Supreme Court left open the possibility that the detainees could be tried by military commission if Congress established an appropriate legal framework for doing so.

The Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on the issue on Tuesday morning, just as news of the new military policy became public.

Daniel Dell'Orto, a defence department lawyer who was the first to testify, said there were about 1,000 detainees in US military custody around the world.

Guantanamo Bay holds an estimated 450. Mr Dell'Orto did not say where the others were being held.

The new Pentagon policy applies only to detainees being held by the military, and not to those in CIA custody, such as alleged mastermind of the 11 September attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5169600.stm

p4radox · 11 Jul 2006 at 16:39

Good news. But who's going to check the new policy actually is implemented? This is still worrying though:

The new Pentagon policy applies only to detainees being held by the military, and not to those in CIA custody, such as alleged mastermind of the 11 September attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The CIA are still free to do as they please with people. And then there's the other 550 detainees around the world, who no one's allowed to know the location of.

locutus12 · 11 Jul 2006 at 16:44

this is worrying too

But the Supreme Court left open the possibility that the detainees could be tried by military commission if Congress established an appropriate legal framework for doing so.

how long will it take ? another 4 years ? whose to say it wont be built in a biased fassion ?

SourChipmunk · 11 Jul 2006 at 16:53

Ok, I'm having a hard time understanding this. Guantanamo Bay was ordered by the Bush Admin to treat prisoner peeps according to the rules of the Geneva Convention. Then someone determined they didn't have to follow the President's order, so the Supreme Court determined the Bush Admin didn't have the power to bark the order in the first place, so they made it official, and now Guantanamo Bay has to treat prisoner peeps according to the rules of the Geneva Convention?

I'm so confused.

VeNT · 11 Jul 2006 at 18:10

I'm sick of this crap, the USA realy has to stop treating people like this, how can they excuse just making people dissapear? its like back when the USSR was around!

Vonhelmet · 12 Jul 2006 at 12:53

VeNT said:
I'm sick of this crap, the USA realy has to stop treating people like this, how can they excuse just making people dissapear? its like back when the USSR was around!

Ah, but it's OK this time, because it's all part of the War On Terror.

Devlish · 12 Jul 2006 at 13:17

Lock em up, throw away the key. Sorted.

willd58 · 12 Jul 2006 at 14:07

We are at War, and were dealing with an enemy that doesnt follow the normal rules of combat, as such the enemy doesnt get treated with the same rules. Its just a shame theres so many damn liberal communists who support evil because there to cowardly to get involved.

Vonhelmet · 12 Jul 2006 at 14:45

willd58 said:
We are at War, and were dealing with an enemy that doesnt follow the normal rules of combat, as such the enemy doesnt get treated with the same rules. Its just a shame theres so many damn liberal communists who support evil because there to cowardly to get involved.

What, so because they won't play by the rules, we don't have to? How does that make us any better than anyone else? Also, we're not at war. We're under attack by terrorists. The two are different. With that in mind, the prisoners are not POWs so it's pretty dubious to be holding them for years without charge.

Siliconslave · 12 Jul 2006 at 15:57

i imagine its just a ruse to get all the attention away from the bush government, the'll be annother Guantanamo somewhere else thats not covered by the genever convention which will be as bad, if not worse.

As p4radox pointed out it doesn't apply to the CIA so they can still do what the hell they like, which from a supposidly humain nation (my rear end) with ideals of freedom of speech etc (again, my derrier) is amazingly discusting. Granted the atrocities commited are awful, but they should never excuse the breaking of basic human rights, or you end up as bad as the terrorists

Garp · 12 Jul 2006 at 16:02

Sleepless said:
Lock em up, throw away the key. Sorted.

Okay... first prove they've done something wrong.

The US is still yet to succeed on that very small issue. I think people refer to it as "justice" and "Innocent until proven guilty"

dirtydog · 12 Jul 2006 at 16:59

willd58 said:
Its just a shame theres so many damn liberal communists who support evil because there to cowardly to get involved.

It's an even bigger shame that there are so many damn fools who swallow government propaganda... not to mention people who don't learn the basics of writing in their native language.