Awesome News From Guantanamo Bay

Regards,

Lee

Quite frankly, then, all this talk about whether the Geneva Convention applies to these particular prisoners is a bunch of evasive balderdash. There might be doubt about whether those in Guantanamo are part of a regular military force or a bunch or illegal irregulars. But they were taken by American regular military forces, and until their status is determined properly, the US is obligated to abide by the Geneva Protocols in its treatment of them.

With the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan some hawkish lawyers in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Aid and in the office of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush that he did not have to comply with the Geneva Conventions in handling detainees in the war on terror. This applied not only to members of Al Queda but the entire Taliban, because, they argued, Afghanistan was a "failed state".[7]

Despite opposition from the U.S. State Department, which warned against ignoring the Geneva Conventions, the Bush administration thenceforth began holding such individuals captured in Afghanistan under the military order and not under the usual conditions of Prisoners of War [8]. For those U.S. citizens detained under the military order, US officials, such as Vice President Dick Cheney, argue that the urgency of the post-9/11 environment called for such tactics in administration's war against terrorism.

Most of the individuals, detained by the U.S. military on the orders of the U.S. administration were initially captured in Afghanistan. The foreign detainees, are held Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba. Guantanamo Bay was chosen because although it is under the de facto control of the United States administration, it is not a sovereign territory of the United States and a previous Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. Eisentrager in 1950 had ruled that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over enemy aliens held outside the USA.

There have been a number of domestic legal challenges made on behalf of the detainees held in Camp X-Ray and in other places. These include:

* On July 30, 2002 The Washington D.C. District Court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction because Guantanamo Bay is not a sovereign territory of the United States. This decision was appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court which upheld the decision. The case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court on September 2, 2003.
* On November 10, 2003, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would decide on appeals by Afghan war detainees who challenge their continued incarceration at Camp X-Ray as being unlawful.
* On 10 January 2004, 175 members of both houses of Parliament in the UK had filed an amici curiæ brief to support the detainees' access to US jurisdiction.
* On June 28, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in Rasul_v._Bush that detainees in Camp X-Ray could turn to U.S. courts to challenge their confinement, but can also be held without charges or trial.
* On July 7, 2004, In response to the Supreme Court ruling, the Pentagon announced that cases would be reviewed by military tribunals, in compliance with Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention.[9]
* On November 8, 2004, a federal court halted the proceeding of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen. Hamdan was to be the first Guantanamo detainee tried before a military commission. Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld[10] that no competent tribunal had found that Hamdan was not a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions.
* By March 29, 2005, all detainees at the Guantanamo Bay facility had received hearings before Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The hearings resulted in the release of 38 detainees, and confirmed the unlawful enemy combatant status of 520 detainees [11]. Reuters reported on June 15, 2005 only four detainees had been charged and that Joseph Margulies, one of the lawyers for the detainees said "The (reviews) are a sham,... They mock this nation's commitment to due process, and it is past time for this mockery to end"[12].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant