Reply #26: Exactly -- BushCo makes a mockery of international law [View All]

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 (to which the U.S. is a signatory) specify numerous criteria for the humane treatment of prisoners of war, and also that anyone falling into enemy hands during wartime is to be accorded prisoner of war status unless determined otherwise by a competent tribunal.

Furthermore, anyone falling into enemy hands and who is determined not to be a prisoner of war must be charged with a criminal offense in order to be held in captivity, and they must be accorded all the rights of accused criminals. This includes informing the person of the reason for his detention, the presumption of innocence, access to a competent attorney, the right to confront witnesses, etc. The bottom line is that no person, whether prisoner of war, suspected criminal, or a person given any other designation, can ever fall outside the scope of these minimum international protections.

The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984 further protects all categories of persons against torture.

The Bush administration, however, has repeatedly claimed that America’s detainees at Guantanamo Bay (and elsewhere to a lesser extent) have no rights according to international law. Consequently, the great majority of those detainees have been held there indefinitely without charges, have had no access to an attorney, have not been tried or (if they have been tried) have been denied the opportunity to confront witnesses against them, and many or most of them have been repeatedly tortured. And by his repeated public pronouncements to the effect that the detainees are murderers and terrorists, George Bush has erased the presumption of innocence. The Bush administration claims that these detainees have no rights according to international law are based on three arguments – none of which have any merit:

First, the Bush administration claims that by designating the detainees as “unlawful combatants”, their rights are thereby abrogated. There are two major problems with that argument. First, in the great majority of cases there has been no legal determination that the detainees are not deserving of prisoner of war status. And second, as noted above, international law specifies that there are absolutely no categories of persons who are without legal rights.

The second Bush administration justification for abrogating all rights of the detainees is that Guantanamo Bay is outside the territory of the United States. That argument is nothing but a shameful attempt to deny human rights on the basis of a technicality, and it has no basis in international law, since the United States has sole control over the detainees, regardless of whether or not they technically reside on U.S. territory.

Thirdly, George Bush claims that the detainees have no rights in international law because U.S. law trumps international law. That argument is even more ridiculous than the other two. If a country can legally claim the right to disregard international law simply on the basis that its own laws trump international law, then international law and all of its accompanying treaties would be devoid of all meaning.