[quote]orion wrote:
You brought that argument several times now. It is not true.[/quote]
I brought it up twice, not several. But I will bring it up often as needed.
[quote]Even if it was, which it isn?t, it would not apply to those people that were kidnapped at a border, sold to the US for money, or woke up in Guantanamo under smilar circumstances.
Feel free to google the Geneva Convention…
Art 2 of the General provisions deal with their status, Art 3 with them not being subject to "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. "
Glad I could help.[/quote]
Two points here.
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I don’t believe they need to be executed. Detaining them for the duration of the war is not “passing of sentences” in the Geneva Convention.
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The other point is that actually, Art 4 deals with their status.
"Art. 4. A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
(1) Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:[ (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
(3) Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.
(4) Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization, from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.
(5) Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.
(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
B. The following shall likewise be treated as prisoners of war under the present Convention: (1) Persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country, if the occupying Power considers it necessary by reason of such allegiance to intern them, even though it has originally liberated them while hostilities were going on outside the territory it occupies, in particular where such persons have made an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the armed forces to which they belong and which are engaged in combat, or where they fail to comply with a summons made to them with a view to internment.
(2) The persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or non-belligerent Powers on their territory and whom these Powers are required to intern under international law, without prejudice to any more favourable treatment which these Powers may choose to give and with the exception of Articles 8, 10, 15, 30, fifth paragraph, 58-67, 92, 126 and, where diplomatic relations exist between the Parties to the conflict and the neutral or non-belligerent Power concerned, those Articles concerning the Protecting Power. Where such diplomatic relations exist, the Parties to a conflict on whom these persons depend shall be allowed to perform towards them the functions of a Protecting Power as provided in the present Convention, without prejudice to the functions which these Parties normally exercise in conformity with diplomatic and consular usage and treaties."
No where in there is there a provision giving POW status to a military force who dressed like civilians without easily recognizable insignia from a distance.
And for Makkun,
Why do you think so many detainees have already been released? Do you really think the American government and military will keep a guy with all the heat they catch for Gitmo who they don’t really believe is a real “bad guy” based on real evidence? There is a price the US is paying in the international community to keep these guys, and they wouldn’t keep them unless they knew they had to.
And to flatly give the process over the US courts in this instance is a joke. The US Judicial system is seriously broken. These guys would probably get released, regardless of evidence just out of the pervasive partisanship in the judiciary. Nearly everyone has an ax to grind in the US nowadays; the media and the courts especially.
Then you simply wind up with more London Train Bombers, or Orion could catch hell on his next trip to Zell Am See.
If you want to get a real issue to get fired up about, get on the issue of genocide or HIV/AIDS in Africa and how most of the world does nothing but stands by and watch, literally; or how the UN actually makes it worse.
I appreciate that both of you want to see perfect social justice in the world. Great. More power to you. Put it somewhere with more impact and potential like Africa. Unless you beleive that Islamic extremists should be slaughtering people across Africa and most of the continent should be under an HIV pandemic. Where is your righteous rhetoric on those much larger issues?
