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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kumar who wrote (4997)	3/5/2003 11:24:22 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

kumar - let's not go into whether the prisoners are POWs or not. Do you think these people should be tortured?

To: kumar who wrote (4997)	3/5/2003 8:07:53 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 15987

Thanks for making a very good point. Spies and saboteurs are very different from soldiers. And Al Qaeda are more similar to saboteurs than soldiers. I just did a google search to find some information on US and international law on saboteurs and came up with this: First, let's turn to American constitutional law. In Ex Parte Quirin (1942), the Supreme Court upheld the jurisdiction of a military commission that convicted German saboteurs who landed in the United States to commit acts of war. The Germans trained them in the use of explosives and other sabotage techniques. They buried their German Marine Infantry uniforms immediately upon landing. The Supreme Court said that the soldiers thereby became "unlawful combatants . . . subject to trial and punishment by military commission for acts which render their belligerency unlawful." Seven of the eight soldiers were born in Germany while one was a United States citizen. All eight, who had lived in the United States, returned to Germany between 1933 and 1941. The United States did not treat the saboteurs as POWs. Instead, it treated them as "unlawful combatants," tried them by military tribunal, and executed most of them. ..... Now, let's turn to international law. Both Afghanistan and the United States ratified the third Geneva Convention of 1949, which sets out basic protections for POWs, but they must be "lawful combatants" for the treaty to apply. The Geneva Convention sets out four key preconditions. First, the soldiers must be part of an organized command structure, so that leaders can be held responsible. Second, the soldiers must wear fixed distinctive emblems visible from afar — so that the other side can avoid killing civilians without fearing attack from disguised fighters. Third, the soldiers must carry arms openly. Fourth, the other side must respect for the laws of war, for example, by not taking hostages. Al Qaeda repeatedly violated these preconditions before, after, and during the Sept. 11 attacks. The al Qaeda terrorists target civilians; they do not wear uniforms; they do not carry arms openly; they take hostages (such as the hostages they took when they hijacked the four airplanes on Sept. 11). The Taliban leadership harbored, aided, and abetted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in their violations of the laws of war, and al Qaeda, in return, financed the Taliban. The Taliban soldiers, or many of them, committed war crimes, such as hiding weapons in mosques, and using their own people as human shields. The Geneva Protocol allows non-state belligerents to secure protected treatment under the protocol. They just have to file a declaration with the Swiss government accepting the obligations of the protocol. When al Qaeda does that, then it will receive the benefits of POW status. nationalreview.com