Ignore the Geneva Convention and Put Our Own Citizens at Risk. (Civil Liberties Watch)

Byers, Michael, The Humanist

Would you want your life to be in hands of U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld? Hundreds of captured Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters don't have a choice. Chained, manacled, hooded, even sedated, their beards shorn off against their will, they are being flown around the world to Guantanamo Bay, a century-old military outpost seized during the Spanish-American War and subsequently leased from Cuba by the United States. There, they are being kept in tiny chain-link outdoor cages, without mosquito repellent, where (their captors assure us) they are likely to be rained upon.

Since Guantanamo Bay is technically foreign territory, the detainees have no rights under the U.S. Constitution and cannot appeal to U.S. federal courts. Any rights they might have under international law have been firmly denied. According to Rumsfeld, the detainees "will be handled not as prisoners of war, because they are not, but as unlawful combatants."

This unilateral determination of the detainees' status is highly convenient, since the …

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Publication information: Article title: Ignore the Geneva Convention and Put Our Own Citizens at Risk. (Civil Liberties Watch). Contributors: Byers, Michael - Author. Magazine title: The Humanist. Volume: 62. Issue: 2 Publication date: March-April 2002. Page number: 33+. © 1999 American Humanist Association. COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group.

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