News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Geneva Conventions & POW Rights

Date: January 16, 2002

"Captured Initially Have POW Rights
Cubans Unhappy About Taliban In Guantanamo Bay (Reuters)  
By ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Battlefield prisoners taken from Afghanistan to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday initially will have legal rights similar to those due prisoners of war.

They will have no right to a lawyer or other constitutionally guaranteed protections such as a speedy trial.

The United States has not recognized its Taliban, al-Qaida or other Afghan captives as prisoners of war, but the captives' status is governed by the Geneva conventions on human rights and international compacts signed by the United States, international law experts said.

``There will be a sorting out, a classification,'' as the United States learns more about the captives, predicted American University international law professor Nicholas Kittrie.

``Detainees is a wastebasket definition, which can have anything and everything in it,'' Kittrie said.

Some of those transferred to the United States may indeed be prisoners of war - ordinary soldiers who cannot be charged as criminals merely because they served in an enemy army. Such prisoners eventually would be sent home.

Some may be charged as conspirators in the Sept. 11 attacks or other terrorism or with war crimes. They could be tried before the military tribunals authorized by President Bush last year.

While at Guantanamo, prisoners not charged with crimes have the same rights they had when captured in Afghanistan, lawyers said.

They must be fed, housed and given medical treatment. They may not be tortured. They may be interrogated and do not have a right to a lawyer.

If declared a prisoner of war, a captive still has no right to a lawyer. The government holding the prisoner cannot demand any information beyond the well-known name, rank and serial number.

Prisoner of war status can be revoked, and the captive charged as a criminal, if evidence emerges that the captive committed war crimes or other crimes prior to the start of hostilities.

Once charged, the captive has a right to a lawyer.

The International Committee of the Red Cross visited some prisoners in Afghanistan and hopes to do the same in Guantanamo, said Nathalie de Watteville, deputy head of the group's North America delegation. "