News-Info-Alerts

Re: Red Cross Gets Into The Act

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: December 16, 2003

"Red Cross wants to check on Hussein
By Associated Press

GENEVA - The international Red Cross said Monday that it considers Saddam Hussein a prisoner of war and wants U.S. authorities to allow it to visit the ousted Iraqi leader to check the conditions in which he is being held.

The United States has not formally declared Hussein a prisoner of war, though Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Hussein would be given POW rights under the Geneva Conventions.

Rumsfeld, however, added that Hussein's classification may change and he may lose POW status if it appears he had a role in the postwar insurgency in Iraq that has killed more than 200 Americans.

A Red Cross spokesman, Florian Westphal, would not comment directly on Rumsfeld's comments. But he said Hussein "was the commander in chief of the Iraqi army, which seems to indicate that he should at least be presumed a POW."

"We expect any state bound by the Geneva Conventions to live up to its commitments," he told the Associated Press.

The International Convention of the Red Cross, which as the guardian of the Geneva Conventions monitors the treatment of prisoners of war, has not set a date with the U.S. military to see Hussein, Westphal said.

"There's no fixed time frame within the Geneva Conventions. It doesn't say that these visits have to take place within 48 hours. But we expect Saddam Hussein - as any other presumed, real or accepted POW - will at some stage be visited by the ICRC," he said.

The U.S.-led authorities running Iraq have granted the ICRC access to other captured members of Hussein's former regime, including those on the U.S. "most-wanted list."

The neutral Swiss-based agency, which prides itself on its discretion, has not revealed the details of their detention. It has also never publicly named any of the senior figures it has visited.

It has also been allowed to pay visits to the 660 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. Navy base in Cuba. Washington calls those prisoners "enemy combatants," not POWs. That classification has raised criticism from the ICRC because the detainees are held without charge or trial.

Hussein has been undergoing interrogation in an undisclosed location in Iraq, said Army Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling of the 1st Armored Division. U.S. officials are pressing for intelligence on the insurgency. Hertling said Monday that the questioning of Hussein and documents found on him have led to the arrest of several prominent regime figures.

Westphal said while the Geneva Conventions allow captors to interrogate POWs, the prisoners do not have to answer questions. They are only obliged to give the information familiar from movies: name, rank and serial number.

Westphal said nothing in the Geneva Conventions stops POWs from being tried for war crimes or regular offenses, although they cannot be charged simply for taking up arms against the enemy.

Westphal would not comment on whether the U.S. authorities had violated the Geneva Conventions in transmitting video images of an unshaven Hussein being examined by a doctor shortly after his capture.

©2003 St. Petersburg Times"