British Guantanamo prisoners set to be tried in US

[Whoa_Nelly]

By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
17 November 2003


President George Bush has strongly hinted that British prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay are likely to be tried by a military tribunal in the US and not sent back to Britain.

In an interview on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost, the US President said that he wanted to find an agreement on the issue that Tony Blair was "comfortable with".

However, it appeared clear that the White House was determined not to give ground on its repeated view that it wanted a military court to deal with illegal combatants in Afghanistan.

Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, has raised with Washington the issue of British terrorist suspects detained without trial at the US naval base detention centre in Cuba. And civil liberties campaigners have complained about the treatment of the prisoners, whom the Americans refuse to recognise as prisoners of war.

more...

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=464487

[DuctapeFatwa]

1. It appears special arrangements are to be made for Sweden as well

also Australia, and I would imagine any other country with an ethnic European majority and a Muslim minority :)

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. Yes, I read your post re: Swede :-)

Am following Gitmo closely. What comes out of this may turn out to be one catalyst to bring BushCo to its knees...I hope

[Jack Rabbit]

3. George Monbiot (Guardian Utd, March 25, 2003): One rule for them

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Tuesday March 25, 2003

One rule for them
Five PoWs are mistreated in Iraq and the US cries foul. What about Guantanamo Bay?
By George Monbiot

Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that "it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them".
He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the third convention, concerning the treatment of prisoners, insists that they "must at all times be protected... against insults and public curiosity". This may number among the less heinous of the possible infringements of the laws of war, but the conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you should expect to be prosecuted for war crimes.
This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life.
His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).

Read more.

Reference: Third Geneva Convention (1949)

[teryang]

4. Gitmo is not in the US

Misleading headline. Guantanomo is not in the US. That is part of the problem. That is why Article III courts say that they have no jurisdiction over what goes on there. This jurisdiction was deliberately chosen by the Pentagon and the Justice Dept to avoid application of the US Constitution. Another violation of their oaths of office.