No To Military Kangaroo Trials
Pentagon Breaks With Bush On Detentions
· Geneva convention covers Guantánamo detainees
· Supreme court ruling prompts policy switch
The Bush administration was facing the collapse of its detention regime in the war on terror yesterday after the Pentagon said for the first time that prisoners at Guantánamo and elsewhere in US military custody around the world would be granted the protections of the Geneva convention.
In a memo released yesterday, the Pentagon's second in command, Gordon England, broke with the Bush administration's insistence of the past five years that the rules of war do not apply to the fight against al-Qaida.
"I request that you promptly review all relevant directives, regulations, policies, practices and procedures" to bring them in line with protections under article three of the Geneva convention, Mr England wrote. Article three outlaws torture and humiliating and degrading treatment, and says prisoners are entitled to a hearing by a regularly constituted court. Yesterday's memo was a direct result of last month's supreme court decision which ruled that the Bush administration's military tribunals for the detainees were illegal.
The 5-3 decision was widely seen as a rebuke to a White House that had asserted since 2001 that Mr Bush had extraordinary powers as a wartime president, and that al-Qaida suspects were not entitled to the protections given to prisoners of war.
The Pentagon has insisted that it had treated detainees humanely. However, a report this week from the Centre for Constitutional Rights on conditions at Guantánamo describes interrogations of hooded prisoners with snarling dogs, sleep deprivation that lasted for months, solitary confinement for periods of up to a year, and threats of transfer to countries that practise torture.
While the Bush administration has said it will implement the supreme court decision, there were indications the new policy was only reluctantly endorsed by the White House. "We are going to do this in a way that is consistent with national security," the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, told reporters .
Other administration officials expressed reservations. In the first of three days of hearings in Congress on the treatment of detainees, Steven Bradbury, of the justice department's office of legal counsel, told senators the Geneva convention protections were ambiguous and poorly defined.
Those tensions dampened the response of civil rights organisations to the Pentagon announcement. "At the same time that the defence department is showing signs of heading in the direction of restoring the rule of law, the justice department is urging Congress to abandon it," said Anthony Romero, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Amid conflicting signals from the White House and the Pentagon, it was not immediately clear how the directive would affect interrogations at Guantánamo and other detention centres.
However, the move by the Pentagon could weigh on Congress as it considers new legislation following the supreme court decision. There has been growing unease among Republicans and Democrats that the administration might try to dilute the supreme court ruling by introducing legislation that would support its version of military tribunals to try Guantánamo detainees.
Yesterday the Senate judiciary committee opened three days of hearings on Guantánamo amid warnings to the administration that it would be mistaken to try to circumvent the decision.
Last week, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, criticised America's conduct in the global war on terror and said the west would be "doomed" unless it reclaimed "the moral high ground".
Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, Sir Richard singled out CIA rendition flights and the indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantánamo for rebuke, saying both policies would have been illegal under UK law.
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington, Oliver King and Simon Jeffery
Wednesday July 12, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1818413,00.html?gusrc=rss
· Geneva convention covers Guantánamo detainees
· Supreme court ruling prompts policy switch
The Bush administration was facing the collapse of its detention regime in the war on terror yesterday after the Pentagon said for the first time that prisoners at Guantánamo and elsewhere in US military custody around the world would be granted the protections of the Geneva convention.
In a memo released yesterday, the Pentagon's second in command, Gordon England, broke with the Bush administration's insistence of the past five years that the rules of war do not apply to the fight against al-Qaida.
"I request that you promptly review all relevant directives, regulations, policies, practices and procedures" to bring them in line with protections under article three of the Geneva convention, Mr England wrote. Article three outlaws torture and humiliating and degrading treatment, and says prisoners are entitled to a hearing by a regularly constituted court. Yesterday's memo was a direct result of last month's supreme court decision which ruled that the Bush administration's military tribunals for the detainees were illegal.
The 5-3 decision was widely seen as a rebuke to a White House that had asserted since 2001 that Mr Bush had extraordinary powers as a wartime president, and that al-Qaida suspects were not entitled to the protections given to prisoners of war.
The Pentagon has insisted that it had treated detainees humanely. However, a report this week from the Centre for Constitutional Rights on conditions at Guantánamo describes interrogations of hooded prisoners with snarling dogs, sleep deprivation that lasted for months, solitary confinement for periods of up to a year, and threats of transfer to countries that practise torture.
While the Bush administration has said it will implement the supreme court decision, there were indications the new policy was only reluctantly endorsed by the White House. "We are going to do this in a way that is consistent with national security," the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, told reporters .
Other administration officials expressed reservations. In the first of three days of hearings in Congress on the treatment of detainees, Steven Bradbury, of the justice department's office of legal counsel, told senators the Geneva convention protections were ambiguous and poorly defined.
Those tensions dampened the response of civil rights organisations to the Pentagon announcement. "At the same time that the defence department is showing signs of heading in the direction of restoring the rule of law, the justice department is urging Congress to abandon it," said Anthony Romero, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Amid conflicting signals from the White House and the Pentagon, it was not immediately clear how the directive would affect interrogations at Guantánamo and other detention centres.
However, the move by the Pentagon could weigh on Congress as it considers new legislation following the supreme court decision. There has been growing unease among Republicans and Democrats that the administration might try to dilute the supreme court ruling by introducing legislation that would support its version of military tribunals to try Guantánamo detainees.
Yesterday the Senate judiciary committee opened three days of hearings on Guantánamo amid warnings to the administration that it would be mistaken to try to circumvent the decision.
Last week, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, criticised America's conduct in the global war on terror and said the west would be "doomed" unless it reclaimed "the moral high ground".
Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, Sir Richard singled out CIA rendition flights and the indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantánamo for rebuke, saying both policies would have been illegal under UK law.
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington, Oliver King and Simon Jeffery
Wednesday July 12, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1818413,00.html?gusrc=rss
posted by R7 at 10:58 PM
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