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Captives Denied POW Status
Tuesday, January 29, 2002
By Robert Burns
The Associated Press

“These are the worst of a very bad lot,” Cheney told Fox News Sunday. “They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can, and they are perfectly prepared to die in the effort. And they need to be detained, treated very cautiously, so that our people are not at risk.”

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- AP
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday ruled out any possibility of granting prisoner of war status to the suspected terrorists held in a makeshift prison on this U.S. Navy base.

“They are not POWs. They will not be determined to be POWs,” Rumsfeld told reporters accompanying him on his first visit to the detention facility, a hot and dusty camp amid scrub brush and rock.

The Bush administration considers the captured fighters to be “unlawful combatants” and “detainees” rather than prisoners of war because they don't represent a recognized government and their method of terror violates internationally accepted laws of warfare.

The distinction is significant because under the Geneva Conventions, written after World War II, a POW has certain legal rights that would govern the U.S. military's interrogations of the detainees and would require that they be released when the hostilities in Afghanistan are over.

If there is any ambiguity about whether a captive should be considered a prisoner of war, the Geneva Conventions say a special three-person military tribunal should be convened to decide.

Rumsfeld said that is irrelevant at Guantanamo Bay.

“There is no ambiguity in this case,” he said.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that officials agree the detainees aren't prisoners of war. But administration lawyers are debating whether the Geneva Conventions, which have provisions that deal with unlawful combatants, apply in this case.
(More: Tribune-Chronicle.com News Source)
2002 © The Associated Press.

Dan