Originally Posted by
Big D
Many of the Guantanamo inmates were captured as "unlawful combatants" during the fighting in Afghanistan, or elsewhere as eest mentioned.
However, after two years of captivity, they've still not been charged with anything at all. The flimsiest legal excuse is being used to continue their detention - "it's not US soil, so they're not being detained illegally". Basically, they're locked up because of the possibility that they might be terrorists or militants. The possibility.
There's a chance that they're all guilty. However, until they're charged and tried (by a court of law, not a military tribunal) then they should be presumed innocent. They should be presumed guilty unless or until they're found guilty of crimes punishable under international law. Anyone who's incarcerated by the state has a right to know what the charges against them are, and to have those charges dealt with promptly. It's entirely possible that the US authorities simply have nothing they can charge the Guantanamo prisoners with - some may simply have been in possession of weapons when the US soldiers found them in Afghanistan, for example.
If they're never going to be charged, then the US government is basically sentencing them to life imprisonment for "being someone we don't like", which is a genuinely frightening idea. The government continues to ignore the basic principles of international law, and claims to be exempt from the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners, that codified document that forbids, amongst other things, the torture of prisoners.
Lets look at things from another perspective.
Suppose the new Iraqi regime starts imprisoning US soldiers. These soldiers aren't charged, but the regime says they're being held as "suspected torturers". There are no indications that these prisoners are going to be charged or released in the immediate future. There's nothing to suggest to the outside world that they're guilty of any crimes, although it's known that there were some US soldiers in Iraq who committed acts of torture.
I doubt that the US would stand for something like this. Military action would be the likely result.
However, when the US does those exact same things, it's all quite all right. The rules apply to other people, not the US because they are "good" so what they're doing must surely be right, apparently. Anyone else who breaches international law, though.. well, they can get invaded or locked up with no charge. This is the kind of reasoning that makes the rest of the world either (a) genuinely afraid of what the US might be capable of or (b) angry at the government that carries out these blatantly hypocritical injustices.[qq]Release all ''the supposed terrorists'' in Guantanomo Bay, and implant micro ships into there bodies, so we find out where they go, and they all be tracked by gps satellites. An then we can capture more terrorists. Its a good idea, and I dont see why we cant do that. We should drug them to so they dont know, and have no memory what so ever on what happen.[/qq]Nice way to assume that they're all terrorists.[qq]Well, I think the guys over there who bomb up there own people, when there rebuilding Iraq are animals, and should be treated like animals...[/qq]I get. There are "bad Arabs" in this world, so that means that every Arab is evil? There are Islamic fundamentalists committing atrocities, so if there's a Muslim in a US prison then that makes him a terrorist too? That kind of thinking fell out of favour after World War Two...[qq] An the Geneva convention, it seems those guys aren't abiding to it much either. [/qq]I thought that those kinds of acts made them the enemy in the first place. It's a bit rich to invade a country and destroy its infrastructure because that country is "evil", but then to behave in exactly the same way. It kind of negates any "moral high ground" argument, and therefore any real justification for what's being done.
As for drugging, bugging and releasing prisoners... again, there's that presumption of guilt. Might as well call for every Arab and Muslim to get the same treatment because they "might be terrorists". Keeping prisoners illegally without regard to the Geneva Convention is bad enough; performing medical experiments on them conjures up very dark images of the Second World War.
