UPI: Ridge: Detainees deserved due process

[Fergasun]

Because a POW would be covered under a different set of rules, than an unlawful enemy combatant. I'm not exactly sure the distinction. I think an unlawful enemy combatant could be tried under US law and a POW couldn't?

Larry, don't look up the "no-hearing hearings" study...

[Larry]

How is the way we treat detainees in the war on terrorism vastly different from the way we treated P.O.W's from past wars?

Uh, let's see. I'm certainly not an expert, but I think that:

You aren't allowed to torture POWs. In fact, you pretty much aren't allowed to even question them. (I think Geneva allows the captor to ask questions, but outlaws anything whatsoever which in any way encourages the prisoner to answer.)

POWs are permitted to send messages home, saying that they've been captured.

The capturing power is required to declare the identities of every prisoner they're holding.

Those are just the ones I can think of.

Oh, and the flip side:

POWs don't get released until the war's over.

[Thiebear]

Last week, after years of litigation, the U.S. government finally conceded that none of these men would be treated as “enemy combatants.” All were cleared for release long ago. However, because of the stigma of their detention at Guantánamo and for fear of offending China, no other country had agreed to offer these men safe haven. Despite this failure to find a third country to take them, the government argued that the court could not release them into the U.S. and, therefore, that the men would have to stay at Guantanamo indefinitely.

This one always got me... how can they say not released anywhere but you have to let them go?

How do you release 68% of the prisoners without there being trials?

[Larry]

The mental picture I've built up (based, I'll freely admit, on an almost complete lack of knowledge. Want to fix that problem? Quit hiding all of the information.) is that what the US did was to, in effect, create a service:

Got somebody you don't like? Somebody who's a pain? A troublemaker?

Call 1-800-USA-GTMO, say that your neighbor is a terrorist, and the US government will take him away, ship him to Cuba, throw him in prison, and pay you $10,000.

And, get this. The US promises that they won't let the troublemaker come back, unless you give permission.

Some of the people, there, aren't terrorists. They're troublemakers. The government/dictator/warlord wanted to get rid of them. Well, even when we determine that gee, they aren't terrorists, what are the odds of the government/dictator/warlord wanting him back?

[Thiebear]

Larry:

I would agree on how you based this: Same is said by the birthers.

[Fergasun]

thiebear,

(edit: I haven't exactly looked into why this is the case)

I know it is not the popular sentiment, but you have to release them without proper trials if there is no reason to be holding them in the first place. Let's say the cops arrested you without charging you with a crime. Would that be Constitutional? I think it would be easier if we charged them as POWs, but we don't want to apply the Geneva conventions, however holding them as non-POWs puts them under US jursidiction, and some of them had acesss to the US Courts.

(edit: Again, I'm not sure if this is exactly why they had to release them).

I'll admit I haven't been into this as much as others may have been around here. However, Congress has been working to change the laws so that they could deny US jurisdiction to enemy combatants. I was reading through some of the opinions before and the Supreme Court treated it as a "dialogue".

(Okay I went and looked it up so to precisely answer the question in the thread)

So the timeline of the "dialogue" is something like:

- Rasul Case (2004?), Supreme Court rules that detainees at Guantanemo are under US jurisdiction.

- In response Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) which attempted to remove US jurisdiction of prisoners held by DoD at Guantanemo or elsewhere.

- Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) the Supreme Court ruled that the DTA doesn't apply to detainees who were being held prior to the DTA becoming law.

- In response Cognress passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) which further attempted to remove US Court jurisdiction and make it clear that they intended to strip all detainees of US jurisdiction.

- Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the Supreme Court ruled that for these enemy combatants there are 3 factors that are to be used to determine whether they are under the US Court jurisdiction: a) citizenship and status of detainee as well as adequecy of process, nature of sites where apprehension and detention took place, c) practicle obstacles of giving them US jurisdiction.

In this case the court ruled factor a for prisoners, and b and c for the US position. Even though the opinion does raise the issue of (paraphrasing) "moving detainees into war zones to turn their right to jurisdiction on or off" it claims "that did not happen here". I suspect the guy detained from Thailand will argue strongly that, indeed; that is what happened. I think the court was relying on an earlier case (1950) of German agents seized in China.

I just don't like the fact that we can say, "this is a war on terror and everyone is a suspect, in any country" and then pick up *anyone around the world* and detain them as an enemy combatant. I would think, at least for those who were picked up outside of an active war zone there would be some due-process review by US Courts to ensure the facts of the case fit.

[Larry]

Larry:

I would agree on how you based this: Same is said by the birthers.

Difference:

The government is hiding the facts about GTMO.