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No geneva convetion to iraqi prisoners captured in iraq Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6611561http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6611561
Report: U.S. Sees Some Non-Iraqis as Geneva Exceptions
Tue Oct 26, 2004 07:25 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration has decided that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
According to unnamed administration officials who spoke with the newspaper, the opinion reached in recent months holds that there are exceptions to previous U.S. assertions that the Geneva Conventions apply to all prisoners taken in the Iraq war.
Sunday's Washington Post said U.S. intelligence officials were transferring detainees out of Iraq for interrogation. In those cases, the Central Intelligence Agency had invoked a confidential Justice Department memo to justify its actions, the Post said.
In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is guaranteed access to prisoners of war under the conventions, said it could not confirm or deny the reports that prisoners had been moved.
On the issue of non-Iraqi prisoners, ICRC spokeswoman Antonella Notari said that regardless of whether the conventions applied, all prisoners must be covered by some law, be it international, Iraqi or American.
"Some law has to apply. The important thing is not to detain people outside of any legal framework. That is what we have always said about Guantanamo," she said in reference to the U.S. naval base on Cuban territory where some 550 alleged Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are being held.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Guantanamo detainees had the right to appeal to U.S. courts against their detention.
The Times report said that the legal opinion would allow the military and the CIA to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere.
In such cases, the United States has said, the Geneva Conventions do not apply.
The Times said that the new opinion represented a consensus reached by lawyers from the Departments of State and Justice, as well as other agencies such as the Pentagon and the National Security Council.
A government official told the newspaper that the opinion had been sought by the CIA to establish the legality of its secret transfers of non-Iraqi prisoners -- beginning in April 2003 -- for interrogation outside Iraq.
But government officials told the Times that the new ruling could open the way for additional transfers on a broader scale, because the status of prisoners being held in Iraq was reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
The administration takes the view that exceptions from the Geneva Conventions would include suspected al Qaeda members and other terror suspects, as well as foreigners who traveled to Iraq to join the insurgency or engage in acts of terrorism, the paper said.
(Additional reporting by Richard Waddington in Geneva)
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