Category talk:Guantanamo captives

question

This edit added Category:Prisoners of war. Is this an appropriate category?

It was the official US position that none of the Guantanamo captives were ever entitled to the classification, as per international law. And the USA never treated them as POWs. They did not have article 5 Tribunals. They were not protected from extreme interrogation techniques, knowledge of their capture was withheld from their families.

Should they have been treated as POW? Many legal critics and human rights critics assert that they should have, that international law as well as the USA' domestic law, required this. But the SCOTUS never ruled on this. Neither has any international body. So, personally, I think including them in Category:Prisoners of war is a stretch.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 19:33, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

As a courtesy to other contributors, could we discuss complicated or controversial issues on the talk page, not in our edit summaries...

In this edit World's Lamest Critic removed Category:Extrajudicial prisoners, with the edit summary "Some Guantanamo detainees are extra-judicial, but not all. This should not be applied to the entire category."

I reverted it with the edit summary "As a courtesy to other contributors, could we discuss complicated or controversial issues on the talk page, not in our edit summaries..."

This was not a simple edit, not simple enough for an edit summary to be a sufficient explanation.

780 individuals were held in Guantanamo. Unquestionably, every individual who was held there, who never faced charges before a Guantanamo Military Commission, were held in extrajudicial detention. So, unquestionably, about 97 percent of the individuals held there were held in extrajudicial detention.

Can individuals who face charges, or faced charges, before a Guantanamo Military Commission still be described as being held in extrajudicial detention?

1. Every one of the small number of individual who faced charges before a Guantanamo Military Commission spent multiple years at Guantanamo, prior to charges being laid. Fouad al Rabia, for instance, was turned over to the USA in late 2001. But he didn't face charges for another six years.

   We have all seen DCI Tennison, on the BBC Prime Suspect. Her detectives can only hold suspects for 72 hours, without charging them.

2. Many of the individuals who faced charges before a Guantanamo Military Commission had their charges dropped. Ten individuals were charged under the first iteration of the Guantanamo Military Commission. In 2006 the SCOTUS ruled President Bush lacked the Constitutional authority to set up a new quasi-judicial system.
3. When whistleblower Darrel Vandeveld revealed how deeply corrupt prosecutors had been in constructing a case against Mohammed Jawad, a child who was subjected to extended sleep deprivation, years after permission to use that technique was withdrawn, his bosses tried to railroad him into a psychiatric review, prepratory to a medical discharge. This ploy failed. Vandeveld was able to expose some of the corruption, and a cowardly prosecution dropped all the charges against the other half dozen men whose case files he had had access to.
4. International law requires the US military to use the same courts, the same rules of evidence, and apply the same sentences, against foreign suspects, as they would apply if DoD personnel were suspected of those chargesle
5. What other country created a special show trial system, designed to convict suspects on secret evidence?

So, I suggest it is questionable to treat the Guantanamo Military Commissions as if they were fair, legitimate courts of law. Geo Swan (talk) 23:57, 20 May 2018 (UTC)