Fair Tribunals at Guantanamo? (Was: YANK CHILD ABUSERS :: another reason to kill americans abroad ???)

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 09:50:39 -0500, "Jim" wrote:


"Jim Watt" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 18:11:05 -0700, "TinCanMan"
wrote:

I find it interesting they, as did the U.S. choose
to disregard them. Had they believed it important to their "culture" to
legitimize sniping at an armed force and hiding among the populace while
claiming protection as POW's, they would have signed.

Yet the Americans continued to sponsor terrorism by the IRA
who did exactly that, demanded POW status if caught and
have now been released.

Some Americans Yes, America no, and by the way they who supported the IRA
should be brough to justice in my opinion
Jim

http://www.sinnfeinbookshop.com/en-us/dept_20.html

"Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams today brushed aside claims that his
party was glorifying violence by advertising IRA t-shirts on its new
website."
--
Jim Watt http://www.gibnet.com

David Evans wrote:

:A fine example of this is the US spy planes which persistently defile
:Chinese air space.

They don't enter Chinese airspace.

:The Chinese claim their air space extends 20 miles
:from its coast, like its territorial waters. The US claim that
:airspace extends just 10 miles from shore under international law - a
:law the Chinese have never accepted.

The preceding is irrelevant, since our 'spy planes' don't get that
close to the coast.

:Pedants note: the 10 and 20 mile limits are from memory, and actual
:distances may be different. The concept of this post is true.

Now let's inject a little truth, shall we? What China was and is
claiming is the right to control air and sea traffic in what is known
as the Exclusive Economic Zone. Note that the very treaty which
establishes such a zone requires the State whose Exclusive Economic
Zone an area is to RESPECT THE RIGHT OF OTHER STATES TO FREE
NAVIGATION.

China was wrong. Read something other than the People's Daily.

--
"It's always different. It's always complex. But at some point,
somebody has to draw the line. And that somebody is always me....
I am the law."
-- Buffy, The Vampire Slayer

"Jim Watt" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 18:11:05 -0700, "TinCanMan"
wrote:

I find it interesting they, as did the U.S. choose
to disregard them. Had they believed it important to their "culture" to
legitimize sniping at an armed force and hiding among the populace while
claiming protection as POW's, they would have signed.

Yet the Americans continued to sponsor terrorism by the IRA
who did exactly that, demanded POW status if caught and
have now been released.



--
Jim Watt http://www.gibnet.com

I really don't give a tinkers damn about the IRA and Northern Ireland.

"Jim Watt" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 06:17:30 -0700, "TinCanman"
wrote:

Did you forget about the arbitrary part?

No I answered that fully.

But you answered it with a textbook definition from the dictionary that
doesn't support your position. ????

Your observation there is no war iss irrelevant and carries no weight.

Thats an interesting way of ignoring it.

Your observation there is no war IS irrelevant to the issue because it is
purely opinion on your part. The belligerent parties believe there is a war.
You'll note their soldiers are dying. That is the only thing that matters.
Third parties sitting on the hillside picnicking and pontificating on the
existence of hostilities while the combatants in the valley maim and kill
one another is ridiculous.


That a state of war exists would be up to the combatants to decide.

Did the Japanese get away with that when they bombed Pearl Harbour?

Oh, for the love of Pete. This is getting sillier by the paragraph. I'm just
going to chalk the last statement up to an early start on the weekend's
festivities. Please try to stay with the current situation. I'll not be
trading analogies with you as they are seldom equalities

In article ,
says...

(Brian Allardice) wrote in message
.ca...

Yep. Of course, I seem to recall that the Chinese in Korea tried to do
something similiar with their forced confessions from pilots that they
had been dropping biological weapons on the rice fields and then try
them for war crimes...

To go off topic when we are already off topic might seem silly, but if you have
been following the US/Vietnam "Catfish War" one of the reasons advanced by US
producers for banning Vietnamese catfish is that they are probably unfit for
human consumption due to contamination by residues from Agent Orange.
Hmmm.....


I might be reading it wrong here, but 4.A.1 (applying to the forces and
associated militias &c) contains none of the conditions of 4.A.2 (applying
to
"other" militias &c). I was a bit surprised when I noticed that... I wonder
where Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys would fit in....

Yes, you do seem to be right here. Just to make things more
complicated, the US never recognized the Taliban government as the
government of Afghanistan, and the wording 4.A.1 is "Party to the
conflict"- I'm not sure whether they mean High Contracting Party in
the conflict or simply a group involved with the conflict. The use of
the capital P suggests it might be HCP, which could complicate matters
even more.

I'm glad someone finally said that... sometimes, judging by the discourse
here, I think I must be hallucinating. But to return the the point, I don't
think mutual recognition of the Parties is a problem..

"4.A.3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government
or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power."

The 1977 protocols were supposed to fix it all up and make it more
modern, but the US passed on ratifying it because they felt it was too
protective of resistance groups that they would have to deal with in
the future.

The problem that I see with it is Article 44 section 3-

-snip details-

In other words, you can shoot all you want when you have the advantage
of surprise, and then melt back into the civillian population without
loss of PoW status when captured. You need not have any sort of c-o-c,
distinguishing mark, or anything like that, as long as you carry arms
openly WHILE FIGHTING you are protected; put down the gun and hide
back in the general population all you wish.

Well, at least that has the merit of grappling with the realities of
"asymmetrical warfare", from American colonists sniping at the Redcoats to
almost everything going on today and for the forseeable future.

Cheers,
dba

In message , Chris
Manteuffel writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...

Chapter and verse, Colin, please.

(You're usually very clueful, but the GCs are explicit: even spies may
not be shot out of hand, but must be tried first)

Are you sure?

Certainly says so in the "Laws of War" section of my MTQ2 folder (which
dates from 1991 - the current JWP says something similar but it's at
work) "Spies are not protected, except that they may not be punished
without trial."

Then you can play the quote game - "the following acts are and shall
remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect
to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,
mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and
degrading treatment;

(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without
previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording
all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by
civilized peoples."

and

"Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment
and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or
occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power
of which they are not nationals."

They must be "treated with humanity" but from my reading it
seems to be that *if* you try them, the trials must be fair. I don't
see any requirement that they be tried.

Quite so - you can always let them go

_If_ you want to punish them, they get a fair trial first (at which
point you dish out appropriate sentences to the guilty). Time spent in
detention pre-trial is deducted from any sentence of imprisonment.

However, this is specific to "protected persons" anyway, which takes us
to your next cite.

That brings up Geneva III-1949, Article 5.

"Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having
committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of
the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article
4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present
Convention until such time as their status has been determined
by a competent tribunal."

Again, no right to a trial that I can see, only a "competant
tribunal". The US has started releasing men from Gitmo,
admitting that they had been caught up in the dragnet by
mistake, so there is some of this going on;

At the current rate, the status of the last detainee will be determined
in 2025 or thereabouts: not exactly a timely judgement, is it?

There's also a side issue of how you read Article 3: "Persons taking no
active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who
have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness,
wounds, detention, or any other cause". To me that reads as protecting
surrendering enemy soldiers, and all the sick, wounded and captured.

note also that I don't
believe they say that the tribunal (for deciding whether they meet
GC III 4.2) must be an open one.

Just needs to be "competent". However, the detainees are POWs until
proved otherwise.

And you don't need a tribunal to
declare someone not covered by III or IV; you only need the
tribunal in cases where there is doubt.

They're either POWs, or doubt exists as to their status and a tribunal
decides. Same issue as spies - you can't go _directly_ to sentencing.

The US seems to be loudly protesting that the men aren't entitled
to protection under the GC's, but in all actuality most of the AQ
men wouldn't get any protection anyway (Geneva III (1949)
Article 4 section 2 would be the standards that they would have
to meet, and from my knowledge of AQ very few of them would
meet them).

How many are al-Qaeda and how many Taliban? One frequent claim is that
these men were "captured on the battlefield, gun in hand", but that
doesn't seem to fit the facts.

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:52:14 -0700, "TinCanman"
wrote:

Your observation there is no war IS irrelevant

Its a legal point, and the reason for introducing the Japanese
premptive strike was that after the war your country used that
to prosecute the Japanese.

The reasons why America refuses to accept an international
criminal court to deal with these problems is clear. You are
the criminals.


--
Jim Watt http://www.gibnet.com

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:58:01 GMT, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

Of course it does. Because it's not what you want (which is
apparently these people given their guns back and sent home).

In the case of the British nationals one did not have a gun
because he was an aid worker and in any event we were
talking of repatriating both to Britain for a fair trial

The more you talk, the sillier you sound....

Uhuh when the argument fails attack the person presenting it
and marginalise them. I think I know that tactic.

But fine, your country kidnaps people holds them illegally, forces
confessions out of them and then executes them, what exactly are you
protecting? freedom?
--
Jim Watt http://www.gibnet.com

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 18:55:04 -0700, "TinCanman"
wrote:

I really don't give a tinkers damn about the IRA and Northern Ireland.

Its a convenient example of international terrorism funded and
supported by Americans.


--
Jim Watt http://www.gibnet.com

"Jim Watt" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 19:52:14 -0700, "TinCanman"
wrote:

Your observation there is no war IS irrelevant

Its a legal point, and the reason for introducing the Japanese
premptive strike was that after the war your country used that
to prosecute the Japanese.

The reasons why America refuses to accept an international
criminal court to deal with these problems is clear. You are
the criminals.


--
Jim Watt http://www.gibnet.com

Well, that does it for me. If there was ever the slightest doubt why the
U.S. has not signed on to the Uropeen IKK, there exists none now. Not even a
glimmer.