[A-List] Britain/US split: status of PoWs

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Illegal to hand PoWs to US, claim ministers

Patrick Wintour and Michael White
Thursday April 3, 2003
The Guardian

British cabinet ministers are warning that it would be illegal for Tony
Blair to bow to US demands for Iraqi prisoners of war captured by the
British to be handed over to the US for trial or imprisonment in America.

They are checking reports that paramilitaries captured by the British will
eventually be segregated from regular prisoners of war and then handed to
the US military police before being sent to the US base at Guantanamo Bay in
Cuba for questioning.

Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, has told MPs that more than half of the
8,000 Iraqi PoWs are being held by the British.

Cabinet ministers are warning that prisoners of war captured by the British
cannot be handed to the US for extradition since the US still uses the death
penalty.

One government source warned that it would be entirely unacceptable for
British captured prisoners of war to be taken to Guantanamo Bay. He argued
that even if Osama bin Laden was captured in Britain, it would be unlawful
to hand him over to the US for trial because of the death penalty there.

The doubtful legality of the US treatment of prisoners taken in Afghanistan
has still not been settled in the higher American courts, British
ministerial sources pointed out. Around 640 alleged Taliban and al-Qaida
fighters are being held at the US naval base. Tony Blair has sounded
lukewarm about the prisoners' treatment.

The prime minister's spokesman has so far only given an undertaking that
Iraqi prisoners of war will be treated in line with the Geneva convention,
but has not ruled out their transfer to Guantanamo Bay.

Senior military spokesmen for the US have toughened their vocabulary to
denounce the militia forces during the past week.

General Vince Brooks has several times called them "terror squads" and
members of "terroristic behaving organisations". This language would allow
the US to treat the Iraqi paramilitaries as unlawful combatants in line with
the Taliban.

The stance of some British cabinet ministers on the PoW issue is supported
by senior British officers in Kuwait, who have made it clear that they would
prefer plainclothes fighters, paramilitaries and the Fedayeen to be
subjected to due judicial process for war crimes, possibly through the new
international criminal court.

The US has refused to sign up to the international criminal court and has
even suggested it would "rescue" any US soldiers that were to be tried at
the court.

A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said that
anyone captured in a war zone, whether in military uniform or civilian
clothes, had to be treated as a PoW under the Geneva Convention. The
convention was extended in 1977 to protect some guerrilla combatants.