| Allied Privilege |
1 December 2003
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US Yields on Guarantees for Australian Citizens Held at Guantanamo
The US government has bent to the wishes of Australia in providing some guarantees to the latter regarding the treatment of its citizens being held at Guantanamo Bay. While Australian law does not permit them to be sent home to face trial for alleged acts taken while in Afghanistan defending the murdering Taliban, there is a chance that they could serve any prison sentences at home, and the trials will be open proceedings. Above all, they won't face the death penalty. The US could have avoided the whole mess by declaring them prisoners of war.
It is hard to say quite why the US government didn't opt for POW status for the dregs of humanity it rounded up in Afghanistan. The niggling, lawyerly non-sense that the Bush administration has suffered since setting up shop in Cuba could easily have been avoided.
The Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs would actually have supported most of the policy decision made in the last two years. POWs don't get lawyers. They don't get to sue their captors. They aren't, however, required to provide any intelligence, but as the US army has discovered, a little junk food in the rations will loosen a lot of tongues. Besides, any information these men have is two years old. Stale intel, at best.
Best of all, Article 118 provides, "Prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities." As the Bush administration says, the war is going on still. Then, they may be kept under lock and key. There is much in the Geneva Convention about trials of prisoners, but they don't really apply unless Uncle Sam wants to punish these men for crimes they may have committed. It seems that being able to keep them captive until the US says the war is over gives Mr. Bush more latitude than his current policy.
For the Australians, the result is a small payback for the use of Australian military personnel in the war in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The British are negotiating a similar deal, and they will get their reward as well. One doesn't envy any French national being held there.
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