OT: Captured Troops

[tesco samoa]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...921192,00.html

an interesting article about the prisoners and the Taliban prisoners...

[dogscoff]

Interesting Tesco? Horrific more like. I know not everyone reads every link posted in these threads, but here are some highlights:

On November 21 2001, around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun civilians surrendered at Konduz to the Northern Alliance commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum ... The doors were sealed and the lorries were left to stand in the sun for several days ... The prisoners, many of whom were dying of thirst and asphyxiation, started banging on the sides of the trucks. Dostum's men stopped the convoy and machine-gunned the containers. When they arrived at Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead ... The US special forces running the prison watched the bodies being unloaded. They instructed Dostum's men to "get rid of them before satellite pictures can be taken" ... In the presence of up to 40 US special forces, the living and the dead were dumped into ditches. Anyone who moved was shot ... The German newspaper Die Zeit investigated the claims and concluded that: "No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts on this issue." ... Donald Rumsfeld's department, assisted by a pliant media, has done all it can to suppress Jamie Doran's film, while General Dostum has begun to assassinate his witnesses.

I thought Guantanamo Bay was bad but this is fkn barbaric.

[Phoenix-D]

"What the f.. does this abbrev. mean?"

Exactly what you just said..

Phoenix-D

[PsychoTechFreak]

Public curiosity... Isn't it the same with court procedures with no cameras allowed? I tend to think so.

[phaet2112]

But the judge can allow footage of the defendant and prosecutor if they desire. The jury must always remain unknown, though, to prevent undue influence.

[Mephisto]

Look were Psycho lives. He is from Germany and here you cannot film anyone inside of a court room. No, never, anyone.

[PsychoTechFreak]

Source (has been posted sooner already)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...921192,00.html

... prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television . In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).

They were not "released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities" (118), because, the US authorities say, their interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name, rank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever". In the hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as "torture lite": sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with pLastic cutlery.

The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva conventions, as they are not "prisoners of war", but "unlawful combatants". The same claim could be made, with rather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded their country. But this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 of the third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of a militia (the Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be regarded as prisoners of war...