In a sweeping change of policy, the Pentagon has decided that it will treat all detainees in compliance with the minimum standards spelled out in the Geneva Conventions, a senior defense official said on Tuesday.
The new policy comes on the heels of a US Supreme Court ruling last month invalidating a system of military tribunals the Pentagon had created to try suspected terrorists, and just before Congress was due to take up the question of a replacement system in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
As part of its decision, the court found that a key provision of the Geneva Conventions, known as Common Article 3, did apply to terror suspects, contradicting the position taken by the Bush administration.
In 2002, US President George W. Bush declared that members of al-Qaeda and other terror suspects seized during the invasion of Afghanistan were "illegal combatants," and so were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, which among other things set forth rules for the treatment of prisoners of war.
The main thrust of the recent Supreme Court ruling, in a case referred to as Hamdan versus Rumsfeld, was that the administration had exceeded its authority by creating a system of tribunals without the approval of the US Congress. But the court also declared that the suspects fell under Article 3, which applies to all "armed combatants," and that detainees were able to assert their rights under Article 3 in federal court.
Since the court's ruling, Republicans have appeared divided over whether to simply seek congressional approval for a slightly modified tribunal system or to adopt a version of traditional courts-martial instead. The Pentagon memo reported on Tuesday may simply reflect a decision that any new system that did not afford detainees the protections of Article 3 would not survive challenge in court.
Article 3 guarantees detainees a minimum level of rights expected in a civilized country. But what that includes and what procedures should govern their trials is expected to be the subject of lively congressional debates all summer, beginning with Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.
Unlike four years ago, when the Bush administration formulated its plans for military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the debate now seems certain to include the views of the military's most senior uniformed lawyers, whose objections were brushed aside earlier.
Do unto others
Beginning shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the military lawyers warned that the administration's plan for military commissions put the US on the wrong side of the law and breached international standards. Most important, they warned, the plan could endanger members of the US military who might someday be captured by an enemy and treated the way detainees at Guantanamo have been.
Since the Hamdan ruling was announced, some legislators had said they would consider rewriting the law specifically to make Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions no longer applicable.
"We should be embracing Common Article 3 and shouting it from the rooftops," said John Hutson, a retired rear admiral who was the top uniformed lawyer in the Navy until 2000. "They can't try to write us out of this, because that means every two-bit dictator could do the same."
He said it was "unbecoming for America to have people say, `We're going to try to work our way around this because we find it to be inconvenient.'"
"If you don't apply it when it's inconvenient," he said, "it's not a rule of law."
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
RSS