The sympathy has also bolstered efforts to win the hearts and minds of ordinary people in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere: that might just have prevented further terrorist attacks (Byers, 2002). Compare and contrast two courts: first, the military tribunal being set up in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: no advance disclosure of evidence, no independent judge or jury, no independent legal representation, no private consultations with defence lawyers, no guarantee of public hearings, and the risk of the death penalty to those who turn down the offer of a plea bargain (Bennathan, 2003)
Chapter 9: Conclusions Would you want your life to be in hands of U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld (Byers
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently complained that the Iraqis were violating the Geneva Convention when they showed captured U.S. servicemen on Iraqi TV (Duggan, 2004)
Chapter 8: The Geneva Convention and Guantanamo Bay After looking at the international laws concerning the detainment of prisoners without trial in Guantanamo Bayin the previous Chapter, this section looks specifically at the Geneva Convention, using examples of how Articles of the Geneva Convention are violated by the United States during the course of their detention of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. What is the Geneva Convention? The Geneva Convention often written and spoken of in contemporary news is actually the fourth Geneva Convention ratified in 1949 in the aftermath of World War II (Farrell, 2002)
S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are the lessons of the United States only previous attempt to imprison foreign suspected subversives, captured overseas, in special camps beyond the reach of the courts; then, as now, casting aside legal principles led to injustices while weakening support for the United States abroad (Friedman, 2004)
S. occupation of Cuba, Congress passed the Platt Amendment which stated in Article III: "The Government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Paris on the United States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the Government of Cuba" (Mellen, 2004)
US President Bush loves pointing out that, "America is liberating Iraqis from human rights abuses by Saddam Hussein," however America is currently abusing the rights of anyone it so chooses in Guantanamo Bay, by giving them a different label, and using their power to assuage criticism on an international level (Duggan, 2004). Suddenly, it seems, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law (Monbiot, 2003)
-km base "a dagger pointed at Cuba's heart" (CBC, 2004). Detention facilities at Camp X-Ray were temporary; as a result of this, of the single occupancy capacity at Camp X-Ray being limited to 320, and with Guantanamo Bay preparing to receive up to 2,000 Al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees, the need arose for the construction of larger enclosed long-term detention facilities at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Pike, 2004)
Secretary of the Navy, James H. Webb, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal in which he said: "It is reasonable to assume that we will lose our lease on Guantanamo Bay in 1999" (Weston, 2004)
soldier who had been a translator during interrogation sessions at the Camps, has revealed that prisoners were physically assaulted by "snatch squads" and subjected to sexual interrogation techniques reminiscent of the Abu Gharib prison scandal. (Davis, 2005) A recent report in Newsweek recounts that the Qu'ran (the Muslim Holy Book) was deliberately kept in toilets and on one occasion, flushed down the toilet, by the guards to insult and provoke the prisoners
As time passed, however, and when it became apparent that the status of the detainees could remain undefined indefinitely, criticism began being fired at the administration. Enemy Combatants The term "enemy combatant," evolved and took on a definition when one of the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay was identified as being an American citizen (Anderson, James B
Guantanamo Bay: Detainees or Enemy Combatants Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States maintains a Navy base, is also the place that has, for the past seven years, since September 11, 2001, been the subject of controversy and debate. At the center of the debate and controversy are some 640 nationals from countries other than the United States (Fogarty, Gerard, P
The term refers to the obscurity of the legal status of the detainees. It has come to define foreign nationals being held in American military facilities without benefit of being charged with a crime, without access to legal representation, and without access to due process under American laws (Katyal, Neal, 2007, p