detainee business
The Washington Post reports on Saudi Arabia’s demands that Saudi prisoners at Guantanamo Bay be returned to them for “interrogation.” (They’re probably worried that the US will discover further evidence of Al Qaeda ties to the Kingdom.)
The article contains this reaction from a Human Rights Watch official, about the decision to declare the detainees outside the protection of the Geneva Conventions:
Human rights organizations are aghast at the decision.
“It’s a legal impossibility not to be covered by the Geneva Conventions” once one has been captured in a war, said Tom Malinowski, a Washington representative for Human Rights Watch . “It’s profoundly dangerous, because if they say the conventions don’t apply in this new war on terrorism, that implies they don’t apply to our forces either.”
Apparently, Mr. Malinowski isn’t aware (or maybe he forgot) that captured US soldiers have been consistently mistreated, tortured, and abused in every conflict for the last, oh, 100 years or so.