US to limit Guantanamo releases

Source: BBC

Between 50 and 100 detainees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay cannot be released or put on trial, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.

The fate of those detainees "is still open", Mr Gates told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
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"The question is what do we do with the 50 to 100 - probably in that ballpark - who we cannot release and cannot try," Mr Gates told the committee.



Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8027547.stm

There should be absolutely no legal reason why they can't be either put on trial or released. Do one or the other. There should be no third option.

:grr:

Or vegetables?

And fuck Gates and anyone who goes along with him on this.

ANYONE

How can this kind of limbo be justice? Apparently they have no right to life even though they are still breathing.

slavery. Not allowed to live freely, but haven't committed any crimes to be tried for. To live in fear and constantly be at the mercy of your owners/captors. I'm pretty sure that that's illegal in the US, isn't? I think I learned something about that in school or somethin'.

Suppose it is WWII and you have a German soldier. You can't try him because he hasn't broken any US laws. You certainly can't release him in the U.S. You can't send him to Germany because you are at war with Germany and he will go back to the war against you.

Does that make a mockery of the U.S. being a nation of laws?

The answer is that you detain him as a prisoner of war under the Geneva conventions. That means you treat him humanely, give him access to international monitors, e.g. the Red Cross or the United Nations, and repatriate him when hostilities have ended. Unless accused of war crimes, prisoners of war are not subject to the criminal justice system, nor is their confinement "punishment." It's meant solely to remove them from combat until hostilities have ceased.

If prisoners of war can show that they were mistakenly captured, that they were not involved in hostilities, then it's the responsibility of the detaining party to repatriate them if possible. In any event, their detention must not include torture, denying access to medical care, summary execution, etc.

The U.S. has refused to acknowledge the Guantanamo detainees rights as prisoners of war. That is the crux of this issue, IMO. As a nation of laws, we must either acknowledge those rights or place the detainees into the criminal justice system, where they have other rights. They're being unilaterally declared criminals without trial. That violates some of the most important principles this country stands for.

Why can't we try them??????????

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That's bullshit

We can't try them because we have determined that they didn't do anything wrong and we can't release them because their own countries won't take them back. Is that what I am hearing?

Raebrek!!!