Posted on 07/16/2003 10:45:37 PM PDT by Destro
Guantanamo Bay suicide attempt
Thursday 17 July 2003, 6:05 AM
A detainee tried to kill himself again in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where US authorities are preparing for military tribunals to try terror suspects, officials said.
The attempt was the 29th since the detention mission was started, said spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson.
Most attempts occurred this year, a sign that the indefinite detentions were beginning to take their toll on detainees, who have not been formally charged or allowed to see lawyers.
"This was an individual who was receiving treatment for mental illness," Johnson said in a telephone interview from Guantanamo.
"He has been returned to his cell with no injuries."
The man, in his 20s, tried to hang himself during an exercise break, Johnson said. He was among 18 who have made repeated attempts.
US authorities are holding 680 detainees from 42 countries at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network or Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime.
President George W Bush earlier this month designated six detainees who could be tried before military tribunals. The next step is for a chief prosecutor to draft charges.
Among the six are Australian David Hicks and Britons Moazzam Begg, 35, and Feroz Abbasi, 23.
Hicks, a Muslim who fought with the Kosovo Liberation Army, called his parents 17 days after the September 11 attacks to say he was with the Taliban, British officials said.
He also allegedly threatened to kill an American upon his arrival at Guantanamo, US officials said.
Moazzam Begg, 35, has been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly five months and was previously detained in Afghanistan for a year, according to the London-based pressure group Fair Trials Abroad. It said the father of four was seized in Pakistan in February 2002 and may be the victim of mistaken identity.
Abbasi has been in US custody since January last year. A British court ruled last November that the British government could not intervene on his behalf though his imprisonment was "legally objectionable".
US officials have refused to reveal the identities of the others eligible for military tribunals, which lawyers and human rights groups see as a red flag for the legitimacy of such proceedings.
The proceedings of military tribunals can be kept secret. The United States has not convened such a tribunal since World War II.
©2003 AP
Whimp.
For my part, let's just say I'm glad his suicide attempt occurred in an environment that made it impossible for him to involve 5,000 other people in his endeavor.
Staying away from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was the right thing to do. The ICC is an independent court composed of international jurists with universal jurisdiction over war crimes, etc.
Not a bad idea in concept, but the problem is that its independence also makes it unaccountable, there are no checks or balances. It does not answer to the UN or the Security Council or any other body.
It is supposed to defer to nations that conduct their own investigations, trials, etc; but the ICC can claim jurisdiction at any point if they themselves determine that an investigation came to the wrong conclusion, the trial was unfair, or the sentence inappopriate.
That is the crux of the problem with this court for the USA. Obviously there are people on the international legal scene who harbor substantial anti-Americanism or whose ideology is hostile to American principles or who may disagree with an American foreign policy decision. Many of these people will be on the ICC and doubtless some would use the authority invested in the ICC to pursue their anti-American agenda.
If someone is captured during a war and suspected of a crime, then they are charged and tried. That is what the process at Guantanamo is about--figuring out which of these guys were just combatants & need to be held as such and which ones committed some type of a crime and need to be tried and sentenced as criminals.
Verdicts should be based purley on the evidence at hand.
No evidence, no trial. Bad evidence, then equit. Good evidence, then confict and you pay the price, no matter what your position in live, government, military, civilian.
I am not saying that this is the best court, we will have to wait and see, but on the other hand, when the last days do come, and we are all judged individually, no one will have a veto, so we better get used to it.
Article 110
The following shall be repatriated direct:
1. Incurably wounded and sick whose mental or physical fitness seems to have been gravely diminished.
3. Wounded and sick who have recovered, but whose mental or physical fitness seems to have been gravely and permanently diminished.
The conditions which prisoners of war accommodated in a neutral country must fulfil in order to permit their repatriation shall be fixed, as shall likewise their status, by agreement between the Powers concerned. In general, prisoners of war who have been accommodated in a neutral country, and who belong to the following categories, should be repatriated:
this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) Taking of hostages;
(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
Article 4
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
1. Those whose state of health has deteriorated so as to fulfil the conditions laid down for direct repatriation;
2. Those whose mental or physical powers remain, even after treatment, considerably impaired.
With this logic lets hope the allies win but when any of the allies are taken prisoner or murdered like Danial Perle, then do not complain, as they see the allies the way you see them.
There is only one Geneva Convention, so we should all follow it, those that do not should be tried as War Criminals.
Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
When the last days come and we get judged, there will be no doubt about jurisdiction or fairness. Those are both problems under the ICC. Until some safeguards are installed to prevent politically motivated prosecutions, we need to stay out of it.
I do not expect the US government to admit this, but regardless, it is what it looks like to the rest of the world.
It's time the US had a paradigm shift on some of it's foreign policies and look at them from the international worlds view point.
Colonial style? We want to prevent an unaccountable foreign court from trying our citizens and you accuse the USA of operating "colonial style"? You have this 100% backwards. It is an outside authority attempting to impose their rules & jurisdiction over Americans--not the other way around.
BTW, did you see what happened while Belgium was going through their little "universal jurisdiction" experiment? Every fruitcake lefty lawyer with an ax to grind was in there filing charges against everybody from both Bushes and Blair to Generals Franks & Schwarzkopf & Colin Powell.
The Belgies finally gave it up when people started filing charges against their own ministers. At least they had a government which was elected by the people and was a participant in international institutions and so had to demonstrate a reasonable amount of accountability.
The ICC will have all the universal jurisdiction and none of the accountability.
It's time the US had a paradigm shift on some of it's foreign policies and look at them from the international worlds view point.
We already do that. And we try to build agreements or come to compromises. But our foreign policy is based on the interests and values of the US--that is why it is called US foreign policy. No different than the way the UK, France, Germany, China, etc or any other country looks at it.
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