Geneva, Cuba and the USA

>> American mistreatment of its military
prisoners stirs up Montreal protests


by CRAIG SEGAL

As reports surface about the inhumane treatment of Taliban prisoners at a U.S. naval base in Cuba, a group of Montrealers is calling on the Canadian government to investigate.
The U.S. army is holding 158 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Guantánamo Bay’s “Camp X-Ray”: a 91 m by 91 m prison, surrounded by seven watchtowers, which sits inside a 70 square-km naval base in southern Cuba. Many have reacted angrily to photographs which showed prisoners, who come from 25 countries, arriving in Cuba masked and gagged, and then being hog-tied on the ground and stuck in sweltering 2.4 m by 2.4 m open pens.

The situation has gotten so bad that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell reportedly disagreed over U.S. President George W. Bush’s refusal to call the inmates “prisoners of war.” The Bush administration calls them “unlawful combatants,” which means they are not entitled to the rights set out by the Geneva Convention. The convention says POWs must at all times have the right to a lawyer of their choice, the right to silence without that silence being used against them and the right not to be interrogated without their lawyer present. They also have the right to a judge who can release them if their imprisonment is unlawful. Evidence taken in violation of these rights may not be used at trial.
“I’m outraged by what’s happening,” says Samaa Elibyari, of the Citizens’ Committee for Respecting the Rights of Afghan Prisoners of War. “If we participate in this savagery, it’s going to generate more terrorist attacks against Canada too.” Elibyari says she researches the Afghan war five hours a day, using the Internet, radio, newspapers, phone, and a satellite dish that picks up Al Jazeera, an Arab news network.

“The great mistake of the U.S. was when they started air-lifting prisoners to Cuba,” adds Elibyari, who is also producer of Crossroads on CKUT, an Arab and Muslim current affairs show. “Now the media can see how the U.S. treats the prisoners.”
Elibyari is also concerned about how the U.S. captured the prisoners. “Americans had been fighting from the air. You have to prove to me, was there a fight on the ground? Or did they just round up these men and take them at gunpoint and put them in jail?”

Elibyari’s group is joined by Alternatives, Amnesty International, the Quebec Human Rights League, and Rights and Democracy, a federally funded human rights organization. “If there is a dispute on whether the captives are prisoners of war, a competent tribunal should be set up, in accordance with the provisions of the [Geneva] Convention, to decide their status,” wrote Warren Allmand, president of Rights and Democracy, in a public letter to Bush. “Indeed, it is not the prerogative of any U.S. administration’s official to determine whether those held in Guantánamo are prisoners of war.”: