When torturing is OK for feds shouldn't it be allowed for others too?

[Lumpy]

That may have been the point, but unfortunately it doesn't answer my (rhetorical) question. O. J. Simpson wasn't a terror suspect, foreign or domestic.

[Elfie]

Both were high profile cases in their respective countries. That's why the trials were broadcast.

but unfortunately it doesn't answer my (rhetorical) question.

If you are looking for an answer to a rhetorical question, then it's no longer rhetorical, or maybe it never was.

[Yeager]

Btw. Timothy McVeigh was not charged with terrorism.

Maybe not but he is dead and thats what counts.

[Lumpy]

Both were high profile cases in their respective countries. That's why the trials were broadcast.

If you are looking for an answer to a rhetorical question, then it's no longer rhetorical, or maybe it never was.

I wasn't looking for an answer to my rhetorical question, I provided the answer. That's why it is rhetorical. That other people don't understand that is not my fault. The Russian "high profile" case wouldn't have been a case at all in the U.S. - That was the point.

[Elfie]

The Russian "high profile" case wouldn't have been a case at all in the U.S. - That was the point.

A situation like the Russians had at Beslan most certainly would be a case in the US, and would most definately be high profile. Every media outlet in America would be covering the story non-stop. Assuming there were any terrorists that survived they most certainly would be put on trial. They might not be charged with terrorism, Timothy McVeigh wasn't even though his actions were the actions of a terrorist, yet the other charges were more than sufficient to earn him the death penalty.

Terrorists, such as those at Gitmo, can be but don't have to be tried in a civilian court. A military tribunal is also allowed to deal with them.

[Lumpy]

A situation like the Russians had at Beslan most certainly would be a case in the US, and would most definately be high profile. Every media outlet in America would be covering the story non-stop. Assuming there were any terrorists that survived they most certainly would be put on trial. They might not be charged with terrorism, Timothy McVeigh wasn't even though his actions were the actions of a terrorist, yet the other charges were more than sufficient to earn him the death penalty.

Terrorists, such as those at Gitmo, can be but don't have to be tried in a civilian court. A military tribunal is also allowed to deal with them.

Yes there have been a few terrorist trials in America. However, the 9/11 2001 attacks were definitely high profile, but how many suspects of that attack (I've already named three three high profile suspects in this thread) have stood trial (I know of one)? How many 9/11 trials have been broadcast? And how many suspects are being held without trial or justice? The 9/11 attacks are the most high profile terrorists acts in American history.

[Elfie]

The ones that carried out the attacks are all dead, so it's rather difficult to put them on trial. The others don't have to be put in a civilian trial, they can be dealt with by military tribunal and if I'm not mistaken, there is no requirement for the military tribunal to be public in the same sense that a civilian court is public.

What you are ignoring, is the fact that these terrorists that are being held consider themselves soldiers in a jihad. They do not fight for a nation state, they fight for the jihad. Since they don't fight for a nation state, they are not protected by any article of the GC except article 3. Note the part I bolded does not specify civilian or military courts. Also note that the bolded part is a protection, not a requirement for a trial.

Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed ' hors de combat ' by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To 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.

(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.

An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

[Fishu]

During the WWII saboteurs were executed rather quick after captured. However they didn't have to first torture people and then execute. Gestapo did that and alot of innocent people were executed after a false confession, when they rather chose to die or rot in prison than suffer under torture. I don't think anyone disagrees with execution of the terrorists, but torture on the other hand is a whole different matter.

[Brownshirt]

See Rules #4, #5 (I do not believe anyone on this board is torturing anyone, but you seem to be approaching it.  Notice the use of the word "you".)

[Elfie]

What US is ignoring is human rights; You have been keeping hundreds of people imprisoned for years without any kind of military or civilian court. Even Ruskies did set up a fake courts just for the sake of the show but US haven't even done that.
Not the best way to get sympathy; all you have done is damaged your own country.
 

I do believe that military tribunals have decided these peoples fates. In a previous thread that was brought up, with links. Yet it was ignored by many.


Fishu, I agree, the torture shouldn't be taking place. I suspect that just because they admit to torturing 3 w/ waterboarding, that those 3 are likely not the only victims of that technique.

[bj229r]

CNN�s Christiane Amanpour does a story on the murder of more than two million Cambodians by Pol Pot�s Khmer Rouge, and compares it to the United States using waterboarding on three top Al Qaeda terrorists to get information about imminent attacks
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/07/amanpour.pol.pot/index.html

"I thought that was the end of my life," he told me. "In my room people kept dying, one or two every day."

Van Nath was kept in a room packed with 50 other inmates, shackled together and forced to lie down.

"We could not sit. If we wanted to sit, we had to ask permission first. No talking, whispering or making noise," he told me.

Van Nath described how male prisoners were whipped raw, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars. Prison guards mutilated women's genitals, ripped off their nipples with pliers. And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers' arms and slaughtered. Video Watch the former prisoner recount the brutality �

Van Nath was accused of being a CIA agent and given electric shock torture, but he survived when his jailers found out he was one of Cambodia's most prominent painters. And what did they make him paint?

"Pol Pot's picture. Big pictures," he told me. "I had to paint the same one again and again. If they didn't like my painting, that would have been the end of my life."

So when Pol Pot finally fell in 1979, Van Nath returned to paint what he had really seen and heard at S-21. He did it as a memorial to the 14,000 who had been tortured and executed in the prison. It's one of the few public reminders of the regime's crimes.

Take water torture, for instance. Van Nath remembers it as if it were yesterday. I gasped as I entered a room filled with his vivid depictions.

One of his paintings shows a prisoner blindfolded and hoisted onto a makeshift scaffold by two guards. He is then lowered head first into a massive barrel of water. Another shows a prisoner with cloth over his face, writhing as an interrogator pours water over his head.

Van Nath still remembers the accompanying screams: "It sounded like when we are really in pain, choking in water," he told me. "The sound was screaming, from the throat. I suppose they could not bear the torture.

"Whenever we heard the noises we were really shocked and scared. We thought one day they will do the same thing to us."

As he talked and showed me around, my mind raced to the debate in the United States over this same tactic used on its prisoners nearly 40 years later. I stared blankly at another of Van Nath's paintings. This time a prisoner is submerged in a life-size box full of water, handcuffed to the side so he cannot escape or raise his head to breathe. His interrogators, arrayed around him, are demanding information.

I asked Van Nath whether he had heard this was once used on America's terrorist suspects. He nodded his head. "It's not right," he said.

But I pressed him: Is it torture? "Yes," he said quietly, "it is severe torture. We could try it and see how we would react if we are choking under water for just two minutes. It is very serious."

Well, there you are. The US is Pol Pot

[Lumpy]

The ones that carried out the attacks are all dead, so it's rather difficult to put them on trial. The others don't have to be put in a civilian trial, they can be dealt with by military tribunal and if I'm not mistaken, there is no requirement for the military tribunal to be public in the same sense that a civilian court is public.

Perhaps you should try to read the thread before posting something that has already been dealt with?

So Nuke, you don't think "it was ever intended to be used on civilians"? Strange then that the three people we know it has been used on were civilians. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was taken from a friend's home in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by Pakistani secret police and handed over to US authorities. He is a civilian. Zein al-Abideen Mohamed Hussein was taken from his two-story apartment in Faisalabad, Pakistan by CIA operatives. He is a civilian. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was arrested in the United Arab Emirates and turned over to US authorities. All are terrorists and criminals, but none of them were captured on any battlefield (though Hussein made a fight of it in his home and was shot three times).

No Nuke, what we're talking about here is dragging people out of their homes in the middle of the night, wishing them away to some clandestine prison and torturing them without trial or justice. So far only bad people have been taken (I hope). So far.

These people were not military personnel or �combatants� in any way and thus should be handled by the civilian justice system.

What you are ignoring, is the fact that these terrorists that are being held consider themselves soldiers in a jihad. They do not fight for a nation state, they fight for the jihad. Since they don't fight for a nation state, they are not protected by any article of the GC except article 3. Note the part I bolded does not specify civilian or military courts. Also note that the bolded part is a protection, not a requirement for a trial.

Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

However if you insist on calling this a military situation:

Your definition would exclude anyone who commits a crime. That's ludicrous. The Merriam-Webster English dictionary defines a civilian as "a specialist in Roman or modern civil law" or "one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force". Under international humanitarian law a civilian is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces. The International Committee of the Red Cross 1958 Commentary on IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War Article 4.4 states that "[e]very person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, or again, a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law." The ICRC has expressed the opinion that "If civilians directly engage in hostilities, they are considered 'unlawful' or 'unprivileged' combatants or belligerents. They may be prosecuted under the domestic law of the detaining state for such action".

"If civilians directly engage in hostilities" ... Civilians.