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Taliban captives should go home, says rights group
The US has no legal basis for holding members of the Taliban at Guantanamo Bay, the organisation Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the American defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. The intervention comes amid growing calls for access to prisoners held by the US following September 11 and the war in Afghanistan. The group, which with Amnesty International has been monitoring the situation of prisoners, said yesterday that there were three types of prisoners at the US camp in Cuba, who should be released.
And a couple types who need to stay.
They were "Taliban soldiers who were detained in the now-concluded war between the US and the government of Afghanistan, unless they are being prosecuted for war crimes; civilians who have no meaningful connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban and probably should never have been sent to Guantanamo in the first place; and suspected terrorists whose detention had nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan, unless they are charged with a crime and prosecuted".
I actually have no problem with the low-level Taliban grunts being sent home, preferably to the north and the tender mercies of the Uzbek or Tadjik warlords. And the civvies? Sure, no sweat. But the "suspected terrorists"? Nah, we keep those.
The small fry weren't the ones who were sent for a Caribbean vacation. Anybody who was sent by mistake should be released, but they all say it was just a big mistake, don't they? How do you tell which ones really were?
"There are people being held at Guantanamo who shouldn't be there,"said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "The US cannot simply hold the detainees for as long as it wants." Attempts to provide legal representation for those held at Guantanamo Bay have so far been unsuccessful.
That's because it's not a cops and robbers situation. If you get caught being a terrorist, your mouthpiece shouldn't be able to get you off...
Human Rights Watch claims the Taliban soldiers captured during the war should have been repatriated following the formation of the government of Hamid Karzai.
Send the soldiers to Kabul and put them on trial there. Could be entertaining.
Mr Roth suggested that, under the Geneva convention, the US should release those soldiers unless they are being charged with war crimes or other criminal offences. The US has released some prisoners from Guantanamo Bay but says that others are providing useful intelligence. The Red Cross has been allowed to visit them.
Something neither the Taliban nor Sammy have ever bothered with for their prisoners.
Under the Geneva Conventions, POWs are released when hostilities are over, on conclusion of a peace treaty. Anybody heard of one lately? The war on terror isn't over yet, and terrorists should be detained until it is.

Posted by: Steve White 2003-03-08
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=11030