Artful Dodger: Agreed. I hope Obama will understand the crucial importance of the matter and make some decisions. It is a new territory, no doubt, and we're now at least 6 years behind in passing the laws we need to deal with it.

Czuch: Is your world really so static that you dont think it is okay to ever have anyone who doesnt fit into the traditional categories or either POW or normal civilian trial material???

Yes. The fundamental principles of legal certainty and prohibition of retroactivity is something I am not willing to give up on.

Artful Dodger: It is important to differentiate between military combatants and criminals. In the case of the former, you are right that the fact that they were caught on the battlefield fighting against "our" forces is sufficient to detain them and keep them at some place until the war ends. However, they must not be interrogated (let alone tortured) and they have to be returned back to their homes after the war is over. This is why the US decided not to grant the people detained in Cuba the POW status. But when they did that, they would automatically have to treat them as criminals and now you really would need more evidence (like video tapes with them committing a terrorist act, documents, confession, etc.). And that's what the US didn't want to do either, for obvious reasons. But, it is illegal not to grant the POW status and to deprive a person from the rights stated in the Declaration at the same time. Some presidential order cannot abrogate Geneva Treaties and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Artful Dodger: What then? What can you do with me if you have no evidence? Is that really such a difficult question to answer?

However, I believe there actually IS enough evidence to convict most of the guys down there in Guantánamo. The problem is that they should have been given the POW status or treated as "normal" terrorists, i.e. people commiting a crime. Everything would have been much easier. Now they're floating in the middle of nowhere, as nobody knows what their legal status is.

Vikings: 5-15, 10-15 or 25 years if you were proven guilty, of course. In a fair trial.

Vikings: Well, you will not have a reason to complain as you would either be sent back to the US to serve your sentence (5 to 15 years of imprisonment, or 10 to 15 years if you happen to kill somebody or act as a member of an organized group, or 25 years if you commit the act of terrorism in an exceptionally condemnable manner) there, or you would spend this time in our correctional facilities. We would NOT detain you for six years outside our country without a trial, depriving you of your fundamental rights.

Artful Dodger: Yes, I know that and I hope the thing will finally be solved. At last. Because some of those people have been detained there for almost 6 years now, without proper hearing. And that's just a terrible "oversight".

Vikings: I am not asking for a provision of law backing up your statement this time, as you would probably come up with an order issued by an assistant to the deputy vice-president saying that not all military combatants actually are military combatants and therefore they are not prisoners of war if captured.

Vikings: This precedent is not valid, since those Germans you are talking about were granted a POW status under the 1929 Geneva Convention, which was replaced by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949. However, your government opted not to include the Guantánamo detainees under the effect of said Convention and therefore, they should be treated as regular civil prisoners.

Artful Dodger: Their situations fall under a different classification. You have deprived them of their prisoner-of-war status, so no, their situation does not fall under a different classification. There is a prisoner of war and a "regular" prisoner. Nothing in between and nothing else.

Vikings: Oh, yes, this Presidential Order. I forgot that rule of law has already vanished from the United States. Presidential orders have a higher legal force and can overrule international treaties adopted by the US and UN resolutions.

Maybe Article 9 of the below mentioned Declaration would help: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. This applies to military combatants as well.

Vikings: Can you back your statement with any provision of law?

Vikings: So American citizens ARE granted a fair trial, while citizens of other coutries ARE NOT given the right to a fair trial? Hmm... I don't remember the US of A withdrawing from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose Article 10 says Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Artful Dodger

1. In America a person is granted a fair trial before they are convicted of a crime.
2. I don't think there are a bunch of innocent men sitting in Gitmo. And I also don't agree that they all are deserving of a trial.

Putting 1 and 2 together, you don't regard Guantánamo detainees as "persons". :)

Artful Dodger: In America a person is granted a fair trial before they are convicted of a crime.

I'm sure Guantánamo detainees would agree with that. :)

Jim Dandy: Is it?

anastasia: I just love the verb "whaa-whaa". Too funny. :)))

Bernice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

Czuch: I believe I had actually never commented on this issue here. Simply because I didn't have enough information back then. People are being "massaged" by the environmentalist propaganda and it seems to me as if it has become some new sort of religion, at least here in Europe. Governments keep adopting new and new "green" laws just because it's popular and even if they see and know it's just not right to limit people's freedoms only for the sake of some unfounded catastrophic theory, they do not dare to oppose the prevalent opinion. I'm already sick of this. I'm not free to use the bulbs I want (because they're not "environment-friendly"), I have to pay more for diesel fuel (because it's not "environment-friendly"), my taxes are higher because the government needs more money to fight the global warming, etc etc. Where's the reason? Can you imagine the laugh, the blast, people will have in some 200 years from now, looking back at what we're doing right now?

Czuch: Did somebody give you a lobotomy while you were gone?

Hmmm, I guess so, as I don't have a clue what you're getting at.

anastasia: Yes, I've noticed. Earth is always referred to in the feminine manner...by you.

So if we said OK, now we'll move back to caves, stop using all the "pollutants", etc etc, it would stop the sea level from rising, it would stop the glaciers from melting? I have to apologize to you for what I am now going to say, but that's just an unbelievable ignorance of the entire history of our planet, it's just so ridiculous. You know what's the biggest threat to Earth? People like you.

anastasia: Do you really think that man can reverse the climate changes? How would that be possible? Earth will do what he wants to do and nothing will stop him...

anastasia:

Humans are a parasite...a cancer on this earth

I just hope you are not being serious...