Human Rights

US says Guantánamo inmates have Geneva rights

The US today reversed policy when it said all detainees at Guantánamo Bay and all other prisoners in US military custody were entitled to protection under the Geneva conventions.

The Bush administration had previously claimed terrorism suspects were "non-combatants" because they were fighting for a sect or faction and not a state and were therefore not subject to the Geneva conventions.

In August 2002, the US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales - then the White House counsel - described the conventions as "quaint" and "obsolete", and said there was an urgent need to acquire information from suspected Islamist militants.

I wonder what made the Bush Junta change their minds?

Another piece of good news is this:

Rethink 'war on terror' strategy, says former MI6 head

Former head of the Secret Intelligence Service tells Guardian Unlimited that CIA rendition flights and Guantánamo bay would be illegal under British law

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has criticised two current US policies in the "global war on terror" saying they would have been "illegal" under British law.

Sir Richard, formerly known in Whitehall as "C" and now master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, singled out CIA rendition flights and the indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantánamo for rebuke.

Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado before an audience of global politicians, experts and commentators last week, Sir Richard also said the west was "doomed" unless it "reclaimed the moral high ground".

Its about time we stop the government taking away our civil liberties and admit that the current way the 'war on terror' is handled needs improvement, you know try and follow international and current domestic laws instead of trying to get around it or trying to change behaviour by creating new legislation.