Military Jury Gives Hamdan Time Served Plus Five Months:
Wow. Hamdan's response:
Hamdan thanked the jurors for the sentence and repeated his apology for having served bin Laden.
"I would like to apologize one more time to all the members and I would like to thank you for what you have done for me," Hamdan told the panel of six U.S. military officers, hand-picked by the Pentagon for the first U.S. war crimes trial in a half century.
The government is going to have to review its strategy. I understand they're already reconsidering plans to try Bin Laden's gardener and dry cleaner.
Wow indeed. That's not my hope for him.
Still dubious about the ex post facto issue, but I'm unclear whether that's moot since Hamdan (1) will require years to appeal and (2) will be in custody at least for the remainder of his sentence.
I note that 5 months is a couple of weeks away from the inauguration. Maybe Hamdan will walk sometime after that.
Don't forget best-looking. Definitely also the best-looking. And the smartest. Yeah, that's it. And really humble at the same time!
In any case, it will be interesting to see whether any "righties" will dare attack the jury for being liberals / traitors / terrorist-lovers etc.
Given that "time served" was over five years, I wouldn't exactly say the commission let him off easy.
It's that the government sought life without parole. And the jury came back with time served. The only bigger rejection of the government's entire theory would have been an acquittal on all charges.
Niiiice.
So, even if all the appeals and whatnot fail (and, honestly, why bother at this point), will W let him out? Or will he assert authority to keep him for a few more weeks?
The appeals would drag on for years. My point was that there will be a new sheriff in town Jan. 20, and if that's Obama, we can expect that just possibly Hamdan will be set free after he serves out his sentence. I have no faith in McCain's doing the same, but am open to being surprised.
That's my take. Bloggers and other commentors are blegged for theirs.
I don't say he got let off easy. But the government was pushing for a minimum of 30 years and hoping for life.
What I really object to is the governments histrionics about anything to do with "terrorism." This not only damages the rights of individuals, it seriously damages the government's credibility.
Look, if this had been a mafia multiple murder prosecution, Hamdan is the first guy the government would have offered immunity and set up in the witness protection program. They would have spent hours telling the jury that Hamdan was a good man who got in over his head but had seen the error of his ways, etc. But because it's Bin Laden instead of John Gotti, Hamdan is Satan's left testicle and one of the most evil and dangerous beings on the planet. Piffle. I don't buy it and neither did the jury.
I also agree, by the way, that these trials aren't "fair" in pretty much any conventional sense of the word. Which makes the government's embarrasment even worse. They re-wrote the rules to throw out the rules of evidence. And forget the right of confrontation -- defendants aren't even allowed to see all the evidence, much less the actual witness. Yet, even with all these absurd advantages, the government managed to fall flat on its face in its very first prosecution. This is Wen Ho Lee all over again, only worse.
And, given that "time served" is more than 5 years, this isn't a slap on the wrist (except by comparison). I doubt that they would have given time served plus 5 monthes if time served was only, say, a month.
The jurors thoughtfully chose a sentence that expressed their opinion on the severity of the crime. Which was far less than the government's opinion, but still deserving of punishment.
But finding him guilty and sentencing him to time served effectively frees the administration from the possibility of further embarassment over this.
They guy basically got 5 years for a traffic violation and having the wrong friends. I personally don't think the guy is any kind of terrorist. The average guy over in afghanistan knows so little of world affairs that it makes the average US redneck look like a Rhodes Scholar. They had no TV, internet or newspapers to bring them news that Bin Laden was an enemy of the US or that he was setting up us the bomb. To them, he was just another rich guy who needed a driver.
Obviously my uninformed opinion, but I haven't heard any better ways to describe this situation.
One also wonders if Jose Padilla, while on appeal or in a new motion to the trial court, can argue the reasonableness of his much longer sentence in light of much shorter military commission sentences for essentially the same offense to the two Gitmo Defendants.
I also hope that the Commission members watch their backs. I can't imagine that their superiors are thrilled with this outcome.
You raise a good point. I believe double jeopardy applies in normal military tribunals. Certainly a court martial will bar a federal prosecution in an article three court.
But I vaguely recall reading that the terrorism military tribunals aren't subject to double jeopardy. That's certainly the case for the unlawful combatant tribunals. In this case, the judge admitted that he may have made a mistake in instucting the jury regarding the conspiracy charge so, if double jeopardy doesn't apply, the government will certainly appeal. If so, we can expect Hamdan II appearing soon in a Supreme Court near you.
This guy is apparently a Yemeni who knew all about bin Laden and his naughtiness but (according to him) decided to continue working for him because he needed the money.
Indeed. Whom will he drive next?
America is getting so soft! He's just gonna go blow himself up anyway.
I hardly think he qualifies for a green card.
Once enough of the American people decide their government is unable or unwilling to protect them, they'll start doing it themselves, and their actions will not be limited to non-citizens.
As an example, death penalty opponents almost always overlook the necessity that the public perceive that justice has been done, and the public's perception is not a matter of legalisms. The American people are not dispassionate jurists and lawyers, and they are not interested in, or satisfied by, legalisms. Justice, for large elements of America, entails retribution and no amount of verbiage by lawyers can change that. Spiritual and moral arguments might, but not legal arguments.
This principle applies in spades to foreign terrorists. The ONLY justification for leniency towards terrorists, including all their co-conspirators and associated lawful combatants, which the American people as a whole might find acceptable is expediency, and here perception is everything.
No effort at all has been made to prepare public opinion for such a light sentence. Nothing could better illustrate the idiocy, as well as the futility, of "trials" of terrorists.
I really, really, fear the consequences of this. At some point the American people will uncork.
A sure money bet: Bush will issue an EO to direct Hamdan to be held until the end of the war on terra (aka forever) and put the ball in President Obama's court to rescind it (thereby being a sitting target for the right). It's pure Bush: using significant policy matters for politics.
I doubt that even a large minority of Americans will be upset that Osama's driver got 5 1/2 years.
And certainly this administration's actions in the months preceding 9/11 speak to this.
I doubt a significant minority of Americans know now, or will in a month, that Osama had a driver. You overlook my comment about the complete absence of preparation of the public for this. That shows the government's complete cluelessness about the role of public opinion here. It doesn't exist for them.
Which means that this light sentence will be repeated over and over. The unlawful combatant trials have been captured by the criminal justice meme. The court, and the executive branch as a whole, feel that justice for terrorists and unlawful combatant prisoners is not merely more important than public perception of the government's willingness to protect them, but that the latter interest is not worth serving AT ALL.
Public opinion is slow to form and slower to move but, when it does move, tends to be inexorable. It's going to move here. That will take years, but it will happen.
Are you really advocating lock people up who don't desserve it solely because it will make the public think the government is doing something to protect them?
the original TS -- "Look, if this had been a mafia multiple murder prosecution, Hamdan is the first guy the government would have offered immunity and set up in the witness protection program."
Sure, if he pulled a Joe Vellachi and told us where Bin Laden was hiding, where all of the bodies were buried, how the Organization was set up, who was who, who did what, who the money man was, etc., I'd be in favor of giving him immunity for being an accomplice for all of the murders committed by Bin Ladin's followers of Islam.
Until then, he is just another confessed Moslem terrorist
For old time's sake?
I think your perception of the American people is as distorted as that of those who think there's broad public support to try Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yu, etc. for war crimes.
Excuse me, but what acts of terrorism is he alleged to have committed? Even the government admits that all they have on him that he was a passive observer of what was going on around him. He was a combatant only in the sense that supply personnel are combatants (he was captured not participating in combat but delivering some missiles to the front). We didn't imprison or even charge Hitler's secretary with any crimes after the war.
The problem here is precisely the difference between criminal justice and foreign counter-intelligence. Informant deals with criminals are public once the judgment of conviction and sentence are pronounced.
Publicity is absolutely the wrong thing in counter-intelligence. You don't want the enemy to know what you know. Plus the various games such as surveillance of a released prisoner, or release of a prisoner who hasn't talked as a means of convincing his own side that he has too talked such that they should whack him, or threaten to whack him, as a means of further inducing him to cooperate, etc.
For that matter the mere fact that we are holding a given terrorist as a prisoner should be secret. Everything should be secret - their interrogation, their trials, their sentences, their executions, etc. That is how to conduct counter-intelligence in wartime.
War is not peace. The criminal justice system is not a means of conducting military hostilities.
The whole thing here is nuts and that is being dramatized right now.
Nathan M., you will never, ever understand the difference between war and peace, or the difference between citizens and non-citizens. You don't want to.
You remind me of someone, wait, I remember:
"Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.
We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!"
The verdict and the sentence seem to reflect this. Even the prosocutor seems to think he was low level, he asked for less than the maximum sentence, and the rational for that reduced (but still pretty stiff) term was not to punish him for what he actually did, but to "send a message". Classic prosecutorese for "sure I'm overreaching, but work with me people."
I totally agree. He was no more culpable in bin Laden's acts of terrorism than a mafia accountant is responsible for a gangland murder. Both of them could read about the crimes in the paper or see it on TV, and do no more than vaguely wonder "did my guy have something to do with that?" And of course keep showing up for work the next day.
i seem to have missed the election where you were elected speaker for the entire american population. i'm also fairly certain that you never asked me my opinion before decided what the american people think.
I understand war and noncitizens, but I don't want to place blind trust in the government to do the right thing.
Now, in a true war where our nation might be overrun and subjugated (to communists, say), it's a more difficult choice. But I don't see the terrorist threat as being of quite that dimension.
I agree. My point is that the government (it's more than the Bush administration) is completely oblivious to the role of domestic support for the war in this matter. Such considerations never entered their heads.
Hamdan was an unlawful combatant and so richly deserves execution. Had he been caught driving a jeep behind American lines, as one of Skorzeny's commandoes, during 1944's Battle of the Bulge, he'd have been immediately executed, after an expedient field court, along with the armed members of his party.
Mere status as an unlawful combatant merits execution absent good reasons not to kill them.
Thomas_Holsinger: Nathan M., you will never, ever understand the difference between war and peace, or the difference between citizens and non-citizens. You don't want to.
Well, Nathan, I think you have your answer.
So what do you think, can we forget about the whole "illegal enemy combatant" thing yet?
It is interesting, particularly, that the judge warmed up to Hamdan and felt sorry for him. Since the judge has seen the evidence (even the "secret" evidence), his reaction to Hamdan says a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of the government's case.
Padilla, I think, was different. He was a US Citizen, running out to join Al Qaeda, which is more akin to treason in many people's minds.
Maybe by Battle of the Bulge standards, but come on, that was 60 years ago, at the end of a long war with 10's of millions of casualties. It's like a bar fight, it may start out fairly fair, but toward the end when both of them are on the ground exhausted and the first one that can find an eye socket with a thumb is going to win, then summary excecutions may be justifiable.
Another of the detainees facing trial was a 15 year old Canadian pressed into being a child soldier by his father at the time he was detained, for whom there may be no reliable proof that he killed anyone. He must be a mastermind of the operation. Apparently, the main reason he's still there is because Canada has chosen to leave him out in the cold and not ask for his release.
Certainly, some detainees are less culpable. The administration admits that some of the Chinese detainees are not enemy combatants, are beyond the scope of the AUMF, and the U.S. has no basis for holding them other than not having any good idea where to send them.
We've sent lots of alleged terrorists much faster through the conventional criminal justice system, which is not nearly as expensive as creating a new criminal justice and corrections system in Cuba from scratch. We handle millions of criminal justice cases a year in the United States, some very serious and very complex. We've got twenty guys at Gitmo who might face commission charges. You tell me which system works better.
I missed the part where Hamdan wore an American uniform.
Skorzeny himself was acquitted, freed, and died of natural causes in 1975.
You have hit on another side of the same coin Kazinki noted. These are show trials, i.e., they are meant for public consumption, and the only public the U.S. government is even trying to address here is foreign. That American public opinion in the war on terror, i.e. of public support for waging it, is a factor in the war is quite outside the U.S. government's frame of reference.
That is, in fact, normal fed behavior, but it is unusual for an administration and further highlights what an idiot President Bush is.
He is auditioning as the worst President since Buchanan. If his do-nothing policy on Iran results in rampant nuclear proliferation, as I predicted three years ago (see Gerald Baker's concurrence), Bush will be known as America's worst President.
... and this kind of comment from the right is cold-eyed realism. From the left, BDS.
Your comments are starting to show flecks of spittle. The Hamden trial was no more a show trial than starting a huge series of mafia trials off with a lower level hitman or bagman. The prosecutor wants to see how his evidence plays, and what he can get in terms of convictions and sentence before he goes for the higher value targets. It is not staged because he can't control the outcome, but it is mangaged, because the prosecutor can control who is tried first and the charges.
Bush isn't perfect by any means and I too wish he would have invaded more countries. But I am grateful for the countries he has invaded, and can just hope there is more to come, even if time is running out.
I don't care what his age was, someone that detonates a grenade trying to kill his captors/medics while they are tending wounded on the battlefield needs to stand trial
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Here is a picture of the innocent youth in happier times making a bomb that was found in the compound where he was captured. So whether he killed anybody or not is immaterial, he was trying to kill people.
To be an utter pedant, Hitler's four female typists weren't charged with wrongdoing, although I believe they were held for interrogation in aid of the historical record. Hitler's secretary was Martin Bormann (AKA "the unspeakable Martin Bormann") who would surely been charged, tried, found guilty, hanged, cremated and had his ashes dumped in a roadside ditch had he been captured.
The only reason he was not executed was because, as you said, he was never captured.
Let me know when I should stop being polite and respectful.
You said it was a test trial. ohwillikie rightly noted that the Bush administration said the trials were reserved "for less than two dozen of the "worst of the worst" at Guantanamo". And it was a public trial. That makes them "show trials". Why are they held in public, instead of in secret?
They're being held in public because the feds want to send a message to someone. Who is that? It ain't us.
Like I said, this is normal fed behavior. What is unusual is that a wartime administration and President are utterly ignoring the effects of this on domestic support for prosecuting the war. But that happens to be NORMAL for President Bush and his administration. They're classic "big government" Republicans.
Which is why the public supports the war so little. And why Bush is angling for a place in history as the worst President since Buchanan, if not in all of American history.
So much for the rationalization that the technique was used for "interrogation" rather than simply the infliction of pain for its own sake.
Well, while we are getting all pedantic, Bormann was not Hitler's personal secretary, he was Chief of the Parteikanzlei, which was basically Chairman of the Nazi Party. It's like saying Condoleeza Rice is Pres. Bush's "secretary".
A slightly more relevant analogy would have been Josh Bolten, not Condi Rice.
When the eee-e-e-vil Bush cowboy concludes his second term, what are the odds that Iran laughs in the face of whoever is elected, and resumes its atomic bomb-baiting of the rest of the world? I'll fade you.
OTOH, if you're an American soldier or Marine, you'd better take care.
I believe the Geneva Conventions state that all prisoners -- whether POWs or unlawful combatants, are entitled to humane treatmetn and "all the judicial guarantees recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
I am, of course, assuming that we still consider ourselves to be civilized people.
I gather you are not a lawyer. You used the term, "civilized". Grin.
That is not a legal argument. There are discussions on this board as to whether a given means of execution constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Execution per se is not federally unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment. Some argue that it should be, which is an admission that it isn't yet under the Constitution and laws of the United States.
This means that execution per se is not inhumane treatment under any treaty signed by the United States.
Furthermore the United States has executed captives held by American forces for mere status as unlawful combatants. It is true that generally this entails conviction for other offenses in violation of the rules of war, such as being an enemy combatant captured while wearing an American uniform.
This was often carried to extremes, however, especially when German forces in the European Theater of Operations 1944-45 tested the limits of American regard for legal nicities in such matters. Notably by having their troops try to scout out American positions, unarmed but in German uniforms, with explanations when captured that they were trying to surrender and/or defect. American forces caught on to that and shot the dudes on the spot, often without even a summary court, but almost generally with the approval (express in many instances, not merely tacit) of higher commanders.
Not that we were above such games, i.e., intentional violation of the rules of war, ourselves. German-speaking American Rangers wearing German uniforms infilitrated behind German lines in the Battle of Aachen, chiefly as artillery spotters, and were summarily executed by the Germans when captured. Which was entirely proper.
War is brutal.
Hamdan is supposedly in the "worst of the worst" and the government sought a life sentence for him. Instead, he officially serves five years and change. By comparison, Wesley Snipes got a federal sentence of three years for not paying income tax. That should give you a rough idea of just how dangerous the military commission thinks Hamdan actually is. There are low-level drug mules who will serve more time than Hamdan will, assuming he gets released when he is supposed to.
I'm not exactly sure what the GC provided for in WWII, but as of the 1949 GC, summary execution, under any circumstances, for any reason, is not permissible. To claim that U.S military or international law ever envisions a situation where summary execution is permissible is simply a lie.
You are simply lying, ignorant or both.
I see you didn't learn your lesson the last time. This is too easy.
"I'm not exactly sure what the GC provided for in WWII ..." juxtaposed to "..You are simply lying, ignorant or both."
Talk Point 2 (The actual result): The entire process is a face since Hamdan was only a low-level flunky.
See, no matter what the result, someone can come up with a talking point to mar the trial's (and all future trials') legitimacy. This is fun.
I really feel for them, but as bad as they look, they were set up. Again.
JF Thomas said:
You have mocked him for saying that.
So you are saying you believe summary execution is now permissible under the Geneva Convention? Can you back this up?
If anyone thinks the split verdict demonstrates fairness, maybe the Bush Administration should charge you with two "war crimes," acquit you of one (which you didn't do anyway), convict you of the other (which really isn't a "war crime"), and then imprison you at Gitmo for 5 1/2 years. Yeah, that demonstrates that the system is fair.
If by the "Ameican People" you mean white people in the old south...
We're just going to hand him over to the Yemenis, anyways. If this idiot had realized who was next on his dance card, he would have pled guilty.
The difference is that cops can't just decide to start shooting suspects or handing them over to other criminals to do it for them after a quick field interrogation.
Thanks to the fame that the US has graciously provided him, I predict he writes a best-selling book disclosing his treatment at the hand of the great satan and gives interviews that run on Al Jazeera for months. Good work again, CIA.
Talking Point 1 (Hamdan found guilty of all crimes and sentenced to life): This entirely fair trial proves that Hamdan was indeed one of the "worst of the worst." So we really don't need to be holding trials in the first place.
Talk Point 2 (The actual result): This surprisingly lenient sentence and the judge's sympathetic remarks prove that the administration and military are entirely fair. So we really don't need to be holding trials in the first place.
What happened here, Dave N, is that a process that still only provides minimal (and sub-constitutional) legal protections to the defendant resulted in a sentence that makes a mockery of the claims of the Bush administration and the Pentagon. I wonder what would happen if we applied even more of the Constitution to these cases.
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That's one form for the two questions that will be further litigated. One being whether or not "material support for terrorism" can be triable by a military commission at all (e.g., take it as a new offense in the military commission venue); and another being whether or not the codification isn't something "new," ergo the conviction isn't based on an ex post facto law.
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Congress is free to direct the adjudication of certain crimes into certain courts, and nothing other than "that's not the way it was before" seems to stand in the way of putting aliens into military commissions, when the charge is material support for terrorism. That on a "forward looking" basis. Aliens would get less process than citizens, on the same offense.
The Mississippi Supreme Court held many years back that this was reversible error; if the prosecutor wants to send a message, he should use Western Union, the court said.
Military commissions are different I guess -- you can lock a man up for decades to "send a message," not because it's what he personally deserves.
Happily the panel thought otherwise.
I doubt that. The prosecuter always wants to send a message, and it isn't up to the MSC to tell the prosecutor what to charge, or recomend for sentencing. I suspect it was the Judge that was rebuked and reversed for trying to send a message, not the prosecutor.
The issue which each juror must resolve is not whether or not he or she wishes to “send a message” but whether or not he or she believes that the evidence showed the defendant to be guilty of the crime charged. The jury is an arm of the State but it is not an arm of the prosecution. The State includes both the prosecution and the accused. The function of the jury is to weigh the evidence and determine the facts. When the prosecution wishes to send a message they should employ Western Union. Mississippi jurors are not messenger boys.
Williams v. State, 522 So. 2d 201, 209 (Miss. 1988).
I think Holsinger's point is that the Geneva convention will be controling of course in all non-battlfield tribunals and procedings. However rule .303 will always have local jurisdiction on the battlefield.
That makes more sense. A guilty verdict is indeed no way to send a message, and the judge should not have allowed that. But a sentence is an appropriate way to send the message and the courts have always recognized its deterrent value.
I'm not grasping the Great Significance of the sentence, apart from the trial being the first of its kind. A kangaroo court is not made less so by the type of sentences it hands out. Illegal treatment of detainees is not vitiated by releasing them from the custody of the jailer.
Isn't this the sort of thing that warms the cockles of your angry hearts - the military making decisions on the war on terror, instead of the hippies that infest every level of society, legislative government, and judicial government?
Surely you can be happy that a criminal of some connection to the terrorists was able to be tortured for a few years without any semblance of due process?
It's pretty clear, isn't it, that at least on the internet, pretty much ANY set of facts can be spun by both the left and right to support their respective meta-narratives?
I'm not at all happy with the procedures for the commission, and I think there are good reasons to question the charge to the jury. But the sentence shows, to me anyway, that the officers on the jury performed their duty as good jurors should. That's a good thing, regardless of the other flaws.
It's a bit like the damages awarded in the Scopes trial. The verdict was wrong, but the damages awarded were as correct as they could be other things being equal.
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My impression is that the new rules are substantially the same as the old rules. The only difference is that instead of being promulgated by the executive, acting alone, they were promulgated by Congress, and Congress adopted the executive's recommendations for infractions and procedure.
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A major infirmity noted in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was that the Military Commissions were created by the executive, acting alone, whereas (said SCOTUS) the Constitution provides that such commissions are to be created by Congress.
And I can't really comment on how the jurors did their jobs. There's no way to know what a true civilian jury would have done. Also, the rules in play here prevented the jurors from seeing some evidence that would be relevant, but allowed the jurors to see evidence that was unreliable.
I wouldn't serve on such a jury, though I assume they had little choice in the matter.
Illegal treatment how? SCOTUS has been supervising the prodedures almost to the point of micromanagement, and the adminstration has conformed to the rulings, or gone to congress to change the law exactly as the justices have directed. This despite the fact that SCOTUS had made numerous ad-hoc modifications to a large body of existing law that the Administration should have been entitled to rely on.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/COM/470-750056?OpenDocument
This is a cite as to how to treat spies, the definition of a spy, and what happens to someone who loses POW status as a result of not wearing a uniform. Can you please provide a cite to your Title I status definition and which Convention it appears in? I could only find one instance of 'summary execution' in the Conventions, and it referred to resistance fighters in occupied territories.
Hamdan was apprehended in a war zone bearing arms (two anti-aircraft missiles in the trunk).
I think Hamdan is “franc-tireur” who fails to qualify as a POW in at least two of the four eligibility requirements in the last paragraph below.
I’m pressed for time, so here’s the wiki entry for “francs-tireurs”. I’ve highlighted the part that allows executions of captured “francs-tireurs”.
From wiki:
Prisoner status
The term Francs-tireurs has been used for an armed fighter who, if captured, is not necessarily entitled to prisoner of war status. This issue was a point of disagreement at the 1899 Hague Conference and was the genesis for the Martens Clause. The Martens Clause was introduced as a compromise wording for the dispute between the Great Powers who considered francs-tireurs to be unlawful combatants subject to execution on capture and smaller states who maintained that they should be considered lawful combatants[4][5].
In the Hostages Trial (or, officially, 'The United States of America vs. Wilhelm List, et al.), the seventh of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, the tribunal found that on the question of partisans, the then current laws of war (the Hague Convention No. IV from 1907), the partisan fighters in southeast Europe could not be considered lawful belligerents under Article 1 of said convention[6]. On Wilhelm List, the tribunal stated
"We are obliged to hold that such guerrillas were francs tireurs who, upon capture, could be subjected to the death penalty. Consequently, no criminal responsibility attaches to the defendant List because of the execution of captured partisans..."[6]
With the Geneva Conventions, namely Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 francs-tireurs were entitled to prisoner of war status provided that they are commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, have a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, carry arms openly and conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
IANAL BTW (thank God)
I refer you to statements by ICRC officials, and news accounts of the contents of the ICRC report.
Please provide relevant case citations for such supervision, with page references or passages from the operative opinions. Thanks in advance.
I wasn't aware that the ICRC was mentioned in Article III. And if you haven't been paying attention to all the Hamdan, Hamdi, Boudimene, Rasul, Padilla, etc. decisions, it is hardly my place to tutor you here.
I don't know anyone who considers Hamdan a heroic victim, but does the judge live in Marin County, because he sounded pretty fond of him?
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And if you think this is the other people's fault -- you're one of the few who sees the world clearly, but fools wrongly view you as a crank, a blowhard, or as someone who overdoes it on the hyperbole -- then you should still rewrite your post before hitting enter. After all, if you're one of the few who sees the world clearly, then surely it's especially important that you frame your arguments in a way that is persuasive and as unalienating as possible, even to fools.
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Naturally, there's always a risk that this discretion will be used erroneously, no matter how well-intentioned the editor. But discussion groups (especially on the Internet, but also off it) generally need an editor who'll occasionally make such judgments.
And, remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.