In a major reversal of policy, the United States will from now on extend protections under the Geneva Convention to all detainees in US military custody around the world, the Financial Times, London, has reported.
Quoting two people familliar with the move, the FT has reported that US deputy defence secretary Gordon England last week sent instructions to senior defence and military officials to extend Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions -- which bars inhuman treatment of prisoners and requires basic legal rights at trial -- to all detainees in military custody.
This reverses President George W Bush's policy set in 2002, under which members of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban were exempte from Geneva Convention protection. That had come in the first flush of the War on Terror, when President Bush ruled that 'new thinking was required in the law of war'.
The new instructions also follows a US Supreme Court ruling last month that the military commissions Bush set up to try prisoners at Guantanamo Bay violated not only Geneva Conventions but also American law. In a 5-3 ruling, the court ruled that the Bush administration had exceeded its brief in setting up the commissions since they did not offer the prisoners sufficient legal rights.
In fact, from Tuesday onwards, Arlen Specter, Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, will kick off Congressional hearings to examine this ruling in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, former driver of Osama bin Laden, and its ramifications for the 450 Guantanamo detainees.
Against this background, the latest instructions on Geneva Conventions is likely to go down well with US allies, at a time when President Bush is all set to leave for the G8 summit in Russia.
However, Geneva Conventions would continue to be denied to Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind behind the September 11 attacks who is being held in a CIA prison and thus is not part of the military detention system.
