Washington – In a stunning reversal, the White House on Tuesday extended the prisoner-of-war protections of the Geneva Conventions to terrorism suspects held by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
White House press secretary Tony Snow announced the policy U-turn moments before Congress began hearings into revising procedures for prosecuting Guantanamo Bay detainees in light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last month that outlawed special military tribunals created by President Bush.
Snow contended his announcement was “not really a reversal of policy” because the Bush administration was merely implementing the Supreme Court ruling.
Several senators said regular courts-martial should be used instead of special military tribunals, but Bush administration officials said they wanted Congress to authorize military tribunals to satisfy objections raised by the Supreme Court.
The Bush administration announced the new policy on detainees on the eve of Bush’s trip to an eight-nation summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the chief executive was expected to face fresh criticism about U.S. policies toward terrorism detainees and demands for Washington to close the Guantanamo Bay facility.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon English outlined the revised policy in a memo ordering U.S. military commanders to “comply with the standards” of the Geneva Conventions for detaining and prosecuting terrorism suspects – including al-Qaeda detainees previously exempted from prisoner-of-war protections.
The Geneva rules dating from 1949 outlaw torture, humiliating and degrading treatment, and imposing prison sentences or executions without using “a regularly constituted court” that affords detainees “all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”
In ruling that the Bush administration must abide by the Geneva Conventions, the Supreme Court rejected a White House contention that enemy combatants deserve a legal twilight beyond the full protections of the Geneva Conventions because they are not from a recognized nation, were not wearing uniforms when they were captured and did not observe traditional rules of war.
The high court said the Bush administration had to consult Congress if it wanted to use special military tribunals.
Bush had publicly rejected Geneva Conventions protections for “unlawful enemy combatants” such as al-Qaeda suspects as recently as Friday during a news conference in Chicago.
Pentagon officials have charged 10 terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay so far, with as many as 80 of the 450 remaining enemy combatants facing potential charges.
With the Senate Judiciary Committee opening the first of three Capitol Hill hearings this week, leading senators said they wanted to use the armed forces’ court-martial system as a model for revised U.S. military tribunals for terrorism suspects.
John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee that will take up the issue later this week, said military tribunals could be resurrected “within the confines” of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former career Navy pilot, told reporters that the Supreme Court ruling suggested that the Uniform Code of Military Justice serve “as the outline for these cases.”
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the career Navy lawyer whose client triggered the landmark Supreme Court ruling, told the panel that the nation’s “existing court-martial system provides a battle-tested way to try terrorists today.
“Before junking an entire system, we should give that system a try,” Swift added.
But Bush administration lawyers argued that Congress should authorize the existing special military tribunals to satisfy the Supreme Court, rather than bringing terrorism suspects before military courts-martial.
