Johannesburg | Thursday
A FORMER chief prosecutor for United Nations international criminal tribunals on Thursday slated the United States for trying to create a new category of prisoner for fighters captured in Afghanistan.
“It seems to me the United States is creating some new category,” said Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for the UN tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
“Either they’re prisoners of war, in which case they are entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. (Or) if they’re not prisoners of war, they are common criminals and they should be brought to trial in the US if it wishes to do that,” he added.
Goldstone, who is a South African constitutional court judge, added his voice to a growing number of groups attached to the UN and human rights advocates who have expressed concern about the conditions in which prisoners from Afghanistan are being transferred to and held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
“The best solution, it seems to me, would be for them to be placed before an international criminal court,” he told SABC radio news.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said on Wednesday she was very concerned about allegations over the treatment of prisoners, responding to reports that they were shackled and drugged during their transfer from Afghanistan to the US military base in Cuba.
Robinson said the overwhelming view in legal circles was that the fighters were prisoners of war and their status was defined and protected by the third Geneva Convention of 1949.
The conditions surrounding the determination of the status of prisoners of war and minimum standards for their treatment are laid down in the third Geneva Convention.