Is it really a question of guilt or innocence
- Thread starter ajrtd
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There is a reason why we have a legal process. It means that you cannot be imprisoned because someone says you are guilty. Humans are fallible. The purpose of the legal system is to test the evidence in court. Unfortunately Guantanamo Bay was in part a fishing trip, capture some foreigners, cos they could, and then torture them to elicit a 'confession'.
Why did they not take them to America? Because if they did, they would have been subject to the American legal process.
Rather than be complicit in this farce, we would have done better to monitor hate preachers in some UK mosques, and deport or prosecute them. Instead we allowed hate preachers to radicalise UK subjects.
I think I need a beer ...
N
nauseous
I think you'll find that status doesn't apply in times of war. Some rules/laws as with certain legal proceedings go out the window when war is declared, naturally.
Ignoring the fact that Aamer was not captured by the US, so they have no evidence that he is "the enemy" at all, implies that it is an arbitrary decision as to who can be incarcerated as "the enemy". Pick anyone up, call them "the enemy", deny them legal assistance to disprove that they are "the enemy", and that's OK. That sounds awfully familiar.
The "enemy" implies a conflict, so the Geneva Convention surely applies? Unless, you decide that you won't apply the convention you have signed up to after all. So your enemy conveniently gets no rights in national or international law.
Or perhaps you can have enemies without a conflict, in which case there must surely be lots of North Koreans, Chinese, Russians, Somalians, Iranians, and Venesualans locked up in US cells. Or even those from Texas who have expressed hostile intent against the federal government?
Or maybe, just maybe, you make up a load of nonsense in an attempt to justify your extrajudicial and unlawful actions.
Yes that does answer the question.
The "enemy" implies a conflict, so the Geneva Convention surely applies? Unless, you decide that you won't apply the convention you have signed up to after all. So your enemy conveniently gets no rights in national or international law.
Or perhaps you can have enemies without a conflict, in which case there must surely be lots of North Koreans, Chinese, Russians, Somalians, Iranians, and Venesualans locked up in US cells. Or even those from Texas who have expressed hostile intent against the federal government?
Or maybe, just maybe, you make up a load of nonsense in an attempt to justify your extrajudicial and unlawful actions.
Yes that does answer the question.
Maybe. Assuming that he was really the enemy as claimed. That's the danger, if he was just an innocent or misguided party or someone a bloke wants out of the way because he wants his business or wife.
I'm not arguing for the Taliban, but there are fundamental principles that we can either maintain or cast aside when it suits. The state can't be allowed to incarcerate who it wants, when it likes, for whatever reason it wants. That is what is at stake. And however distasteful the alternative, that is the choice.
Like honour amongst thieves, or the Mafia's 'costa nostra', of the principles of a human trafficking or paedophile ring? I'm sure they all have principles.
There is the concept that a society's principles become it's laws. So they keep both.
There is the concept that a society's principles become it's laws. So they keep both.
Interesting to see that ajstone advocates murder, and does not respect the law.
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