I’ve seen a number of blogs refer to that this AP story about American troops taking insurgent’s wives hostage:

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of “leveraging” their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family’s door telling him “to come get his wife.”

In one memo, a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer described what happened when he took part in a raid on an Iraqi suspect’s house in Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, on May 9, 2004. The raid involved Task Force (TF) 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile targets.

“During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target’s surrender,” wrote the 14-year veteran officer.

So the fact that the U.S. military has done this seems to be an established fact.  I’ve seen a lot of blogosphere outrage over this.  What I haven’t seen is anyone noting that this is actually a war crime.

The Geneva Conventions on Treatment of Prisoners of War, Article 3 states:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

You cannot take a non-combatant hostage.  I think a woman nursing a child at home is definitely not a combatant, and it is illegal to hold her hostage.

Not that this is new.  Back in November 2003, the U.S. took the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri hostage.  Izzat was a “top Saddam associate”.  And the western media again did not ever mention that this is a war crime.

The Council on Foreign Relations said this in 2003:

What does international law say about prisoners of war?

The most important rule, enshrined in Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, is that prisoners of war (POWs) must be treated humanely.

What are the most serious violations?

Violence, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture.

Violations of personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.

Sentencing and executing prisoners without a judgment handed down by a regularly constituted court that offers all standard judicial guarantees.

Hostage-taking.

You might think that ignoring the Geneva Conventions is something the U.S. can just do whenever it feels like, since “international law” has no forum to prosecute any offenders.

Except that American domestic law specifically states that the U.S. must abide by the Geneva Conventions.  U.S. Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 118 § 2441 states:

(a) Offense – Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

(b)  Circumstances.– The circumstances referred to in subsection (a) are that the person committing such war crime or the victim of such war crime is a member of the Armed Forces of the United States or a national of the United States (as defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act).

(c) Definition.– As used in this section the term “war crime” means any conduct–

(1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;
(2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907;
(3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party and which deals with non-international armed conflict;

C3 is the relevent section, since that’s the part about taking non-combatants hostage.  The punishment for a violating this statute is either life in prison or execution in American law.

Holding the wife of a wanted fugitive/terrorist is a war crime in American law.

Here’s a few more Geneva Conventions that the U.S. has broken.  The same Article 3 of the POW protocol:

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

Of course the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib certainly rose to the level of “outrage upon personal dignity”.  Even if you believe in the “few bad apples” theory, the truth is that not a single person has ever been charged (much less convicted) of violating the Geneva Conventions or American war crimes violations.

You can read the details here by Lynndie England and Graner and the rest were charged with “dereliction of duty” and “maltreatment” of prisoners.  Not a word about either torture or war crimes or violations of the Geneva Conventions.

It also happened to other Iraqi POW’s at other locations as well, although those were less well publicized.

But that 4th Protocol of the Geneva Convention is a rather lengthy document.  Article 13:

[p]risoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.

You might remember that when Iraqis put American POW’s on television, this was considered a war crime and a violation of the Geneva Conventions.  Yet the U.S. has displayed Iraqi POW’s on television on multiple occasions.

Not to mention that Saddam Hussein’s image was also broadcast all around the world when he was captured.

But wait! There’s more.  The Geneva Conventions Article 22:

Prisoners of war may be interned only in premises located on land and affording every guarantee of hygiene and healthfulness. Except in particular cases which are justified by the interest of the prisoners themselves, they shall not be interned in penitentiaries.

In December 2005 inmates stored the armory of their prison, which was run by Americans and not the Iraqis.  The report states that Iraqi prisons are “overcrowded”.  Other reports state that the prisons are patently unhygienic.

Geneva Conventions Article 25:

Prisoners of war shall be quartered under conditions as favourable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area. The said conditions shall make allowance for the habits and customs of the prisoners and shall in no case be prejudicial to their health.

The foregoing provisions shall apply in particular to the dormitories of prisoners of war as regards both total surface and minimum cubic space, and the general installations, bedding and blankets.

From a report about what life is like inside Abu Ghraib:

The supplies to prisoners consist of underwear, towels, bed sheets, blanket, detergent powders, soap, shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste. However, when we accessed the prison and queried how many persons received their dues, we found that less than 5% had received their dues. I personally, received none of the above-mentioned items.

Article 119:

Parties to the conflict shall communicate to each other the names of any prisoners of war who are detained until the end of the proceedings or until punishment has been completed.

Meanwhile the U.S. refuses to release statistics on detainees.  By the way, they aren’t detainees, they are Prisoners of War.

Article 79:

In all places where there are prisoners of war, except in those where there are officers, the prisoners shall freely elect by secret ballot, every six months, and also in case of vacancies, prisoners’ representatives entrusted with representing them before the military authorities

I can find no record of any Iraqi POW’s holding such elections.

And so on and so forth.  You might note that all of the above describes POW’s taken in Iraq and not Afghanistan.  That’s because the Pentagon, Abu Gonzalez, John Yoo and other Torture Masters “determined” that people fighting in Afghanistan somehow do not qualify for the Geneva Conventions.  I vehemently disagree with that legal analysis, as I’ve written about many times before.

Surely the people “detained” in Iraq are POW’s though, right?  Department of Defense legal briefing from April 7, 2003:

Before describing our policies, I should note that in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the United States and coalition partners detained 86,743 Iraqi prisoners of war. These Iraqi prisoners of war were given all the protections required by the Geneva conventions.

Our aims and acts are precisely the same in the current conflict. We are providing and will continue to provide captured Iraqi combatants with the protections of the Geneva conventions and other pertinent international laws.

What’s bitterly ironic is that the same legal briefing also noted this:

With respect to Iraqi violations of the Geneva conventions and other laws of war, the Iraqi regime is not complying with the Geneva conventions. Before turning to a summary of the Iraqi violations, I should note that in Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, the Iraqis mistreated U.S. and coalition prisoners and forces in numerous respects, including physical abuse and torture, forced propaganda statements, food deprivation, denial of International Committee of the Red Cross access until the day of repatriation, and much more.

The only atrocity that the Iraqi “regime” committed to POW’s that the United States has not is that the U.S. has allowed the Red Cross to visit all Iraqi POW’s.  And I note that the Red Cross cited many examples of abuse against POW’s by American troops.

But I guess we shouldn’t be shocked by the U.S. committing war crimes in Iraq.  After all, the administration doesn’t even oppose the mistreatment of Americans by Saddam Hussein:

The Bush administration is seeking to block a group of American troops who were tortured in Iraqi prisons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 from collecting any of the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets they won last summer in a federal court ruling against the government of Saddam Hussein.

In a court challenge that the administration is winning so far but is not eager to publicize, administration lawyers have argued that Iraqi assets frozen in bank accounts in the United States are needed for Iraqi reconstruction and that the judgment won by the 17 former American prisoners should be overturned.

What makes you want to cry is that the judge who awarded the compensation to the American POW’s said he did so because it would “likely deter the torture of American POW’s by agencies of Iraq or other terrorist states in the future”.

Everyone is talking about the NSA surveillance program, which is certainly illegal.  What’s ongoing in Iraq however rises to the level of war crimes under American law.

The question is, who shall prosecute the offenders when the prosecutors are allied with the offenders?

Cross-posted from Flogging the Simian

Peace