Volume 1 issue 2 October 2013
The Legal Status of the Guantanamo Bay Detainees – Ten Years Later
Agnieszka Szpak
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The
article aims at exploring the status of the Guantanamo detainees ten years after the first
arrivals at the Guantanamo Bay Camp. The author will answer questions about
whether the detainees are entitled to combatant and prisoner of war status, and
what rights they have according to international humanitarian law and international
human rights law. In this context the notion of the ‘war on terrorism’ will
also be discussed. It will be argued that Guantanamo
is not a legal ‘black hole’ and therefore the detainees should be accorded
prisoner of war status according to the Third Geneva Convention on the
Treatment of Prisoners of War, or alternatively, they should be treated as
civilians protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention on Civilian Persons in Time
of War. It will be shown that there is no intermediate status under international
law and that particularly, international humanitarian law does not recognise
the term ‘unlawful combatant’.
This article will also critically analyse whether the situation of the detainees has changed under the Obama administration. To this end some new developments regarding, inter alia, habeas corpus proceedings in the United States, which took place in 2009 and 2010, will be discussed. |