Talk:Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States

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This article was nominated for deletion on 261005. The result of the discussion was keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

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[edit] Article Name

As the article is about detainees who are held in "civilian" custody, by the CIA or other intelligence agencies, as opposed to those being held by the military, the name should reflect that, agreed? I'm not doing well on ideas, but what I've come up with so far is:

  1. Military detainees being held by the CIA
  2. Military detainees from Guantanimo being held by the CIA
  3. Guantanimo detainees being held by the CIA
  4. CIA held Military detainees
  5. CIA held Military detainees from Guantanimo
  6. Guantanamo Bay (military detainees) - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] :: AfD? 14:31, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  7. CIA detainees is descriptive enough for the title. Guantanamo Bay should not be mentioned in the title since the locations of at least some of the detainees are unknown. Military in the title would be confusing because these people are not being detained by the military. If I understand correctly, that's what sets them apart from all the other "regular" detainees. By the way, Wikipedia:Naming Conventions might have some useful information. --TantalumTelluride 16:45, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
    1. This one works for me. For completeness let me list my previous favourites. -- Geo Swan 18:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  8. terror suspects in CIA custody
  9. detainees in CIA custody -- currently a redirect of this article -- see below -- Geo Swan 18:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Please feel free to add more suggestions to the list above. KillerChihuahua 19:56, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps I am mistaken, I thought the article was for military detainees who were specifically not in the hands of the military, but the CIA, and hence not at Guantanimo. If that is the case, then name suggestion 6 (Guantanamo Bay (military detainees)) would not be accurate. KillerChihuahua 16:38, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

The names we have considered so far have tried to address who is being detained; where they are being detained; and who is detaining them. I like the suggestion above of CIA detainees. I was working on some comments on those questions while that suggestion was being made. For completeness:
  1. who is being detained?
    1. terror suspects?
    2. al Qaeda and Taliban foot soldiers?
    3. donors or workers for charities that have been subverted to help finance terrorist activities? Muhammad Assad (terror suspect) is a Yemeni who was repatriated last May. He was captured in Tanzania. Amnesty International concluded that none of the facilities where he was detained were in the Western Hemisphere. According to his account to Amnesty International the questions in his interrogation all concerned the activities of his superiors in the Al-Haramain Foundation, a charity accused of helping to finance terrorist activities. According to Amnesty Interational, Assad, and two other Yemenis, captured in Indonesia, continued to be held, by the Yemenis, in compliance with a US request. According to Amnesty International the Yemenis plan to lay charges, and try these Yemeni citizens, when the USA sends the dossiers with the evidence against them. I think calling someone like Assad a "military detainee" would not conform to the NPOV policy. If he really was only asked about the activities of his superiors, then he was just a material witness. Assuming that the USA held him because he was a terror suspect is just speculation. The speculation that the USA has not forwarded a file of evidence against them to the Yemenis because they don't have any evidence seems just as valid to me. We know that US intelligence officials were prepared to hold material witnesses, for long periods of time. Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri was initially held as a "material witness".
    4. material witnesses?
    5. all of the above?
  2. where are they being held?
    1. Are there any terror suspects, currently in Guantanamo Bay, in the custody of civilian US intelligence agencies? I would prefer that this article not overlap with List of Guantanamo Bay detainees, which, at this tims, only deals with detainees who are in military custody. Up until the land-slide of coverage of CIA detainees, following the 2005/11/02 Washington Post story on "black sites" I thought that the CIA didn't hold any detainees at Guantanamo Bay. A few of those stories said that the CIA did have their own facility at Guantanamo, until mid-2004, when Guantanamo Bay attracted too much public scrutiny.
    2. should this article overlap with the ghost detainee article? CIA director George Tenet asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to hold Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul, aka "triple-x", off the books, at Abu Ghraib prison[1]. Later press reports have speculated that there may have been as many as 100 ghost detainees. An argument can be made that all CIA prisoners, who are held in DoD facilities, should be listed under the ghost detainee article.
  3. who is responsible for their custody?
    1. It is commonly assumed that those held in the secret interrogation centres are in CIA custody. But there are other US intelligence agencies that have officers overseas. The possibility exists that the CIA may have delegated the detention of some terror suspects to more junior agencies, like, for instance, the DEA. The Taliban has been accused to have had ties to the underworld, because Afghanistan was the center of Opium production.
    2. US spokesmen commonly try to distance the USA from responsibility for their detention centres. US spokesmen have described the salt pit as an Afghan facility, even though it was directed by, and paid for, by the CIA, because it was in Afghanistan. Janis Karpinski has been all over the map. Early in the unfolding of the Abu Ghraib scandal she tried to distance herself from responsibility for the activities there, by describing it as an Iraqi facility. I think that this article should not address detainees who have been rendered to third-party states, if they end up in a pre-existing facility, and their interrogations are conducted by local interrogators. But if they are rendeded somewhere, and held in a new facility, built with US funds, or interrogated by US interrogators, they should be listed here.
So, I would have reservations about renaming this article with a name that called these detainees "military detainees". And I would have reservations about implying they were held in Guantanamo. As best I can determine the CIA is no longer holding any of their own detainees in Guantanamo.
I redirected this article to Detainees in CIA custody to link this article to the black site article.
The black site article is a bit confused. It has a better name though. Maybe we should rename this article terror suspects held in black sites, or detainees held in black sites? Lol. -- Geo Swan 18:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
  • "extrajudicial" means "done outside the course of a judicial proceeding". No mention of military or civilian context. E.g.: No Judge = Extrajudicial. Let the name stand; it is descriptive. Too Old 04:17, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about low value detainees in CIA custody?

The Washington Post article said the CIA held about 30 high value subjects, and approximately 100 more subjects with limited intelligence value. I suspect that Muhammad Assad, and the other two Yemenis repatriated last May fall into the latter group. I didn't include them in the list yet, because of the current name. Should we? Should we wait until a new name is decided?

What about guys like Triple-X? I don't know where he is now. But the DoD held him, in secret, for at least eight months, on behalf of the CIA. -- Geo Swan 18:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naming basics

Calling people "high value" or "low value" violates NPOV in two specific ways. One its using partisan terminology which implies a POV, and two, it expresses a POV regarding the "value" of individuals in a partisan context. Even a change to United States political prisoners, though probably controversial is at least general enough to be accurate. -St|eve 19:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC) PS: Renamed to current (list of United States extrajudicial prisoners)- SV

Steve, "list of United States extrajudicial prisoners" is not a good name, because it applies fully to all those in the List of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
(cutting in) Please sign your posts to talk pages. If there is a redundancy problem, then a simple merge may be in order. This title would seem to cover the subject broadly enough, wheras other titles appear to be overly specific or POV in their chosen terms. -St|eve 22:53, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
The Bush administration tried to rule, by administrative fiat, that they could hold everyone they captured in Afghanistan, and dozens, or hundreds of others, captured around the world, as if the Geneva Conventions did not apply to them. The US judicial branch over-ruled the executive branch. The Combatant Status Review Tribunals were the flawed result. The CSRT documents from Moazzam Begg, among others, record that the presiding officers were not empowered to determine whether or not the detainees should have been classified as POWs. But that is what article 5 of the third geneva convention says a captor must do before it strips POW rights from a captive. The Supreme Court may rule against justice Joyce Hens Green in this matter. But, until they do, the extrajudiciality of the Guantanamo Bay detainees remains open.
I saw you added some kind of {editor name} tag. I clicked on it. I found it confusing. What the dickens is it supposed to mean? -- Geo Swan 20:13, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Did you realize that we have been discussing the choice of a new name for some time? -- Geo Swan 19:44, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, well I made a move and justified it here. Discuss the new version and challenge my points made and propose some alternatives. Debates dont need to be indefinite. -St|eve 22:53, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Without regard to how they are named, you didn't take a stand on whether guys like Muhammad Assad (terror suspect) should be included in this article.
Who was he? We don't really know. And wikipedia articles are not the place for us to speculate. He may never have been anything more than a material witness. He worked for a Saudi charity that the USA believes was subverted by terrorists in order to finance terrorist activities around the world. Did terrorists replace all the innocent workers in the charities the USA listed? Did they entirely stop funding ordinary charitable activities in order to fund terrorist activities? Unlikely. That would remove plausible deniability. If they had done that the charity would have lost all its value to them. All the Algerian Six were charity workers too. And quite a few of the Guantanamo detainees claim they went to Pakistan or Afghanistan for charitable purposes. I have read their Combatant Status Review Tribunal documents. Personally, I find a lot of those claiming to be charity workers to be highly credible. When everything is unclassified we may find that Assad was never really a suspect, just someone the CIA thought knew a lot about his bosses, who were the real suspects.
If guys like Assad were to be listed in this article, in a separate list, I believe it would be quite possible to pick a name you would agree was NPOV. Would you agree that those we have already listed could, safely, be put in a table that said they had already been identified as of high intelligence value? A field could be added to the table with a link to the source where they had been named as having a high intelligence value. Would you agree that this would insulate the article from having taken an biased POV?
I cannot concur more that the sudden move to an undiscussed name by Steve was inappropriate. This is highly disruptive when there is an ongoing, detailed discussion about the name. Steve, why did you do this? KillerChihuahua 21:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Crossposted (new changes) User talk:KillerChihuahua, re. the "extrajudicial" title: Perhaps that (voting on a would have worked, but the correct process for the type of referendum you suggest would have been to vote on it in a systematic fashion, and advertise at WP:RFC. I dont see that here. I decided to be bold and use the term "extrajudicial" which is the proper term and more to the point. CIA is besides the point, and not entirely correct -- the recent WashPost article (and our black site article) refers to a secretive Pentagon "intelligence" org. Hence "CIA" is overly specific. Likewise titles referencing Guantanamo Bay Cuba are overly specific, as are (as I said on the talk) references to the term "value" are POV. Likewise the use of the term "detainees" is POV. Ive had some success over the years with renaming titles to suit concerned parties -- this move may be agreeable.-St|eve 22:45, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I trust that the move to List of United States extrajudicial prisoners was made in good faith, but I strongly disagree with the name. Besides the objections above, this article is not just a list. It is an explanation of the circumstances under which a number of international detainees are being held by the CIA, and it includes a couple of lists. Whatever title is chosen, it should not be a "list-of-something" article. --TantalumTelluride 22:11, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
We can rename it from list, and move the list to a list article should there be enough names to warrant it. -St|eve 22:53, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree. Lists can always be broken out if they become too long. United States extrajudicial prisoners and CIA extrajudicial prisoners are both acceptable titles. --TantalumTelluride 23:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I like the current name, Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States. If we're voting on it, I say keep this one and redirect everything else. It's like AfD all over again! --TantalumTelluride 03:34, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Broken link to one of George's Maps?

Why is there a dead link to an ortho proj of the Diego Garcia? How is that relevant even if the link were to work? Joaquin Murietta 16:09, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I put the map there because people might not know where Diego Garcia is. I didn't know, exactly, until I made the map. Why is it relevant? Because Diego Garcia is one of the locations that knowledgeable commentators have speculated might have housed a covert interrogation centre. As to why it appears dead to you? Sometimes the wikipedia serves slow to a crawl. The link is not dead. -- Geo Swan 18:57, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I see you moved the map to its proper location. At least, that was how you described it in the summary to your edit to the article. Joaquin Murietta 08:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
(Sigh) Look at the edit history. It shows the map was next to the locations section, until you added a section in between. -- Geo Swan 19:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "the dark prison" article -- related to this one -- has been nominated for deletion

I started an article about "the dark prison", a black site where eight of the Guantanamo detainees were held, prior to being shipped to Guantanamo. It wasn't long before someone nominated it for deletion. Since it is related to this article I thought those interested in this article might like to weigh in on the {afd} discussion. -- Geo Swan 13:22, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Ghost detainee

Two expressions for one reality. Tazmaniacs

Merge is a bad idea. Ghost detainees identities, or indeed capture, have been kept secret. As such they are a subset of extrajudicial prisoners, which also includes all the detainees who were held in Guantanamo, Maher Arar, and a handful of others. -- Geo Swan 19:28, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
So if they are a subset, why can't we include them in a subsection of this article? Wikipedia is not a Wiktionary, and the two articles are close enougH. Tazmaniacs 05:44, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
In the meanwhile, I created a subsection, according to your implicit suggestion. Tazmaniacs 05:47, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a Wiktionary. Okay. Are you suggesting that either of these articles are short enough, or limited enough, they should be moved to the Wiktionary?
I know there are a fair number of wikipedia contributors who are big fans of merging all related articles into big omnibus articles. I find this frustrating and short-sighted. Wikipedia is not paper. There is no reason why it should be artificially bound by the restrictions imposed on legacy paper documents. Legacy paper documents can only have one natural path through the network of knowledge. With a wikipedia, or other hypertext, the reader is more empowered, because they can choose their own path through the network of knowledge. They don't have to be restricted to the organization that made sense to the author. This empowerment is more likely, so long as we resist the temptation to confine our articles to the same limits imposed on paper documents.
Please think about which is more useful. If you read an article, that apparently links to Ghost detainee, would you rather that it took you to an article about Ghost detainees? Or would you rather it took you to a larger, omnibus article, with a different title?
One danger of merging a smaller article, that could stand on its own, with a larger article, is that N months down the line some new editor may decide the merged material doesn't really belong in the larger article, after all. And they remove it. Then you have the very damaging situation that all the articles that once linked to the small article link to a big article that has nothing to do with the topic they thought they were linking to. That sucks. Too much of that will make new users think the wikipedia isn't that useful after all.
In my opinion it is much more useful to leave smaller articles that can stand on their own alone. If it is related to some other article, link to the other article, or use {main| } or see also.
I don't know what you mean by "according to my implicit suggestion. -- Geo Swan 19:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
since the discussion seems to be over I am removing the tag(s). — Geo Swan 21:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {main|illegal combatants} inappropriate and POV

A contributor put {main|illegal combatants} at the top of the section on legal status of the detainees. This is inappropriate and highly POV. While the Bush administration -claims- detainees are "illegal combatants" there own documents don't back that claim up. The Denbeaux study used the US governemnt's own allegations against the detainees. They found that for 55% of the Guantananmo detainees the US government wasn't claiming they had participated in a hostile act. They were merely associates of suspects who the US alleged participated in hostile acts.

Taking the US government's claims at face value, in light of the lack of substantion behind those claims, is highly POV.

As for the detainees held in secret, the USG has, of course, released no evidence of their activities. Merely -assuming- that they too deserve classification as "illegal combantants" is highly POV. Consider the case of this guy -- kidnapped, tortured, finally repatriated to the brutal country of his birth, not the country that was his home for the last 25 years. Why? Was he an illegal combantant? No. He rented office space to a charity that the Bush administration claims has served as a front for terrorists.

If it were a front, then it was continuing to perform some legitimate charitable activities. If it were a front then the civilians who donated to it, accepted or provided services to it, may very well have been totally innocent of any knowledge of the activiities that triggered Bush administration suspicions.

The AI report on al-Assad says that the Yemenis now hold him, and are wsiting for the USG to release documents to them that will enable them to try him. They have no evidence against him. My prediction is that the Bush administration will not, is unable to release any evidence against him, because there is no evidence against him. Describing guys like him as "illegal combatants" is shamefully POV. -- Geo Swan 16:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

You must misunderstand the tag. The term illegal combatant was invented to create an air of legallity around the practise of denying the GC. This in no way suggests the Bush administration is correct, it merely states that this is what the Bush administration advocates.
Although under international law illegal combnatant status and the existence of ghost detainees is illegal, the Bush administration asserts it is not. By using the illegal combatant rationale they think people can be hidden from scrutiny. If these were POW's, by definition we would be talking about crimes of war.
In short, the use of illegal combatant is not POV, it reflects the erroneous interpretation of the Geneva Conventions and the US war crimes act.Holland Nomen Nescio 21:53, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup?

According to Ed Poor:

"intro makes it sound like Wikipedia KNOWS FOR SURE that the Bush administration is violating the law: "known to be ... outside of the legal process required"

The whole passage reads:

"In the context of the War on Terrorism, the United States is known to be holding prisoners for interrogation, outside of the legal process required within established United States legal jurisdiction."

This is merely the truth, and I doubt the Bush administration would refute it: on the contrary, the admin maintains that the detainees are not "entitled" to the legal process required within established United States legal jurisdiction, and that it is thus acting within the law. Of course I abhor this sort of Orwellian language, but they seem to think it justifies their actions. Too Old 07:09, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, it sounds like you're saying that if the admin brought the prisoners back to the U.S., they would be entitled to greater legal rights - than if they're kept at gitmo or elsewhere overseas.
Is that what the passage is intended to convey? If so, we can indicate sources who advocate that position, and sources who oppose it. --Uncle Ed 00:45, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Ed, many of the more westernized Guantanamo detainees expressed confusion over why they were not provided with a lawyer's assistance during their Combatant Status Review Tribunal. The Presidents of their Tribunals routinely told them the same thing -- that the Tribunals were not courts of law -- they were "administrative". So, the passage you object to is, simply, a paraphrase of official US policy.
The detainees, are held without being charged, in a court of law -- isn't that, by definition -- "outside of the legal process". Personally, I think it is more succinct, and clearer, just to say they are held in extrajudicial detention. (the Guantanamo military commissions are not courts of law. In a real court of law the Prosecution can point to specific laws the suspect is alleged to have violated. Not so with the Guantanamo military commissions. One of the objections of Supreme Court Justices is that conspiracy, the main charge against Hamdan, is not an international crime.)
In answer to the question you posed in your reply, above, one of the implications of the US Supreme Court's ruling on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is that -all-' US prisoners were -always- entitled to greater legal rights than the Bush administration was extending to them -- like, for instance, protection from humiliation, like making them wear women's lingerie. -- Geo Swan 07:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Saying that "extrajudicial prisoniers of the US are prisoners held in extrajudicial detention" might be a bit going in circles. I prefer the first formulation, to which they is nothing to object. Ed Poor should also know that there are all the necessary sources going further in the article, and no need to reference the first sentence of the intro. Tazmaniacs 13:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Um, okay, good point about circular definition.
So, how long do we give Ed to respond before we excise his cleanup tag? -- Geo Swan 16:42, 1 August

2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bad link

Above "DEA" link ("like, for instance, the DEA." )leads to a disambiguation page. I assume it is the drug enforcement agency but whoever knows please fix it. Carrionluggage 21:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

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