Talk:Tablighi Jamaat and allegations of terrorism

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on December 28, 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

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[edit] User:Tarinth's nomination for speedy deletion

There are approximately three dozen Guantanamo captives whose continued extrajudicial detention has been justified by an alleged association with the Pakistani missionary group Tablighi Jamaat.

It is not the place of wikipedia contributors to post their own opinions of whether the US allegations are credible. It is appropriate for wikipedia contributors to cite authoritative, verifiable sources, and summarize the information therein from a neutral point of view, so readers can make up their own mind as to the allegations credibility.

I've read the allegations against all three dozen captives. A few of the allegations contain some implied justifications for associating Tablighi Jamaat with al Qaida. There was one Saudi detainee, for instance, who told his Tribunal he went to stay in Pakistan because the drugs he wanted to treat his chronic pain were so much cheaper there, whose testimony seemed to tie Tablighi to al Qaeda. My own guess was that, like Rush Limbaugh, a bunch of hollywood types, and many ordinary citizens in many nations, he had become addicted to what would be prescription painkillers in the USA. It sounded to me that even after years of detention in Guantanamo he was still in denial about his drug addiction. He told his Tribunal that he had traveled to Pakistan for "medical treatment". But, in addition to the cheaper drugs he took in his room in a Pakistani guest house, the only medical treatments he had scheduled were massage sessions once or twice a month. Anyhow, shortly after September 11, the Pakistanis started rounding up all Arabs, and selling them to the Americans for a bounty. When this guy heard this he says he sought out the Tablighi Jamaat, with whom he had no prior association, and asked if they could recommend a safer house to live. They did recommend a house for him, where he was eventually captured. According to the allegations against him this house where he was captured also housed a number of al Qaeda operatives. Mind you the USA didn't list the identity of these al Qaeda operatives. Who knows if they were actually al Qaeda. There were a few, maybe half a dozen captives, whose tribunal transcripts contained this kind of hint that there had been a connection between Tablighi and al Qaeda.

I am not unsympathetic to the people who respect the Tablighi movement so much that they don't want to see the American allegations repeated here. I am not unsympathetic to their feelings that the American allegations are unsubstantiated. Nevertheless, if the USA is going to throw people into terror prisons, potentially for the rest of their lives, with no meaningful opportunity to contest the evidence against them, then I think this is important enough to be covered on the wikipedia.

I pointed out to User:Tarinth that his deletion nomination was counter to policy because he waited less than two minutes from the article's creation before he placed his speedy on it. I have asked him to be more careful in future. -- Geo Swan 04:15, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

My speedy was based on the appearance that the article was an unsourced and one-sided soapbox about a current event that did not assert notability about the subject (speedy A7 criteria). I don't have any position on the particular subject you are writing about, and would be happy to see verifiable, notable information. If you feel that I reacted too quickly by marking it for speedy (thus preventing you from adding the parts that would have addressed my concerns), I am not against you re-creating the article, and I'll stand aside and let other editors decide whether it is suitable.

Regards, Tarinth 12:40, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Somebody jumped the gun

Somebody jumped the gun, and speedy deleted this article, even though I put a {hangon} on the main article, before I had a chance to complete the justification.

I am actually pretty pissed off about this. I am going to try to get its out of policy deletion reversed. I would like the administrator who jumped the gun to exercise more caution. -- Geo Swan 04:21, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

If someone deleted it over a {{hangon}} then it was probably an oversight. It wasn't me (I'm an editor, not an admin, although I did initiate it). I'd suggest making some improvements to the article to include a sourced assertion of notability, and put the article on Wikipedia again. Please note that notability is based on what a secondary source (such as news publishers) thinks about the issue, not what we as Wikipedia editors personally think is notable. Tarinth 12:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I am working on it...

At User:Geo Swan/Guantanamo/Allegations that Tablighi Jamaat has ties to terrorism. -- Geo Swan 19:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] excised the most recent contribution

I excised the most recent contribution because:

  1. The contributor was editorializing, in article space -- commenting on the references I had picked, in article space.
  2. The contributor had cut several of the key references -- apparently judging them by their titles -- without reading them.
  3. The contributor had cut and pasted the bulk of the Tablighi Jamaat article into this article. Even if that were appropriate, he or she should have edited out the [edit] links that were pasted in uselessly.

Let's have the discussion of the relevance of the references here, on the talk page.

Let's not try to duplicate the Tablighi Jamaat article here. The background sections on the movement should be more brief than in the main article. They should be referenced, if possible. And they should refer the readers to the main article. IMO at least.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 13:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] unilateral renaming?

User:Jossi unilaterally renamed this article.

I don't agree that the new name is better. And I don't believe unilateral renaming is how the wikipedia should work. Jossi's edit summary says that this is a "more appropriate name". Oh? How is it more appropriate?

The previous name makes clear that the allegations are that TJ is tied to terrorism. The new title obfuscates this. The new title could be interpreted as being about an article about the allegations of terrorism TJ has made against other groups or individuals.

Is there anyone besides Jossi who thinks the article even needs a new name? -- Geo Swan 09:18, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Previous: "Allegations that Tablighi Jamaat has ties to terrorism"
Current: "Tablighi Jamaat and allegations of terrorism"
The former may be a great article for a magazine. The latter a more appropriate one for an encyclopedia. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] either incorrect or very confusing

The section "Terrorist suspects alleged to have links to Tablighi Jamaat" begins thus:

American intelligence analysts have justified the continued extrajudicial detention of dozens of Guantanamo captives based on allegations that Tablighi Jamaat has ties to terrorism.

A casual reader might assume that all the listed detainees remain in captivity solely for an association with Tablighi Jamaat. This is clearly not true. The names I've reviewed had other claims against them. Even members who'd been released had other claims.
-- Randy2063 00:45, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Then fix to be appropriate, and cite your sources. --Petercorless 06:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
It is true, only a handful of the captives have just a single allegation against them, although some of them have, essentially, the same allegation rephrased several times, in different words.
I added the phrase, "in part". I hope this satisfies your concern.
Cheers! -- Geo Swan 02:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
It's still wrong. There are references for the individual detainees but none for the assertion that anyone is being held because of Tablighi membership. There is a similar claim about "low-level intelligence analysts" in the previous section. While that paragraph does have a reference it does not support this claim either.
The only inkling on this that I can find is in the claims made by the Denbeaux studies, and they're studying the same documents. They offer no real support for this charge. (They have been known to twist the facts before.)
If there are any detainees at all being held solely due to to Tablighi membership then they should be the only ones listed. So far, I can't find a single one.
The best case I can find is Murat Kurnaz, but even this one fails when you read the references. Judge Joyce Hens Green "wrote that the panel's decision appeared to be based on a single document, labeled 'R-19.'" If true, then that seems to confirm that his Tablighi membership was not deemed to justify continued detention. And that would mean the premise of that statement is untrue.
-- Randy2063 18:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry Randy, I really don't understand what kind of references you think are missing. Each of these captives faced either an allegation in the "Summary of Evidence" that they were associated with Tablighi Jamaat, or they faced a "factor favoring continued detention" that they were associated with Tablighi Jamaat.
Randy, I think you are correct -- that none of these captives were detained solely because of their association with Tablighi Jamaat. But I fail to see why those who were detained, in part, due to an association with Tablighi Jamaat shouldn't be named in this article. If you think adding the phrase, "in part", does not satisfactorily clarify that they weren't detained solely due to their association with TJ, have you given any thought to wording that would satisfy you?
I can't really figure out the meaning of the sentence -"There are references for the individual detainees but none for the assertion that anyone is being held because of Tablighi membership."- You aren't disputing that each of those captives faced an allegation that they were tied to JT in the "Summary of Evidence" prepared for their Combatant Status Review Tribunal, or they faced a "factor favoring continued detention" that tied them to JT in the "Summary of Evidence" prepared for their Administrative Review Board hearing, are you? Surely if an official document contains "a factor favoring continued detention" that states a captive is tied to JT is sufficiently unambiguous that the article doesn't need to cite a commentator to establish the connection?
On a related point, I'd be interested in hearing your concerns about the Denbeaaux team. Frankly, the only questionable conclusions I found in their work are due to a decision they made as to how much credibility to credit the work of the Guantanamo intelligence team. IMO the Denbeaux team reached some questionable conclusions because they credited the work of the Guantanamo intelligence team with too much credibility.
The first Denbeaux study reached the conclusion that 55% of the captives were not alleged to have participated in hostile activity. It is a defensible conclusion -- if -- big if -- the Guantanamo intelligence team could be trusted to follow orders. The summary of defense memos were supposed to break the allegations into two lists: the allegations that show an association terrorism or terrorists; and the allegations that showed participation in hostile activity. 55 percent of the summary of evidence memos only contained the first list, and didn't contain a list of allegations showing hostile activity.
I think I have read as many of the documents as any single member of the Denbeaux team. The assumption they made, that the Guantanamo intelligence team that compiled the allegations, could be trusted to follow their instructions, IMO, just didn't pan out during my reading of the transcripts. The allegation compilation team were wildly inconsistent in what they classified as hostile activity. For some captives the allegation compilation team included attending a training camp in Afghanistan as "hostile activity". For other captives attendance at the same camps was classified as an association with terrorism.
Let's be fair to the Denbeaus team. How fair is it to blame the Denbeaux team for what is really a failure of the Guantanamo intelligence team to compile the allegations in a consistent manner?
Was their 55% conclusion one of your concerns with the Denbeaux team? Do you care to share any other concerns you had?
A final point: while he isn't included in the table, there is one former captive for whom the Gauntanamo intelligence team has only provided the single justification for his detention, that he was involved in JT. That would be Mani Al Utaybi, one of the three men who the DoD claimed committed suicide last June. Do you remember his case? There is no record that he participated in his CSRT or ARB, so the transcripts haven't been made public, and the allegations and factors in his summary of evidence memos haven't been made public. But, when he and the other two men died the DoD apparently felt they should offer a justification for their detention. For Mani Al Utaybi the sole justification they offered was an alleged association with JT. Thats it. Maybe their were other justifications. But I think it is safe to assume they chose to offer the most compelling one.
I make a point to refrain from referring to the men as suicides. The blue-ribbon international panel of forensic pathologists that was to conduct third party post-mortems of the dead men said they couldn't confirm the cause of death because the DoD was withholding crucial evidence. Dr Patrice Mangin, the chair of the panel, eased the concerns of the family over the DoD's removal of organs that spoil, like the liver and brain. However, he explained that the panel couldn't reach a conclusion because the DoD had not provided the sheets that the DoD claimed the men had used to hang themselves, and the DoD pathologists had dissected, and retained the dead men's throats.
You remember the allegations that the force-feedings were unnecessarily brutal, tantamount to torture, in order to break the hunger strike? Mani Al Utaybi was one of the half-dozen huner-strikers who didn't break. He had been on a hunger strike for almost the entire previous year. Other captives have reported that the forcefeeding caused lesions in their throat. Another interpretation is that the force-feeding was as brutal as reported, and that after nine months of wounds caused by having the tubes brutally forced down his throat his throat was too damaged to support life, and he died of his iatrogenic wounds.
Cheers! -- Geo Swan 11:57, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Geo,
It's my contention that no one is detained, even in part, because of their affiliation with TJ.
I'm sure you've seen this a lot: "Jama'at Al Tablighi [sic], a Pakistan based Islamic missionary organization is being used as a cover to mask travel and activities of terrorists including members of al Qaida." That might even have become boilerplate for a detainee's file but that fact didn't put them in there. It's probably stated that way to show that TJ membership is not an alibi for being where they were when they were captured.
The Denbeauxs are lawyers who've decided to represent the interests of the detainees. There is no half-way about this. They can't say they'd represent someone and then present a balanced case. Everything they do and say must be taken in that light. They are the voice of detainees, and not the cause of human rights.
Mani Al Utaybi is one case where they spun the facts by claiming that he was going to be freed when he may have been facing time in an Arab prison.
The matter of "hostile activity" is another way they're spinning. Of what importance is this statistic? A mob bookkeeper doesn't fire a shot but he's still a vital part of the operation. It's possible that the ones not accused of hostile acts are the very ones we most need to lock up.
How does one reconcile this Denbeaux statement:
5. Finally, the population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants - mostly Uighers - are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants.
with this one?
As shall be seen in consideration of the Uighers, the Government has found detainees to be enemy combatants based upon the information provided by the bounty hunters. As to the Uighers, at least, there is no doubt that bounties were paid for the capture and detainment of individuals who were not enemy combatants.
They're both in different sections of the first Denbeaux report. As with most artful lawyerly statements, they're both "technically" true. The first one says the Uighers are the worst of them, and the second implies they were railroaded. Taken separately, they seek to make U.S. policy look foolish. Taken together, U.S. forces made a clerical error in the middle of a war but their actions were proper at the time. It also lends support for the idea that bounty hunters weren't just sweeping innocent foreigners off the streets who wound up in GTMO.
Intelligence teams aren't all lawyers and paralegals. It may be an error to put some detainees into the wrong slot, and that may have led to some errors in their own internal analysis, but it didn't prevent the release of a single innocent man. I don't blame the Denbeauxs for any unintentionally wrong numbers. I simply recognize their intentions for what they are.
On Mani Al Utaybi's pending transfer, he was going to be incarcerated in another country. That implies there was a case against him that could be adjudicated there in some way. Whatever that is, good case or not, it could not be TJ membership. It's definitely not safe to assume they'd give out all the information they have on this guy.
The U.S. had released Saudi detainees before this, some of whom (if not all) had been to training camps. It's also funny to think that the only non-jihadi TJ member at GTMO just happens to be one of the few who refused a hearing.
I don't doubt that forced feeding was rough but I can't see how that can be accomplished otherwise. They needed to be kept alive. People may have wailed when Admiral Harris called it "asymmetric warfare" but there's no disputing that it was in fact used by the enemy as a propaganda tool. That's one good reason to keep them alive. Is there an easier way to do that? I doubt it. Chemotherapy isn't ordinarily good for you either.
While it may be possible that they could eventually degenerate to where they can no longer be fed, they'd be on an IV in intensive care for a while before they did die. The idea that all three would succumb in one night strains the imagination.
It would be extremely difficult for the military to pull off such a lie in absolute secrecy under these conditions. And on the other side, there is absolutely no surprise whatsoever that these conspiracy theories would come up.
I was wrong when I said earlier that the list should be limited to those held solely because of TJ membership. The problem is that the article makes it appear as if that is exactly what's going on. Just read it. Almost every name only shows his relation to TJ as though they're all a bunch of harmless missionaries. What is the reader to think?
What about the nuts in Birmingham basements who watch jihadi videos that say this is a war against Islam? They may see this stuff as confirmation of those views coming from a supposedly unbiased source.
I suggest just removing that paragraph. It doesn't serve much of a function anyway. The one above with the "low-level intelligence analysts" needs a reference for that statement.
-- Randy2063 02:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your long, and detailed answer. Tackling your points in the order you raise them:
  • I think there is a distinction to be made for "why they were detained", and the justifications for their detention. The real reason they were first detained was the American bounty program. Those handing out the bounties had infinitely deep pockets, and were not required to perform any sanity checks before handing out the bounties. The case of Abdullah Khan makes that painfully clear. The justifications for their detention were, I believe, thought up long afterwards. If the official summary of evidence lists an association with TJ as one of the "factors favoring continued detention" I don't really see how there is any room to question that the association with TJ is being used to justify the continued detention.
  • Regarding Mani al Utaybi, you are one hundred percent correct, it is a mistake to conflate "release" with "repatriation to the custody of their parent country". The ARB get to recommend either release of repatriation as alternative to continued detention. Many countries, including Afghanistan itself, quickly free those captives who were repatriated to their custody. I believe I read that all the Afghan repatriates were subsequently quickly released. I don't know if if was ever made clear whether al Utaybi was recommended for release, or repatriation. The camp authorities hadn't released that many Saudis, prior to his death. In the nine months since then they have released or repatriated a lot of Saudis. FWIW.
  • Regarding your comment on allegations of "hostile activity". We have to remember that nothing has been proven, not openly at least, where third parties can evaluate the evidence, and reach their own conclusions in full knowledge. The secrecy is not the captives fault. It is Bush administration policy. You cite the example of a mob bookkeeper, who may not ever carry a gun himself, and, if I understand you correctly, suggest he can be more dangerous to society that a street level drugdealer, who does pack heat. And, if I understand you correctly, you are drawing a compparison between, lets say, a believer in jihad (for others) who siphons off money from a once legitimate charity, and channels it to terrorism related projects. Takes money that is supposed to build a peaceful charity, and gives the teenage orphans marksmanship training, and jihadist indoctrination, represents a greater threat than an illiterate, monoglot, poverty-stricken villager, who was conscripted by the Taliban years ago, and subsequently demobilized, long before September 11th.
    • Guantanamo included both classes of people. One of the founders of the Afghan al-Wafa has been released, while, I believe it still contains illiterate, monoglot, poverty-stricken villagers.
    • My understanding of the Geneva Conventions the conscript who was demobilized, and is peacefully at home before he is denounced to his captors due to his prior, unvoluntary association with the Taliban's armed forces, would not be classified as a combatant by a proper, Geneva Convention "competent tribunal". But some CSRTs did classify demobilized former conscripts as enemy combatants
    • You and I are both doing our best to write from an NPOV. We have reached quite different conclusions about how many of the captives really belong in detention.
    • I believe that if the USA had fulfilled its Geneva Convention obligation, and convened open competent tribunals, that made the determinations the Geneva Convention says the Tribunals should make, that is (1) civilian bystander; (2) lawful combatant; (3) someone, civilian, or combatant, who breached the laws or customs of war, some would have been determined to be civilian bystanders, who should have been immediately released, of lawful combatants, entitled to all the protections of the Geneva Convention. Maybe you agree with this, so far? Maybe where we would differ is on our guess as to how many of the captives wouldn't meet the criteria for civilian bystander or lawful combatant? I think only a minority of captives wouldn't qualify, and really belong in detention in a camp with less protections that a POW camp run according the Geneva Conventions rules. The Bush administration has announced that they intend, eventually, to charge up to 80 of the captives before the military commissions. And that is close to the guess, I made, six or eight months ago, when I had read a big slice of the transcripts. Back then I guessed that only about one hundred of the captives had an association with terrorism strong enough that it should really strip from them the protections of POW status.
    • I know, I know, spindoctors like John Yoo, who I think really knew better, said that the Taliban never wore uniforms, and that they were "a mob", and didn't report up the chain of command. Yet, look at the second allegation against Khirullah Khairkhwa#Allegations. He was a provincial Governor. He was alleged to have controlled all the military and police forces in his Province, and answered for them to, and acted under the direction of of Mullah Omar. Well, that is a chain of command. The USA can't have it both ways. Khairkhwa denied he controlled all the military forces in his Province. But that didn't mean it was "a mob". He said the military controlled the military forces. He only controlled the Police forces. Either way, there was a chain of command. Similarly, my reading of the transcripts leaves me with the impression that the Taliban did fulfill the requirement of "wearing a fixed distinctive marking, recognizable from a distance" -- which is the exact wording of article four of the third Geneva Convention. They wore a particular kind of black turban, and a particular color of pants and matching long vest. There are several foreigners, Tajikis, and Uzbeks, who were kidnapped by the Taliban's allies in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, who were imported, as slaves basically, to work in the Taliban's kitchens. The allegations against these guys assert that they were members of the Taliban because they had been issued "Taliban uniforms". Again, the USA can't have it both ways. If they chose to detain some captives because they were issued "Taliban uniforms" they can't say the Taliban don't qualify for Geneva Convention lawful combatant status because the Taliban don't have uniforms. I recently read a dialogue Yoo had with Erwin Chereminsky, a California law professor who is the lawyer for the first captive to win the right to access US civil courts. The dialogue was on PBS's "Uncommon Knowledge" in 2004. You made all the claims I attribute to him above, during that dialogue. He also claimed the Taliban didn't qualify for lawful combatant status because they committed atrocities. The way I see it only the soldiers who committed the atrocities, and the officers responsible for them, should be stripped of lawful combatant status. As we know, a limited number of GIs have committed atrocities. No one I know is arguing that this should strip all GIs of lawful combatant status.
    • Good eye for spotting the inconsistency between the two passages from the first Denbeaux study. It is a flaw.
    • About the Uyghurs -- I have been thinking about whether they would be happier in Canada, whether they could fit in to Canada, whether any of them would pose a risk to Canada.
    • It is hard to say that none of them would represent any risk. Both Canada and the USA have active communities of Uyghur expatriates, as Albania does not, who would be an enormous help to the Uyghur Guantanamo alumni to adapt to western society. Presumably the five who were NLEC wouldn't represent any risk. The Denbeaux study staid that most of the Uyghurs were classified as NLEC. They got that wrong. Candace Gorman said that the Uyghurs, like her client, were among those whose first CSRT classed them as NLEC, so they then had a second Tribunal, that convened in their absence, in Washington, composed of officers made of sterner stuff, who concluded the opposite. Maybe this explains why the Denbeaux study got the proportion of Uyghurs who were NLEC wrong. I am just about ready to think we should accept all the Uyghurs as refugees, on humanitarian grounds. I think Canada would be well served to cherry-pick some of the other well-qualified, and obviously captives.
    • Maybe you and I differ about our interpretations of the infamous "manchester manual". I think I said before that if this "al qaeda training manual" was really teaching its readers how to make up bogus claims of torture and abuse, and make them seem credible, it would not tell readers to try to get a medical examination as soon as possible, after capture. It recommends this so the reader, if they were ever captured, could use the medical examination to document their condition before interrogation, so that the authorities couldn't claim that they entered custody with "pre-exising conditions" -- as the Guantanamo authorities said with Sami al Laithy.
    • About force-feeding -- many people, including, I believe, serious legal scholars consider force-feeding a violation of the individuals rights. They argue that the individual's right to exercise informed choice over the medical treatment they receive trumps whatever black eye the authorities fear if captives starve in custody.
    • How difficult would it be for the military to keep secret that some captives had died as a result of forcefeeding? Well, how long were they able to keep secret that female interrogators were telling their interrogation suspects they had made them "unclean" by wiping their menses on them? They kept that secret for over three years, didn't they? They kept secret that there was a mass suicide bid that filled all 48 beds in the infirmary for several years. And it might have been secret today if the infirmary director hadn't let it slip.
Cheers! -- Geo Swan 19:42, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I see "factors favoring continued detention" as more of a general section name. It looks to me like the analysts created sections and took all the data and fit them into whichever one looked best. The sub-parts below that are meant to explain what's directly above it. I don't think each one can be taken as a factor by itself.
For example, Ahmed Hassan Jamil Suleyman's CSRT says "a. The detainee is a member of al Qaida and associated with the Taliban". TJ membership is a sub-part of that that explains their view of how he got there. It's not a reason for his detention.
I don't doubt that the bounty hunters got some innocent people but I think they would have been weeded out in Bagram. You may have gotten Abdullah Khan confused with someone else. He's not listed as a TJ member, and what you said about him doesn't fit the article.
You're right that Utaybi may have been released if sent back. That doesn't mean he was innocent. Once detainees returned they were subject only to their own country's criminal laws, and allowed the rights of the accused. That usually means an "innocent until proved guilty" standard that they wouldn't get as war captives. We don't need to assume Utaybi was innocent in the eyes of Wikipedia. We only have to report that there were no charges made public.
FWIW, he was less cooperative than most detainees, and it may be that they still had unresolved issues about his story. This isn't like a court of law. The benefit of the doubt doesn't go to the accused.
You had said this: "My understanding of the Geneva Conventions the conscript who was demobilized, and is peacefully at home before he is denounced to his captors due to his prior, unvoluntary association with the Taliban's armed forces, would not be classified as a combatant by a proper, Geneva Convention 'competent tribunal'."
I'm not so sure. Even aside from the SCOTUS ruling on article 3, I think they'd still be able to detain anyone of interest. I'd have to look closer at GC4.
I'll add here that I'm not comfortable with the planned tribunals that could actually sentence a prisoner for his crimes. To some extent, I think Bush has been backed into a corner.
I think you'd be expecting too much from competent tribunals. If the full GC3 was in play, the tribunals would not mean they'd be releasing any detainees. As I read it, the competent tribunal would only prevent a theoretically innocent detainee from being treated as an unprivileged combatant and/or summarily shot as a spy. If the detainee prevails at his tribunal, he could then be accorded rights as a POW and locked up until the end of the war. That's more rights than they got up to 2003, but they would not be going home just because the U.S. couldn't prove its case at the tribunal.
John Yoo's view may have lost in Hamdan but it wasn't a complete loss. The SCOTUS didn't find that the GC3 applied, other than article 3. Uniforms are important but they aren't enough. One reason the crimes of individual soldiers doesn't affect the GC rights of others is because their commanders are responsible for them, and their crimes are prosecuted. A simpler reason is because the U.S. definitely does fall into GC3's article 4. Otherwise they wouldn't have signed it.
I understand that the U.S. is trying to send the Uyghurs somewhere but only China will take them. Now that you mention it, I don't know if Canada was asked to take any but I'd guess that the U.S. would not want them living on this continent.
I don't have a strong opinion on the Manchester manual itself, but I don't doubt that they'd claim on their own that they were tortured. Their first visit with a lawyer would clue them in on what works, and the first to figure it out would quickly inform the others. It might not even require a lawyer's prodding. Most of the western-born detainees are savvy enough.
Is "informed choice over medical treatment" in any of the GCs? I don't think so.
The individual rights angle on forced-feeding is limited. If you really want to go by the Third Geneva Convention, camp authorities would then have a right to expect the same discipline from prisoners that they'd get from their own soldiers. That would mean if the U.S. Army can force-feed a U.S. soldier (and they can) then they can force-feed a prisoner.
And lest you think this is a one-way standard, when GTMO got their first detainees from Afghanistan, the guards had to sleep in tents to maintain parity of living conditions IAW GC3. They couldn't move into their own barracks until the detainees got theirs.
The military is capable of keeping secrets, and yes, they've done that in GTMO for a while. I don't doubt that they can keep a lot of them for as long as it takes. But some secrets are hard to keep, and the ones you've mentioned being found out actually show that to be true. Besides, those examples you gave were secrets, and not lies. They'd have to be accountable to their superiors, and ultimately to Congress. That's hard to do with a lie, and they'd know that going in.
-- Randy2063 00:01, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:NOT#FORUM

Could I suggest this level of lengthy discourse might be best dealt with on a public forum related to the topic elsewhere? --Petercorless 01:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I removed a {{fact}} tag

I removed a {{fact}} tag, which I think is inappropriate. Every entry in the table is referenced. -- Geo Swan 02:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

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