U.N. declares U.S. terror commissions illegal.
An independent investigator on human rights for the United Nations expressed grave concern regarding the detention of “unlawful enemy combatants” at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Martin Scheinin’s report to the United Nations called on the United States to release the detainees or try them in civilian courts in a move aimed at closing the detention facility and ending the military commissions there.
In his report, issued Monday, Scheinin also said the U.S. government should “take transparent steps” to cease extraordinary rendition and interrogation techniques. Sheinin said that under international law “there are no circumstances in which cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment may be justified.”
Sheinin’s report says the U.S.-led “war on terror” was “not a ‘war’ in the true sense of the word” and questioned the legal justifications for the military commissions established at Guantanamo Bay. In 2006, the United States passed the Military Commissions Act, which defines the rules for prosecuting individuals accused of being terrorists, and classifies conspiracy - and other charges - are violations of the laws of war, according to U.S. law.
But Scheinin said the MCA imposed restrictions regarding judicial review processes that violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Sheinin also reported that the MCA’s categorization of war crimes “go beyond offenses under the laws of war.”
It is a violation of international law to abolish, suspend, or diminish the rights and actions of foreign nationals.
Sheinin said that “whenever possible, ordinary civilian courts should be used to try terrorist suspects” and called on the U.S. to abandon the categorization of detained terrorist suspects as “unlawful enemy combatants” calling the categorization “a term of convenience without legal effect.”