wartasikora
31.01.02, 17:14
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — Afghanistan's interim leader sided with his American
hosts today in saying the captives from the Afghanistan war being held in
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, did not deserve prisoner-of-war status.
"They are criminals," the leader, Hamid Karzai, told reporters today at the
National Press Club. "I don't see them as prisoners of war."
His rejection of prisoner-of-war status for the captives puts him squarely on
the side of the United States, as opposed to many critics in human-rights
groups and in allied governments who are urging the United States to abide by
the Geneva Conventions and grant the prisoners such status.
"They brutalized Afghanistan," Mr. Karzai said in response to a question. "They
killed our people. They destroyed our land. There was no war there. It was
plain killing fields. Very plain killing fields. And these people are the
perpetrators of that atrocity."
Despite this view, Mr. Karzai said he still believed that they deserved humane
treatment.
The administration calls the prisoners "unlawful combatants," a phrase that
originated in the 1942 case by the United States against German saboteurs but
that does not appear in the Geneva Conventions.
