U.S. Detention Policies in Iraq and Afghanistan Continue to Spark Controversy

During the end of October 2004, the media ran stories on new legal opinions and practices in the Bush Administration that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by U.S. forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention and have been taken out of Iraq. A draft opinion, dated March 19, 2004 and written by the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, refers to both Iraqi citizens and foreigners in Iraq, who the memo states are protected by the Geneva Conventions. The memo allows the CIA to take Iraqis out of the country to be interrogated for a "brief but not indefinite period." It provides the CIA can permanently remove persons deemed to be "illegal aliens" under "local immigration law." and One media source said the CIA. The CIA has apparently used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly taking as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the six months thereafter. The CIA concealed the detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross and other authorities...[more]