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Parent debate

• Debate: Guantanamo Bay detention center

Supporting evidence

• Karen J. Greenberg. "8 Reasons to Close Guantnamo Now". In These Times. February 12, 2007 - "#2 It violates the Geneva Conventions Guantánamo is a prisoner-of-war camp that is not labeled as such. From the beginning, the administration took the legal position that the captives brought to Cuba were not prisoners of war, but fell into the vague, newly created legal category of “enemy combatants.”

But according to the International Committee of the Red Cross Commentary to the conventions, no such intermediate ground between civilians and prisoners of war exists: “Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, [or] a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.”

As the camp was being built, military personnel I interviewed said they knew not to use the words “prison-camp,” or “prison.” Why? Under the Geneva Conventions, a prisoner cannot be interrogated, punished, or forced to answer questions beyond rank, name and serial number."