Posted by
Team Turk on Thursday, October 26, 2006 3:35:22 PM
From United Press International:
The U.S. attorney general defended the new U.S. anti-terror law Wednesday, saying the Geneva Conventions' framers were not thinking of 21st-century terrorists.
"I do not believe the Geneva Conventions were drafted with the threat of al-Qaida in mind," he said at a meeting of the German Marshall Fund.
The U.S. legislation, signed into law last week, "means that a different set of rules is applicable," Gonzales said.
The law authorizes military trials of terrorism suspects, eliminating some of the rights defendants usually are guaranteed under U.S. law while allowing continued harsh interrogations of terror suspects, a provision U.S. President George Bush has said was vital.
"We must have the ability to detain and remove terrorists from the battlefields of this conflict, to collect from them the vital intelligence that enables us to capture their associates and break up future terrorist plots and to create effective and fair procedures that will allow us to prosecute and punish captured terrorists for their war crimes," Gonzales said.