Combatant Status Review Tribunal

One of the criteria for holding and not releasing the hostages is commitment; the one thing that a faithful Muslim cannot deny

Combatant Status Review Tribunals (WP) were held in a trailer the size of a large Recreational Vehicle. The captive sat on a plastic garden chair, with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor. Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed.

Releasing prisoners is more in line with a commitment to humanitarian treatment. It is what was done with Nazis in WWII and there is no end to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is an occupation.

Holding them as prisoner for a long period makes it more likely they will fight to the death. To say that is ok is not only unethical, but ignores how much more dangerous such a person is. Regardless of whether one cares, it shows the extent to which the US has gone, to put their troops and thus their military strategy at a disadvantage, simply to hold the prisoners.

Further reading

• Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals", Financial Times
• Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court, New York Times
• Wikipedia:Wikisource:Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism, Military Order of November 13, 2001 by George W. Bush (WP)
• Wikipedia:Wikisource:Declaration of Stephen Abraham, Lieutenant Colonel, United States Army Reserve, June 14th, 2007
• Wikipedia:Wikisource:Guantanamo Detainees (02/13/2004)

The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of Wikipedia:tribunals for confirming whether Wikipedia:detainees held by the Wikipedia:United States at the Wikipedia:Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "Wikipedia:enemy combatants". The CSRTs were established July 7, 2004 by order of U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Wikipedia:Paul Wolfowitz after U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Wikipedia:Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Wikipedia:Rasul v. Bush Combatant Status Review Tribunal (fact sheet of October 17, 2006)Wikisource link and were coordinated through the Wikipedia:Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants.

These non-public hearings were conducted as "a formal review of all the information related to a detainee to determine whether each person meets the criteria to be designated as an enemy combatant." The first CSRT hearings began in July 2004. Redacted transcripts of hearings for "high value detainees" were posted to the Department of Defense (DoD) website. As of October 30, 2007, fourteen CSRT transcripts were available on the DoD website.