Powell urges PoW status for al-Qaeda captives Afghanistan - Observer special
Ed Vulliamy in New York
Sunday January 27, 2002
The ObserverThe US Secretary of State Colin Powell has urged President Bush to declare al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and elsewhere prisoners of war, with protection under the Geneva Conventions.
Powell's defiant challenge - his boldest during a year of reported rifts within the administration - is revealed in a four-page White House memo obtained by the Washington Times and published yesterday, in advance of a National Security Council summit tomorrow to discuss the prisoners.
The proposal would radically transform conditions under which the prisoners are being kept and clarify their legal status.
Rumours of a deep rift between Powell and the White House - specifically Vice President Dick Cheney, his old nemesis - have dogged the Bush administration.
The stark split of opinion on such an internationally sensitive issue cuts to the core of that division, and means it cannot stay hidden for much longer.
The State Department had no comment, but a source told The Observer: 'The Secretary of State has for a while been monitoring with some concern international concerns over the treatment and status of prisoners.' The note says that Powell 'would agree that al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters could be determined not to be prisoners of war, but only on a case-by-case basis following individual hearings before a military board'.
While the White House refused to comment on the memo yesterday, sources indicate that most of the President's security team would oppose the suggestion.
Powell's views will give fresh energy to international pressures on Bush over his decision that hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters are 'battlefield detainees', not prisoners of war - a ruling which put them in a legal limbo and deprived them of treatment under the Geneva Convention.
Human rights groups and a steady stream of British and European politicians have protested against the decision.
Under the convention, prisoners of war lose their freedom but they are not criminals - they are enemy soldiers. If Powell wins his argument, the US would have to provide clothing, exercise rooms and canteens. The captives cannot be hooded or shackled and would be allowed contact with the outside world, including letters to families.
There would also be restrictions on the open-ended interrogations used at present. The Americans say these have given the FBI new insights into how the al-Qaeda network operates.
Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002