Chapter

Interrogation and treatment of detainees in the global war on terror

by Richard B. "Dick" Jackson

The war on terror and the laws of war : a military perspective

Oxford [etc.] : Oxford University Press, 2015

p. 101-130

English

The US military has been at the forefront of training and applying the law of war to detention in military operations since well before the adoption of the 1907 Hague Regulations, as exemplified by the Lieber Code. Up until the end of 2001, the humane treatment provided in common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 was to be applied in all armed conflicts, and the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions’ standards presumptively to captured individuals. Yet, as the Global War on Terror unfolded in the fall of 2001, those standards started to be challenged and new ones came to be developed in an effort to free interrogators to apply “harsh interrogation techniques”, tantamount to torture. Most notably through a president’s Military order and memos from the Secretary of Defense, they became a mere vague requirement of humane treatment consistent with military necessity. This chapter describes the arc of change in those policies from elimination of the standards to the congressional and public pressure that ultimately led to their return. The authorization of certain interrogation techniques did not mean, however, that they were necessarily used on the field. Most Judge Advocates kept applying the provisions of the Geneva Conventions and the Army’s manuals, although others were later criticized for authorizing the use of brutal interrogation techniques. Investigations and public disclosure of those abuses eventually led to a reaffirmation of the Geneva Conventions standards of treatment from 2005 on. [Summary by students at the International Criminal and Humanitarian Law Clinic, Laval University]

• Full text (restricted access : ICRC)

• The war on terror and the laws of war : a military perspective / Geoffrey S. Corn... [et al.] ; foreword by Charles J. Dunlap