Prisoner of war

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Concept.png Prisoner of war Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
A person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict.

A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict.

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war are automatically granted the enhanced status of protected persons.[1] To avoid these protections, certain countries, noticeably the United States and Israel have come up with the concept of "unlawful combatant", which allows for torture and indefinite imprisonment.[2]

Some Prisoners of War on Wikispooks

  • John McCain - collaborated with the Vietnamese during his captivity during the Vietnam War.
  • Since the Korean war, the several US POWs were publicly confessing to involvement in projects to use bioweapons. The response was to deny the validity of this testimonies, arguing that these were programmed confessions brought on by communist "brainwashing" in an effort to deny the biological warfare.
  • When James Bacque claimed that millions of Germans POWs were starved to death by the Western Allies in 1945, he was harassed by the deep state. Definitely a third rail subject.
  • After World War 2, the British Political Warfare Executive was tasked with the re-education of German POWs.
  • Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega claimed prisoner of war status after the US invasion, but was hauled off to a US trial and prison.


 

Related Quotation

PageQuoteAuthorDate
Seymour Hersh“But one of the things we did, ostensibly to improve the conditions of prisoners, we demanded that the American soldiers operating in Afghanistan could only hold a suspected Taliban for four days, 96 hours. If not... after four days they could not be sure that this person was not a Taliban, he must be freed. Instead of just holding them and making them Taliban, you have to actually do some, some work to make the determination in the field. Tactically, in the field. So what happens of course, is after three or four days, "bang, bang" — I'm just telling you — they turn them over to the Afghans and by the time they take three steps away the shots are fired. And that's going on. It hasn't stopped. It's not just me that's complaining about it. But the stuff that goes on in the field, is still going on in the field — the secret prisons, absolutely, oh you bet they're still running secret prisons. Most of them are in North Africa, the guys running them are mostly out of Djibouto [sic]. We have stuff in Kenya (doesn't mean they're in Kenya, but they're in that area).”Seymour HershJanuary 2011
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References