Detention: Operations in Iraq

Interested in the ongoing debate over the relationship between LOAC and Human Rights Law in general, or the intersection of those bodies of law in relation to non-criminal detention in particular? You won't want to miss this.

In 2012, the UN Human Rights Council asked the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to produce a document spelling out just what it means to say there is a prohibition on arbitrary detention--including in the context of armed conflict.

Below, you will find the second installment in our ongoing effort to identify, in summary form, key areas of dispute as between the SSCI, the SSCI minority, and the CIA with regard the CIA's detention and interrogation program.

Over at Newsweek, Jeff Stein wonders: "What Will U.S. Forces Do With ISIS Prisoners?"

Among the many unresolved issues in the campaign to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, as it’s generally known, is what to do with prisoners in Iraq or Syria, should American special operators or U.S.-backed forces be lucky enough to capture any. How deeply will we be involved in interrogating them?

I've posted many times on the gradual but inexorable process through which the United States is closing out its detention operations in Afghanistan, including this recent update.  It has been a bumpy road, and after President Karzai recently suggested that he would quickly release certain detainees once able to do so, it not surprisingly has gotten bumpier.  The New York Times explains:

In September, when