Cairo,
April 19 (Islamonline.net) - As part of "liberating" Iraqis,
U.S. occupation forces are trying more than 6850 Iraqis, in a move
branded by international law experts as stark violation of the Geneva
Convention on the treatment of PoWs by the occupation power.
The
Pentagon announced Saturday, April 19, that American military tribunals
were set up in Iraq to try Iraqi PoWs.
"A
prisoner of war must not be put on trial unless he commits a war crime
as stipulated by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of PoWs,"
stressed Ahmed Abu el-Wafa, Professor of International Law, Cairo
University.
In
exclusive statements to IslamOnline.net over the phone, the expert
asserted that the "1949 Third Geneva Convention states that it is
impermissible to put a PoW on trial unless he has committed a war crime.
"Instead,
the convention stipulates that PoWs should be treated humanly and should
be freed once military operations are over," he added.
The
law professor underlined that Iraqis did not commit any war crimes and
were simply defending their country against occupation.
"Those
people were in a state of legitimate self-defense," he averred.
Abu
el-Wafa charged the Anglo-American troops with perpetrating war crimes
in Iraq, and demanded that they be put on trial.
He
cited, in as an example, the case of Ail Abbas Ismail, the Iraqi child
who lost his parents, brothers and sisters as well as his four limbs in
an American bombardment of their home.
"The
occupier does not have the jurisdiction to try the people of the
occupied country," said Muhammad Shawqi Abdelaal, Professor of
International Law, Cairo University.
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Ail
a victim of an American "smart" bomb
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In
statements to IslamOnline.net, he dismissed as "unfounded" the
pretexts propagated by Washington against Iraqi PoWs.
"By
talking about tribunals, the United States is placing political
considerations over legal ones and is paving the way for Israel to do
the same with the Palestinians," underlined the expert.
"Assuming
that Iraqi PoWs have -indeed- committed war crimes, the United Stated
has no jurisdiction to try them, and must instead forward their cases to
the International Criminal Court."
In
a bid to save Iraqi PoWs from an unfair trial, Abdelaal called the Arab
League to lodge complains with the U.N. Security Council and General
Assembly to intervene and stop such trials.
"who
is trying who?" Abdelaal wondered.
U.S.
military tribunals so far have ruled on the cases of seven people who
were taken prisoner, releasing two of them and formally declaring four
others as prisoners of war, said Pentagon spokesman Major Ted Wadsworth
said.
The
seventh prisoner whose case was heard by a military tribunal was
determined to be either a doctor or a chaplain and returned to provide
services to the prisoner population, he said.
Wadsworth
said 925 other people had previously been found to be non combatants and
released although not by military tribunals.
Prisoners
whose status has not been determined will be treated as prisoners of war
until a tribunal decides otherwise, he said.
