Prisoners of War or Unlawful Combatants?: Guantanamo Bay and International Law

In this engaging study, international relations scholar Valerie Jeche questions the legality of the detentions at Guantanamo Bay. She emphasises that Guantanamo is a legal detention camp and evaluates the rights that its detainees have under international humanitarian and human rights law. This study tested the hypothesis that the detentions at Guantanamo represent a violation of international law. Jeche conducted interviews with selected officials from the US and Cuban embassy as well as academics and those from the Red Cross and Amnesty International.

The text’s main objective is to analyze the status of the detainees: can they be classified as prisoners of war or unlawful combatants as labeled by the US government? It has been argued that the US government violated international law and international human rights law when it decided to detain those captured during the war on terror.

The main argument is that the US government tortured detainees to attain information from them. Interrogation techniques such as waterboarding were used and in most cases the detainees went on hunger strike and some even committed suicide while at the facility. Both international law and human rights law protect the detainees but the US government articulated a different interpretation.