Saddam is a PoW, says Pentagon

Pentagon lawyers have determined that Saddam Hussein has been a prisoner of war since American forces captured him on December 13, a US Defence Department spokesman said in Washington.

Despite that determination, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told CBS Television: “I don’t know that he has been formally declared a prisoner of war.”

That decision was up to the Pentagon, Powell said.

Whether or not Saddam is a prisoner of war could be key to how he is treated in captivity and eventually put on trial. The Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war forbid any kind of coercion in interrogations, for example.

Powell said: “We are certainly treating everybody in our custody in accordance with basic rights and expectations of international agreements that we have.”

A senior British official said Saddam had not given useful information to his interrogators.

The official said US authorities were taking their time questioning Saddam in the hope that he might eventually open up.

The general counsel office in the Pentagon – the US Defence Department’s top civilian lawyers – has determined that Saddam is a prisoner of war because of his status as former commander in chief of Iraq’s military, spokesman Major Michael Shavers said.

The lawyers advised that no formal declaration of Saddam’s status was needed, he said.

US officials have said they plan to turn Saddam over to an Iraqi court for trial. The US says Saddam’s government killed at least 300,000 Iraqis, including thousands of Iraqi Kurds in a poison gas attack in 1988.

But the Geneva Conventions say PoWs can be tried only for crimes against humanity by an international tribunal or the occupying power – which in this case is the US.

PoW status also would entitle Saddam to meet representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross. No such meeting has happened.

Some human rights groups have complained that other top former Iraqi officials in US custody have not been given access to Red Cross representatives.

Saddam is being held and interrogated by the CIA. Iraqi officials say he is being held in the Baghdad area.