Continuing on this issue, Mr. Chair, very early on in January 2002, Canadian soldiers did capture suspected Taliban and al Qaeda fighters and they handed them over to the U.S. forces. This was in the context of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld having publicly refused to convene the status determination tribunals required by the third Geneva Convention of 1949 to investigate whether individuals captured are in fact prisoners of war.
In addition to some of the stories about what has happened to prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, we have an open repudiation of the extent to which the Geneva Conventions, in the minds of the American administration, actually apply in this situation. It is one thing to say we want them to do it, but on the other hand, there is some evidence that even by their own understanding, it is not something they feel obliged to do, at least in this particular instance.