Alberto Gonzales and the Geneva Convention

May 25, 2007
Alberto Gonzales and the Geneva Convention

But Gonzales wouldn't have to go to cases from Singapore to find how inhuman treatment was defined under the Geneva Convention.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Tokyo war crimes trial of major Japanese leaders, organized by American General Douglas MacArthur held months of hearings on the inhuman treatment of POWs and civilian internees. Prosecutors spent days summing up cases of inhuman treatment before the tribunal.

All the war crimes trials at the end of the Second World War came under the jurisdiction of the UN War Crimes Commission, and the U.S. and Britain were the main countries that planned the trials, so the records defining the term inhuman treatment were easily available to anyone who looked hard enough.