to be considered with respect to the relationship of the individual to a nation-state and not to an ad hoc group, movement, cause, or self-proclaimed cell of rebels. However, there is as the case of Guantanamo detainees believed or known to be associated with the group called Al-Qaeda a highly controversial issue (Dershowitz 1).
The Geneva Convention is quite specific according to ICRC (2) in that it refers to the application of provisions to parties to a conflict who are prisoners of war defined as "persons belonging" to the armed forces of a party to the conflict, or other individuals who profess allegiance to a government or an authority that has standing. The difficulty of the Convention in the context of individuals arrested for non-state acts of aggression is that as originally designed, the Convention was clearly meant to be applicable to a variety of different actors who were associated in some formal manner with a sovereign nation-state and its various military organizations (International Committee for the Red Cross, 1, 2).
The difficulty of determining whether or not a group like Al-Qaeda and its members constitute prisoners of war when they are detained as defined under the Geneva Convention is enormous. The International Committee for the Red Cross (3, 1) notes that the Convention prohibits "violence to life and person in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture" handed out not only to military prisoners of the enemy but also persons taking no active part in the hostilities who have laid down their arms or been rendered hors de combat. This has become an issue of enormous significance leading the International Committee for the Red Cross (2, 2) to emphasize the necessity of having "High Contracting Parties" for remaining faithful to the strict interpretation of the Convention as it applies to noncombatants.
What becomes particularly challenging in the case of events such...