http://www.counterpunch.com/fisk04072004.htmlThe United States has secretly flown Saddam Hussein out of Iraq and imprisoned him under high security at a vast American air base in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar.
After his capture last December, he was initially taken by helicopter to a US aircraft carrier in Gulf waters for extensive interrogation. After lengthy questioning, he was transferred to Qatar, although the emirate's royal family was not even told of his presence.
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But the increasingly sophisticated guerrilla attacks against the Americans raised fears that insurgents would try to stage a spectacular prison escape for the former Iraqi dictator, so Qatar was chosen as the safest place to hold him within the Middle East.
Under international law and the Geneva Conventions, it is legal for an occupying power to move a prisoner of war outside the frontiers of the country of which he is a citizen, which is why the Americans almost immediately made Saddam an official PoW, an act which initially surprised both US politicians and members of the Iraqi Governing Council.
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They say that an almost equal reluctance is being displayed over Tariq Aziz, Saddam's former deputy prime minister, who is being held prisoner by the US at Baghdad airport.
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I didn't know our base in Qatar was "vast", big I knew. (don't know our 51st state very well.)
the albatross around the bushgang's neck is their prisoners, where ever in the world, including america, they are held.