Meet Stockwell Day: Judge, Jury, Executioner.

Nice to see Minister Day is pre-judging detainees kept in Canadian custody as all being guilty already:

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day defended Canada’s role in Afghanistan in a rousing speech this morning.. and described some Afghan detainees captured by Canadian forces as killers and torturers..We’re saying to them that these people that we’re bringing you to put in jail, yes, these people have no compunction about machine-gunning, mowing down little children. They have no compunction about decapitating or hanging elderly women. They have no compunction about the vicious forms of torture you can imagine on innocent people. Now we’ve captured them and yes these people that we’ve captured want nothing more to do than to kill you and your children and we’re asking you to treat them humanely.”

The thing is, Stock seems to be forgetting 1 minor detail: the Fundamental Guarantees under the Geneva Conventions are for prisoners to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The part of the Geneva Convention protocol relevant to this reads as follows: “anyone charged with an offence is presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law”. Article 75(4)(d) of Additional Protocol I.

So, according to Stock, we don’t need to worry about prisoners handed over because they are “murderers” not worthy of Geneva Convention guarantees.

I know the US Administration thinks of the Geneva Convention as being “quaint”, but I thought after Day’s surprisingly good performance dealing with the US over Maher Arar, we hadn’t quite reached that level here yet, but I guess we have, as it deals with Afghanistan. Anything reflecting badly on the Conservative government needs to be met head on with some ridiculous charge or statement in order to try and paint the opposition as being being “soft”.