1/11/2002

During a Pentagon Briefing on January 11, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld responded to a journalist’s question about whether the ICRC and other non-governmental organizations would be given access to the detainees: “… They will be handled not as prisoners of wars, because they’re not, but as unlawful combatants. The — as I understand it, technically unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention. We have indicated that we do plan to, for the most part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the Geneva Conventions, to the extent they are appropriate, and that is exactly what we have been doing.”

– Federal News Service Transcript at 9:50 on video, “Defense Department Briefing,” Pentagon Briefing, C-SPAN.org, January 11, 2002