Awwad Ahmad, the sniper, killed both Marines during the battle of Fallujah. And the US classified him like a criminal.
This matters a *lot*, because of the widespread confusion in the US government as to whether insurgents were non-uniformed fighters, and thus subject to harsh rules, including field trial and execution; or “criminals”, and thus subject to international rules of arrest, detention, evidence and jurisdiction.
That is, if the US had classified al-Qaeda as non-uniformed combatants, by international law we could have hung every one we captured, after a brief, almost administrative trial. Instead the US government chose to handle them as “criminals”.
But since the US military are not policemen, nor do they gather evidence, every single one of those combatants is going to eventually have to be released by the Iraqi courts, unless the Iraqis have other evidence of a crime.
This shows how fouled up our policy was, and remains.
In any event, we are for the most part leaving Iraq, and the prisons we manage are going to be turned over to the Iraqis. So expect to see a LOT of this in the future.
Agreed.