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Kerry's Wife Says Gitmo Prisoners Should Have POW Status NewsMax.com WiresSEATTLE -- The wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Monday that suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay should be given prisoner of war status. "They were captured while fighting a war," Teresa Heinz Kerry said at an informal discussion with minority activists in Seattle. "They should have the rights that other prisoners of war have had." Heinz Kerry, the heir to the Heinz family's food fortune, said denying the detainees the protections of the Geneva Convention is "insulting, ignorant and insensitive" to the rest of the world. She added that under President Bush, the United States, once known as the standard-bearer for human rights, is now considered a hypocrite. "The arrogance shown by this administration on human rights and in its foreign policy is horrible," she said. Some 660 people suspected of taking part in terrorist activity are being held at the prison on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Many, believed to be members of al-Qaida or the Taliban, were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan two years ago in war on terrorism. The Bush administration has said its top priority is interrogating the detainees for intelligence on any planned terrorist attacks. American officials started releasing some of the detainees a year ago, using a system under which they had to be judged no further threat, of no further intelligence value and not wanted for prosecution. Officials have said the prisoners would either be tried by U.S. military tribunals, held indefinitely in Cuba or sent home if their governments could be trusted to handle them properly - something never completely explained publicly. A spokeswoman for the Kerry campaign said Sen. Kerry supports his wife's position that the detainees should be given basic protections such as the right to an attorney. "As long as al-Qaida is actively trying to take down America, Sen. Kerry believes that these prisoners should be held as enemy combatants," spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said. "But unlike the Bush administration, he also believes that we don't need to shred our Constitution in the name of national security."
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