Geneva Conventions require that prisoners of war "must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."
The United States is already holding more than 600 foreign prisoners in camps in Guantanamo Bay, its base in Cuba.
The vast majority was captured in or around Afghanistan during the operation to root out al-Qaeda bases in that country in the 9/11 aftermath.
There were times, especially at the start, when the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay came very close to being paraded before television cameras. They were shown in conditions that seemed designed to humiliate, confined to metal cages, led hooded and blindfolded to interrogation sessions that were not, and could not, be monitored.
The American authorities resisted all efforts by foreign governments and human rights organizations to have their "detainees," as they termed them, recognized as prisoners of war and so subject to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.
Just last month the Pentagon confirmed four detainees in Guantanamo have attempted suicide. That prisoners are repeatedly attempting to take their own lives indicates the human cost of the indefinite legal limbo into which they have been thrown.
It brings the total of serious suicide attempts in the camp to 14 in the past year.
