 "To
be entitled to prisoner-of-war status,
captured service members must be lawful
combatants
entitled to combatant's privilege—which
gives them immunity from punishment for
crimes constituting lawful acts of war
such as killing enemy troops. To qualify
under the Third Geneva Convention, a
combatant must have conducted military
operations according to
the laws and
customs of war,
be part of a
chain of
command,
wear a "fixed distinctive marking,
visible from a distance" and bear arms
openly. (The Convention recognizes a few
other groups as well, such as persons
"who on the approach of the enemy
spontaneously take up arms to resist the
invading forces, without having had time
to form themselves into regular armed
units".) Thus, uniforms and/or badges
are important in determining
prisoner-of-war status; and
francs-tireurs,
terrorists,
saboteurs,
mercenaries
and
spies
do not qualify. In practice, these
criteria are rarely interpreted
strictly.
Guerrillas,
for example, usually do not wear a
uniform or carry arms openly, but
captured guerrillas are often granted
POW status. The criteria are applied
primarily to
international
armed
conflicts;
in civil wars, insurgents are often
treated as traitors or criminals by
government forces, and are sometimes
executed. However, in the
American Civil
War,
both sides treated captured troops as
POWs, presumably out of
reciprocity,
although the
Union
regarded
Confederate
personnel as separatist rebels. However,
guerrillas and other irregular
combatants generally cannot expect to
receive benefits from both civilian and
military status simultaneously."
Source:
Wikipedia.
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