End of the Conflict and Detention. Finally, as noted in relation to the ‘War without End’ discussion above, when an armed conflict comes to an end the lawful basis for detention under IHL also ends, and detention must end with it, or another legal basis must be provided. If the conflict shifts in nature from international to non-international, as happened in both Afghanistan and Iraq for example, different legal con- siderations apply and the detention must be justified in accordance with the law that then applies. The ICRC suggests that the minimum standard of ‘im- perative reasons of security’ may still justify detention, and the relevant minimum safeguards continue to apply, while others suggest a greater role for human rights law in non-international conflicts settings, where less pre- scriptive rules of IHL apply.487 When armed conflict ceases, undoubtedly it is the provisions of human rights law that then apply, as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has noted: ‘since that IAC [in Afghanistan] ceased, however, IHRL standards have applied in the normal fashion’.488 IHL provides for detention to come to an end and relocation of detainees. Despite many detainees having been detained in relation to the conflict in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, the ‘ending of combat in Afghanistan and 485 See discussion in Chapter 7B3. 486 See generally, Pejic, ‘Procedural principles and safeguards for internment/administrative detention in armed con?ict and other situations of violence’, ICRC, Vol. 87 No. 858, June 2005 (hereinafter ‘ICRC Minimum Guidelines’). 487 See the ECtHR decision in Al-Jedda v. United Kingdom, Appl. No. 27021/08, Judgment, ECtHR, 7 July 2011, on detention in armed conflict situation in Iraq, and the critique thereof in J. Pejic, ‘The European Court of Human Rights’ Al-Jedda judgment: the oversight of international humanitarian law’, 93(883) 2011 International Review of the Red Cross 837 (stressing the importance of having regard to the inherent right to detain under IHL); see also 7B.3 ‘The “war” and human rights’. 488 PACE, ‘Lawfulness of detentions by the United States in Guantánamo Bay’, Res.1433 (2005), para. 4. Iraq appears to have no consequences for the ending of detention’.489 The defence secretary, Leon E. Panetta, announced that the US hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2013 as it did in Iraq in 2011, yet apparently maintained the right to continue to hold enemy detainees ‘for the duration of hostilities’.490 A media report recently e...
