The Tribunal's reasoning arguably would also apply to civilians detained or interned in occupied territory under article 78 of the Fourth Convention.

Nicolae Romulus Mailat, the young man of 25 accused of Giovanna Reggianni s murder, had been interned at age 14 in a school for re education. He was later condemned again for theft, but was pardoned a year before arriving in Italy.

In the case of international armed conflicts, for example, both the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 contain provisions addressing the circumstances under which POWs and civilians, respectively, may be interned or detained and the manner in which their internment or detention must be monitored, including access by the ICRC.

In moments of extreme fear, the pendulum of attitudes swings toward the security end of that spectrum. Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus the principle that detainees are entitled to challenge their detention in a court of law during the Civil War, and Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese American citizens during the early days of World War II.

The gaunt, gentlemanly Mazowiecki had served as an adviser to Lech Wałęsa, the leader of the Solidarity movement. He had seen the movement swell to more than nine million members in the heady days after the August 1980 Gdansk Shipyard strike and, like the rest of the movement s leadership, had been interned when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and banned Solidarity 16 months later.