Reply #6: Geneva Conventions are meaningless here.

[Igel]

They are voluntarily adopted by states, and they may do so with stipulations as to how they will be followed, or which provisions will be ignored.

However if this translator was captured, it's unlikely that a state military did so. Therefore the Geneva Conventions are irrelevant.

Baathists have been torturing--we're talking amputations, severe burns, psychological ploys like torturing family members in front of the captive, throwing people off buildings--for decades; the Russian proverb "you're not a thief unless you're caught" seems to govern their actions. Islamists have been doing like things a far sight longer, for all the posturing and revising of history; the Geneva Conventions are a Western ploy, of no validity for this group since they serve a higher morality. They did this before we went into Iraq; they did this before we went into Afghanistan.

In other words: People are grown ups and from time to time, no matter how hard it may be to believe, simply follow their own moral compass.