The International Red Cross said Wednesday that Colombia broke the Geneva Conventions by deliberately using its humanitarian emblem during the covert military mission that freed Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages.... "It seems to be a deliberate improper use of the emblem," said Anna Schaaf, an ICRC spokesman. She said this was a violation of international law.

Use of the Red Cross symbol in a military operation violates the first Geneva Convention because it could damage the relief group's neutrality in conflicts, endangering medical personnel on the battlefield who are using the red cross for protection.

In the July 2 rescue, a team of Colombian military intelligence agents posing as members of a fake international humanitarian group airlifted the hostages safety, including Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate, and three U.S. military contractors....

"Maybe we're dense, but it seems to us that rescuing civilian hostages from a terrorist group is a higher humanitarian priority than preventing unauthorized use of a trademark. The way the Red Cross interprets them, the Geneva Conventions seem almost quaint."

Article 37.-Prohibition of perfidy

1. It is prohibited to kill, injure, or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy:
(a) The feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender;
(b) The feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;
(c) The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and
(d) The feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.
2. Ruses of war are not prohibited. Such ruses are acts which are intended to mislead an adversary or to induce him to act recklessly but which infringe no rule of international law applicable in armed conflict and which are not perfidious because they do not invite the confidence of an adversary with respect to protection under that law. The following are examples of such ruses: the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations and misinformation.

Article 38.-Recognized emblems
1. It is prohibited to make improper use of the distinctive emblem of the red cross, red crescent or red lion and sun or of other emblems, signs or signals provided for by the Conventions or by this Protocol. It is also prohibited to misuse deliberately in an armed conflict other internationally recognized protective emblems, signs or signals, including the flag of truce, and the protective emblem of cultural property.
2. It is prohibited to make use of the distinctive emblem of the United Nations, except as authorized by that Organization.

Article 39.-Emblems of nationality
1. It is prohibited to make use in an armed conflict of the flags or military emblems, insignia or uniforms of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.
2. It is prohibited to make use of the flags or military emblems, insignia or uniforms of adverse Parties while engaging in attacks or in order to shield, favour, protect or impede military operations.
3. Nothing in this Article or in Article 37, paragraph 1 ( d ), shall affect the existing generally recognized rules of international law applicable to espionage or to the use of flags in the conduct of armed conflict at sea.

Under this rule are prohibited acts of assassination, the hiring of assassins, putting a price on an enemy’s head, offering a reward for an enemy “dead or alive,” proscription and outlawry of an enemy . . . Perpetrators of such acts should be tried as war criminals.

But the fraudulent use of a white flag or a red cross (or the equivalent of the red cross in other cultures—the red crescent or the red lion, for example) is prohibited for three reasons. First, some small pieces of language in war must remain wholly intact, uncompromised, unwavering, undiluted in their meaning. These few insignia are placed hors de combat, or “out of combat”; they constitute a civil structure that remains in place in the international sphere (in the same way that inside a country the military is kept inside a civil frame). These small but sacrosanct pieces of language act as a location from which other true sentences can be spoken: without them, as Morris Greenspan observes in Modern Law of Land Warfare, neither party would “be able to place the slightest credence in the word of the other.”

The second reason points to the future rather than the present, the period of peace rather than war. Unless certain pieces of language remain uncontaminated by war, no international framework of trust remains available for a truce or peace accord. These small pieces of language must be kept intact, then, because they will provide a bridge back to civilization.

The first and second reasons tell us that some pieces of language must carry the guarantee of truthfulness without telling us why these particular pieces of language must do so. This explanation is provided by a third principle, which is hard to formulate. One formulation states ... that it is a “grave breach . . . when the use invites the confidence of the enemy with the intent to betray confidence.” [...] What is key in cases of treachery is that one party invites its opponents to refrain from injuring others and to refrain from protecting themselves against injury by appealing to the higher frame of language, the hors de combat language, and then, thanks to the opponents’ willingness to honor this higher call, injures them...

The stark prohibition on the false use of the red cross is derived from a logically prior and overarching prohibition: that a Red Cross vehicle or building cannot itself be the target of assault. It is because all participants are obligated to regard the white flag and red cross as inviolable that a secondary obligation arises not to use either sign falsely.