[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
International News Title: Pentagon Releases Names of Gitmo Inmates GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon released documents Friday that contain the names of detainees held at a U.S. military prison. The release resulted from a victory by The Associated Press in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. ADVERTISEMENT Travelzoo Get Our Top 20® Newsletter in Your Inbox Each Week! The Most "WOW!" Travel Deals on the Internet - here's a sampling: Released MAR 1, 2006 Last-Minute to London (Roundtrip) $241-$368 United Airlines Fly to Orlando from 45+ Cities $99 or less Major Airlines Ritz-Carlton Caribbean Getaway, 4 Nights & Air $634 American Airlines Vacations Bermuda: 3 Nights & Air $349 Bermuda Department of Tourism Click on Any Deal and Check Them Out Today! *Fares listed may not include all taxes, charges and government fees. More information. © 2006 Travelzoo Inc. The Bush administration had hidden the identities, home countries and other information about the men, who were accused of taking up arms against the United States. But a federal judge rejected administration arguments that releasing the identities would violate the detainees' privacy and could endanger them and their families. The names were scattered throughout more than 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings in which detainees defended themselves against allegations that they were "enemy combatants." That classification, Bush administration lawyers say, deprives the detainees of Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war protections and allows them to be held indefinitely without charges. In some cases, even having the name didn't clarify the identity. In one document, the tribunal president asks a detainee if his name is Jumma Jan. The detainee responds that no, his name instead is Zain Ul Abedin. The documents also contain the names of former prisoners, like Moazzam Begg, a British citizen who was freed in January. The status of other named detainees, such as Feroz Al Abbasi and Naibullah Darwaish, was not immediately clear. A Pentagon lawyer delivered the documents about 20 minutes after the deadline. They were stored as 60 .pdf files on a CD-ROM. But within minutes, an officer returned and took back the CD-ROM, which contained sensitive material that was not intended for release. Most of the men were captured during the 2001 U.S.-led war that drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and sent Osama bin Laden deeper into hiding. Documents released last year — also because of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the AP — had the detainees' names and nationalities blacked out. "Some folks don't want the names to be released for security and privacy reasons. Other folks think it should be open to the world to see," Army Maj. Jeffrey Weir, a Guantanamo spokesman, said Friday outside the kitchen where prisoners' food is prepared. The documents, transcripts from at least 317 hearings at Guantanamo Bay, should shed light on the scope of an insurgency still battling U.S. troops in Afghanistan, in part by detailing how Muslims from many countries wound up fighting alongside the Taliban there. U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York ruled in favor of the AP last week. "This is extremely important information," said Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA. "We've been asking ever since the camp opened for a list of everyone there as one of the most basic first steps for any detaining authority." Human rights monitors say keeping identities of prisoners secret can lead to abuses and deprive their families of information about their fate. The United States, which opened the prison on its Navy base in eastern Cuba in January 2002, now holds about 490 prisoners at Guantanamo. Only 10 have been charged with crimes. Some current and former Guantanamo detainees remained unidentified, even after the release of the documents Friday. An unknown number of the named prisoners have been freed or transferred to custody elsewhere. Neal Sonnett, chairman of the American Bar Association's task force on enemy combatants, said he hopes the documents will help focus attention on the conditions for the detainees and the way the hearings were handled. "Perhaps even more important than just the identities of the detainees are the unedited transcripts of the hearings, which I think will reveal a lot about the way in which the detainees have been treated and the way in which their status has been determined," Sonnett said. He was at Guantanamo to observe pretrial hearings for two detainees charged with crimes. The Pentagon's secrecy has drawn criticism from human rights groups and lawyers. "You can't just draw a veil of secrecy when you are locking people up," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program for Human Rights Watch. "You have to do at least the minimum, which is to acknowledge who you are holding." The Defense Department had argued that releasing the identities of detainees could subject their families, friends and associates to embarrassment and retaliation. But Rakoff said the relatives and others "never had any reasonable expectation" of anonymity. Friday was the deadline he set for release of the material. __ Associated Press reporters Ben Fox contributed to this story from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Lolita C. Baldor contributed from Washington. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
|
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|