[Ppnews] US reveals full Guantanamo list

[Political Prisoner News]

US reveals full Guantanamo list

Tuesday 16 May 2006 4:32 AM GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DE7A4F11-9CEF-484A-AAEE-E4B65446A2E7.htm

The Pentagon has disclosed the names, ages and home countries of 
everyone held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in southeastern Cuba 
as a suspect in the US-led war on terror.

The US says it has held 759 males, from teenagers to men older than 
70, from more than 40 countries, according to the list released late 
on Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed 
by The Associated Press.

The list includes about 200 previously undisclosed names. They are 
former Guantanamo detainees who were moved out before the military 
began hearings in summer 2004 to determine whether detainees were 
properly classified as "enemy combatants" who should be held at the base.

The list includes the 10 detainees who have been charged with crimes, 
but it does not include the most notorious US prisoners, such as 
alleged September 11 plotters Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi 
Binalshibh - whose whereabouts are secret.

"There's still much more in darkness," said Priti Patel, a lawyer 
with New York-based Human Rights First who has monitored legal 
proceedings at Guantanamo.

Lawyers and other advocates will be able to use the list to track who 
has been held at the base and find former detainees to help 
investigate allegations of abuse, Patel said.

The Pentagon released the list while denying the AP access to other 
information about the detainees, who were mostly held on suspicion of 
links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The handover is the first time that everyone who has been held by the 
defence department at Guantanamo Bay has been identified, said Navy 
Lieutenant Commander Chito Peppler, a Pentagon spokesman.

Last month, the military released the names of 558 detainees, in 
response to an AP lawsuit.

The names of all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were classified 
because of "the security operation as well as the intelligence 
operation that takes place down there," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

The new list, when compared with the one from April, shows that the 
Pentagon released many Afghans who were caught early in the war. More 
than 90 were transferred out of Guantanamo from January 2002 to summer 2004.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties 
Union, believes that US officials are trying to deflect international 
criticism by gradually moving out detainees.

"They are trying to slowly let the air out of the tires as a way to 
make the problem go away," Romero said.

Incomplete information
The list released on Monday does not specify what has happened to 
former detainees.

The fate of some is documented. All British nationals were 
transferred back to Britain. What has become of dozens of other 
detainees was not known.

Some could be free. Others could be in secret US detention centres or 
in torture cells of prisons in other countries.

The US military says about 480 detainees are now at Guantanamo Bay. 
Those released or transferred numbered 275.

Agencies
By

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DE7A4F11-9CEF-484A-AAEE-E4B65446A2E7.htm 



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