According to today’s Guardian, the names of all of the prisoners who are, or have been, at the Guantamino Bay prison:
The US government has released its first official list of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.
The list of 558 people comprises three-quarters of the total number of detainees who have passed through the camp, which was set up in 2002 after the end of the war in Afghanistan.
Well, finally the world is allowed to know who we captured, and likely are abusing and torturing. Their families can know that they are alive, but have to worry it this is better or not.
So, who is it we are holding in Guantamino Bay Prison?
The people named on the detainee list come from 41 countries, although nearly two-thirds are from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Ok, so that makes sense many of them were captured in Afghanistan, we know that there were Saudis on the planes on 9/11, but…
Former officials of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime are particularly prominent on the tally. The Taliban’s former defence ministry chief of staff Mullah Mohammed Fazil is still in custody along with intelligence officials Abdul Haq Wasiq and Gholam Ruhani.
Kabul’s former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, is also included, although he was released from the prison camp late last year.
Why are detaining without due process government officials of a regime we deposed. True the Taliban were a bunch of illiberal theocrats and true they did allow terror training camps in their territory, but they better have good reason to believe that these guys had access to actual terrorist plots.
This is a really bad precedent. We really don’t want to go around capturing and torturing former government officials. Now wonder Bush didn’t want to sign onto the World Court. It is yet another reason why Bush will probably not be able to travel much after January, 2009.
We gave Milosovich access to due process at the Hague, and even Saddam is getting better treatment at his trial in Iraq. Hitler would have had his day in court if he hadn’t killed himself first. We have tried to make it so that world leaders are not hidden away and tortured for the crime of losing a war.
The article goes on to talk about the list and how it was released:
The list has previously been seen by members of the Red Cross, but was only publicly released after the Associated Press news agency sued US authorities under the freedom of information act.
My goodness, the AP is actually doing its job, and getting information that the government doesn’t want us to know. I wonder if that is why Scotty had to resign, he was court ordered to actually answer a question.
But have they really released the names of all of the detainees:
It numbers all the detainees who have appeared at hearings in Guantánamo Bay to determine their combatant status.
The hearings took place between July 2004 and January 2005. All detainees at the prison between those dates received a hearing, but only 38 of them were determined to be “no longer enemy combatants” by the military tribunals, and only 29 of those were released.
A total of around 750 people are believed to have passed through the camp, and 490 are currently believed to be in custody there.
So these are just the guys who we have got around to determining if they are actually enemy combatants or not. Didn’t the Supreme Court order them to do that some time ago? Or did O’Conner’s resignation make that ruling null and void?
Not only that, but we are still holding 9 people whom we have decided are “no longer enemy combatants”. WTF?! And again despite having been ordered to release this information by the courts, they only released the names of 3/4 (558/750) of the people detained.
What is so special about the other 200 people that we cannot release their names publicly? Are they super secret Terrorists? Does Bin Laden still think they are free to plot inside they United States? Have the ever even been to the US?