Pentagon releases names of Gitmo inmates

Mar 3, 6:03 PM EST


Pentagon releases names of Gitmo inmates


By MIRANDA LEITSINGER and BEN FOX


Associated Press Writers


AP Photo/ANDRES LEIGHTON


GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon released documents Friday that contain the names of hundreds 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.

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.

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>>>cont

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