Guantánamo: The Definitive Prisoner List (Part 1)

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First published in March 2009, this list was updated on January 1, 2010, was updated again on July 12, 2010, and was updated for the third time at the end of May 2011, to mark the fourth anniversary of my career as a full-time journalist and blogger, specialising in Guantánamo and related issues. At this time, 171 prisoners remained, 600 had been released, and the last two to leave had departed in coffins, bringing to eight the number of prisoners who have died at the prison. This update also includes previously unseen photos from the classified US military documents relating to the prisoners (the Detainee Assessment Briefs), which were released by WikiLeaks in April 2011.

The following list (also see Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4) is part of an ongoing project (now in its sixth year) to record the stories of all the prisoners held at the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The first fruit of this research was my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon (US and UK), in which I related the story of Guantánamo, established a chronology explaining where and when the prisoners were seized, told the stories of around 450 of these prisoners, and provided a context for the circumstances in which the remainder of the prisoners were captured.

Between November 2007 and February 2009, I also published 12 online chapters telling the stories of over 250 prisoners that I was unable to include in the book (either because they were not available at the time of writing, or to keep the book at a manageable length), and since May 2007 I have written over a thousand articles about Guantánamo, for a variety of publications, expanding on and updating the stories of all 779 prisoners. In particular, I have covered the stories of the 209 prisoners released from Guantánamo since June 2007 in unprecedented depth. I have also covered the stories of the 27 prisoners charged in Guantánamo’s Military Commission trial system in more detail than is available from most, if not all other sources, and have endeavored to do the same with the Guantánamo prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions, covering the 59 cases decided to date in the District Court in Washington D.C. (38 of which have been won by the prisoners) as thoroughly as possible.

As a result, this is the most comprehensive list ever published of the 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo, providing details of the 600 prisoners who have been released (and the dates of their release), and the 171 prisoners who are still held (including the prisoners cleared for release but not freed under President Bush, and, where possible, identifying some of the 89 remaining prisoners cleared for release by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force). I will, of course, continue to update it if more prisoners are released.

The list provides links to my articles or online chapters telling the stories of over 400 prisoners, and also provides references for the chapters in The Guantánamo Files where their stories can be found.

Until April 2011, the stories of 89 prisoners remained unknown, as they were among the 201 prisoners released between May 2002 and September 2004, and the Pentagon had not been obliged to publish any information relating to these men, unlike those released afterwards, whose stories were, at least in part, known about through the release of the allegations against them, and their tribunal and review board transcripts, which I used for The Guantánamo Files, and which have formed the basis of much of my subsequent work.

Through detailed research, I managed to discover information about 112 of these 201 men, whose stories had surfaced in the media or in research undertaken by NGOs, but it was not until April 2011, when (with myself as a consultant and a media partner) WikiLeaks released classified military documents relating to 765 of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo throughout its long history that details of almost all the unknown prisoners (86 in total, with just three stories missing) surfaced for the very first time. At the time of writing, I am partway through a five-part series covering all these stories, with the first two parts published, and I will add references for the others as they become available. For my introduction to the WikiLeaks documents, assessing their significance, see WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies.

It is my hope that this project will provide an invaluable research tool for those seeking to understand how it came to pass that the government of the United States turned its back on domestic and international law, establishing torture as official US policy, and holding men without charge or trial neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects to be put forward for trial in a federal court, but as “illegal enemy combatants.”

I also hope that it provides a compelling explanation of how that same government, under the leadership of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, established a prison in which the overwhelming majority of those held — at least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total — were either completely innocent people, seized as a result of dubious intelligence or sold for bounty payments, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or international terrorism.

And finally, as it is now painfully apparent that President Obama has failed to close Guantánamo, and that dark forces are at work to try and ensure that it remains open forever, I hope that it also provides useful information for those still seeking to close Guantánamo, and to bring to an end this bleak chapter in American history.

Andy Worthington, London, May 2011

How to use the list

In the categories below, ISN refers to the Internment Serial Number by which the prisoners are (or were) known and identified in Guantánamo, followed by the prisoners’ status (released, cleared for release, still held, or, in eight cases, deceased), their names (with just some of the many different permutations noted, in some cases), their nationality, and links or references to chapters in The Guantánamo Files. Links on the release dates feed into articles published when the prisoners were released.

Of the prisoners cleared for release, some, as indicated, were cleared by military review boards under the Bush administration, others (38 at the time of writing) had been cleared by judges in US courts, who had granted their habeas corpus petitions, and 89 in total had been cleared by the Obama administration’s interagency Task Force, which reviewed their cases last year. The Task Force has not announced the names of the prisoners it has cleared (although many are the same as those cleared under Bush, and the figures also include those cleared by the courts). As a result, several dozen prisoners in these lists have also been cleared, but I am unable to provide details.