WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo (Part One of Five)

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Freelance investigative journalist Andy Worthington begins a 70-part, million-word series telling, for the first time, the stories of 776 of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Adding information released by Wikileaks in April 2011 to the existing documentation about the prisoners, much of which was already covered in Andy’s book The Guantánamo Files and in the archive of articles on his website, the project will be completed in time for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening on January 11, 2012.

This is Part 1 of the 70-part series. It was updated on September 21, 2011.

In WikiLeaks’ recent release of classified military documents relating to the majority of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo, one of the great publicity coups was shining a light on the stories of the first 201 prisoners to be freed from the prison, between May 2002, when a severely schizophrenic Afghan prisoner, Abdul Razak, was returned to his home country, and September 2004, when 35 prisoners were repatriated to Pakistan, and 11 were repatriated to Afghanistan.

A handful of these 46 prisoners were cleared for release as a result of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which began on August 13, 2004 and concluded on March 29, 2005. These, as Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of US intelligence who worked on the tribunals has explained, were essentially part of a one-sided process designed to create the illusion that the prisoners’ cases were being objectively examined to determine whether, on capture, they had been correctly designated as “enemy combatants,” who could continue to be held indefinitely.

558 prisoners passed through the CSRT process, and records released by the Pentagon in 2006, as the result of a successful lawsuit filed by media groups, provided details of all these men’s cases — the government’s supposed evidence against them, and transcripts of the CSRTs (and their annual follow-ups, the Administrative Review Boards), or, at least, transcripts of the tribunals and review boards in which the prisoners had deigned to take part, after many boycotted them, correctly perceiving that they were essentially a sham. Read the rest of this entry »

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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