Pentagon forced to release names of Guantanamo detainees
The Associated Press, has forced the Pentagon, using lawsuit under the rights of the Freedom of Information Act, to release 317 "unredacted" records on detainees being held at the US facility in US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A federal judge in New York ordered the Pentagon to release the records of combatant status review tribunals and administrative review board summaries to the Associated Press by March 3.
Those documents were originally provided to AP, but with names and identifying information redacted for privacy reasons, as part of a Freedom of Information Act request in June 2005. "The court's ruling applies to those documents that have been provided under FOIA in June 2005," a senior official speaking on background said.
The list does not give the names of all 490 detainees being held at Guantanamo. Senior defense officials said the 317 records only cover the previously released redacted documents. These will be "unredacted," and names, nationalities and other personal identifying information will be released. Other protected information -- names of American servicemembers for example -- will remain redacted, officials said.
This is only a portion of the combatant status review tribunals and administrative review boards that have been held to date. There have been 558 tribunals and 463 administrative boards, officials said.
The judge ordered the department of defense to release personal information that they originally withheld because it feared the release could endanger lives or safety. "We removed the information from the transcripts that identified the detainees," the official said. "Detainee personal information was removed... because of concern of potential harm to detainees if the documents were made public."
Meantime, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Jerry Agar show on Thursday that there is no torture occuring in Guantanamo and that " those prisoners were taught under the Manchester document. They're taught to lie, they're taught to allege that they have been tortured, and that's part of the training that they received."
