To: steve harris who wrote (294893 ) 7/22/2006 5:32:16 PM From: tejek Respond to Over 10000 people were captured in Afghanistan. Some as you say turned in for bounty. "In response, the United States and a coalition of allies initiated action against Afghanistan where the Taliban regime had provided Al-Qaida facilities to train, equip, and organize military operations against the United States and other countries. During the military conflict approximately 10,000 enemy fighters were captured, screened or released in Afghanistan. Some were Taliban soldiers and some were Al-Qaida fighters. More than 700 were so dangerous that they could not be safely held in Afghanistan. They included terrorist trainers, bomb makers, recruiters and facilitators, terrorist financiers, bodyguards for Usama Bin Laden, and potential suicide bombers. These fighters were detained as enemy combatants at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, Cuba." This movement included one detainee found to no longer be an enemy combatant by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The other thirteen detainees were approved for transfer by an Administrative Review Board (ARB) decision at Guantanamo. With today’s transfer, approximately 120 detainees remain at Guantanamo who the U.S. government has determined eligible for transfer or release through a comprehensive series of review processes. Departure of these remaining detainees approved for transfer or release is subject to ongoing discussions between the United States and other nations. The United States does not desire to hold detainees for any longer than necessary. The department expects that there will continue to be other transfers or releases of detainees."defenselink.mil After reviewing declassified records, Globe journalists uncovered a number of simple mistakes that they said raised "questions about whether the US military has thoroughly investigated its cases against the roughly 400 inmates." Lawyers defending detainees have said that false accusations strengthen the need for new judicial procedures at the prison in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld [text], in which the court ruled last month that military commissions as initially constituted lack proper legal authorization [JURIST report]. Prior to the Hamdan decision, ten Guantanamo detainees awaited military trials."jurist.law.pitt.edu "A group of former Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees were found not guilty by a Kuwaiti court Sunday of belonging to al Qaeda and fighting a friendly state. The five detainees, arrested in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, were released from Guantanamo [JURIST report] in November and put on trial in Kuwait after they were returned home. suggesting that if the defendants were not innocent, they would not have been released. Last year, while still held at Guantanamo, the defendants said they had falsely confessed [JURIST report] to being Taliban or al Qaeda members in order to stop their torture, which they claimed included beatings with chains, electric shock and sodomy. jurist.law.pitt.edu Don't let the real facts get in your way!
