Midtopia

Midtopia

Saturday, March 04, 2006

More details on Gitmo detainees

Here are some excerpts from the Pentagon release showing detainee identities. What they released was not a list of names, but transcripts of "enemy combatant" hearings containing the names of the person being assessed. Apparently it only identifies 317 of the 420 or so current detainees, which undoubtedly will cause a continuing furor.

-Abdul Rahim Muslimdost was a journalist for newspapers and magazines in Pakistan. U.S. authorities accused the Afghani of belonging to a Muslim militant group. He admitted membership but said he joined to help drive the Russians out of his country. He denied the accusation he had an al-Qaida contact in the province of Herat. Unknown whether still in custody.

-Mohammed Gul, a farmer and gas station owner in his native Afghanistan, was captured and held on suspicion of links to Taliban forces about six weeks after returning home from Saudi Arabia, where he lived for three years and worked as a driver. He told the tribunal he returned to Afghanistan to take care of his sick wife, and he urged the tribunal to release him. "I don't want to spend any more time here, not one more minute," he said.

There's a lot more like that. Some are pretty interesting. There's no way to judge the validity of their claims from the excerpts, so take most of it with a grain of salt. But the circumstances of their capture appear undisputed, and the other details start to put faces to the word "detainees."

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