Some Gitmo detainees to be freed

[thedrifter]

May 05, 2003

Some Gitmo detainees to be freed

By Pauline Jelinek
Associated Press


The U.S. government is preparing to free some two dozen terrorist suspects from its high-security prison in Cuba, defense officials said Monday.
The release is expected in the next several days, two senior Defense Department officials said on condition of anonymity.

Some 660 prisoners from 42 countries are held, many captured during the war against al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Officials have declined to identify them, their countries or any other details about them, including the exact number held.

The Defense Department officials denied that the release is the result of a complaint by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has pressed the Pentagon to move faster in determining the fate of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, some of whom have been held a year and a half without charges and without access to lawyers.

In what officials said was a ?strongly worded? letter, Powell told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that eight allies had complained about the holding of their citizens. He said failure to handle the prisoners correctly was undermining efforts to win international cooperation in the war on terror.

Pentagon officials said Monday that the April 14 letter was not a factor in the upcoming release, which they said was in the planning process for four weeks.

One official said that some 20 to 30 prisoners will be released from the prison opened in January 2002 at Gitmo.

He said he did not know what countries they were from, nor whether they would include any of several juveniles held there. News that several boys between the ages of 13 and 16 were among prisoners drew criticism from human rights groups and a call for their immediate release.

Over time, countries that have said publicly that they want their citizens home include Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Pakistan.

Since the prison was opened, only 23 people are known to have been released. They were all men, including one who was mentally ill and another reported to be in his 70s.

Asked Sunday about the correspondence from Powell, Rumsfeld said prisoners must be questioned by several government agencies before they can be released and that it is a ?very slow? process.

He said the prisoners? cases are being reviewed by agencies including the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Some are interested in prosecuting the detainees for crimes they may have committed, while others are interested in gathering intelligence information to prevent future attacks.

The defense secretary responded that he, too, would like to see the process move more quickly.

?So, it?s a complicated process. It is very slow,? Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld has said over the past year that the prisoners were being interrogated for any information they had on planned terrorist activities. He said they would continue to be held indefinitely until it was determined they posed no threat, until interrogators were convinced they had no more useful intelligence to offer, and until it was determined charges would not be brought against them.

Officials said long ago that some prisoners could be released to their countries of origin if they were sure those countries would deal with them properly. They didn?t explain further, but said negotiations were under way with various countries. No results of those talks were ever announced.

Pentagon officials said Friday they had finished writing the rules for trying terrorist suspects in military tribunals.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials said they have some suspects in mind who might be candidates for military trials, but that no final decisions have been made.

It was not known if the suspects included prisoners held at Guantanamo. A number of high-level al-Qaida figures are not being held there, but rather at secret locations elsewhere, officials have said.






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Copyright 2003 The Associated Press


Sempers,

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