Feds Name Gitmo's 'Indefinite Detainees'

46 inmates can't be tried, transferred, or released
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 18, 2013 12:06 AM CDT
Feds Name Gitmo 'Indefinite Detainees'
A Guantanamo detainee peers through a steel grate in a room at the Camp 5 detention facility.   (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

The names of Guantanamo's dozens of "indefinite detainees" deemed too dangerous to release even if the detention center is closed have been disclosed for the first time. In response to a lawsuit from the Miami Herald, the federal government released a list of prisoners including 26 Yemenis, 12 Afghans, three Saudis, two Kuwaitis, two Libyans, a Kenyan, a Moroccan, and a Somali it says cannot be tried in court but cannot be transferred or released. Two of the Afghans have died—one from suicide and one from a heart attack—since a task force produced the list in 2010, so there are now 46 indefinite detainees among Guantanamo's 166 inmates.

The men, many of whom are among the more than 100 Guantanamo hunger strikers, are being held under the Authorized Use of Military Force signed by George W. Bush in 2001. Officials have given a variety of reasons why they cannot stand trial, including tainted evidence, the AP reports. An Amnesty International spokesman says the notion of keeping captives as "indefinite detainees" is "fundamentally flawed." Under international human rights law, "all of the detainees should either be charged and fairly tried in federal court, or released," he says. (More Guantanamo Bay stories.)

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