- WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon
planned to continue the indefinite secret confinement of some prisoners
at Guantanamo and exclude them from a promised annual review, it emerged
yesterday.
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- The decision offers further evidence for a secret network
at Guantanamo, akin to that at Abu Ghraib, whereby "ghost detainees"
were under the control of the CIA and not the US military, and never officially
entered on the prison's books.
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- Reports in the Los Angeles Times that the Pentagon had
reservations about even a limited review for prisoners in Camp Delta at
Guantanamo naval base caused concern among rights activists.
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- The plan to deny some prisoners a review of their detention
was agreed last month by senior Pentagon officials. It was designed as
a response to a review process promised last February by the defence secretary,
Donald Rumsfeld. Since then, the supreme court has ruled that Guantanamo
prisoners should have their day in court.
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- It was not immediately clear how the earlier Pentagon
decision would be affected by the verdict, or by a more recent version
of a prisoner review.
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- That review, announced this week, would establish military
tribunals to review each Guantanamo inmate; they would not get a lawyer
to argue that they do not pose a threat to US security.
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- But even that limited review - much criticised by lawyers
for the detainees - would not be afforded to detainees held secretly. The
wording of the order specified "all detainees under the control of
the Department of Defense", which the Los Angeles Times suggested
provided a loophole for detainees under CIA charge.
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- Rights campaigners say they do not know with absolute
certainty how many are at Camp Delta. The official figure is 594, after
the release of a Swedish man earlier this week.
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- "This just heightens our already very serious concerns
about what is taking place at Camp Delta," said Neil Durkin of Amnesty
International.
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- "We fear that the Pentagon is trying to set the
goalposts very narrowly in terms of the supreme court decision. If you
are talking about withholding certain individuals from even that procedure,
then we have tremendously serious concerns."
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- The LA Times quoted top defence officials as saying that
prisoners destined for indefinite detention without review were under the
control of the CIA, not the Pentagon.
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- However, a top military official told the Guardian there
were no detainees outside the defence department's control - at least in
the first year of Guantanamo.
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- Ghost detainees first intruded on the broader public
consciousness last May in the report by Major General Anthony Taguba on
the abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
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- "Detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade
have routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies
(OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the
reason for their detention. The joint interrogation and debriefing centre
at Abu Ghraib called these detainees 'ghost detainees'," the report
said.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1258111,00.html
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