The Pentagon released the documents today:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060304/...namo_detainees
Expect a long run of stories as news organizations pore over them and see what light they shed on the detainees' treatment and imprisonment.
Quote:
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Most of the Guantanamo hearings were held to determine if the detainees were enemy combatants. That classification, Bush administration lawyers say, deprives the detainees of Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war protections and allows them to be held indefinitely without charges.
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I impatiently await the day when the whole "enemy combatant" subterfuge will be ingloriously retired. We will be a better country when that happens.
Quote:
"Perhaps even more important than just the identities of the detainees are the unedited transcripts of the hearings, which I think will reveal a lot about the way in which the detainees have been treated and the way in which their status has been determined," Sonnett said. He was at Guantanamo to observe pretrial hearings for two detainees charged with crimes.
The Pentagon's secrecy has drawn criticism from human rights groups and lawyers.
"You can't just draw a veil of secrecy when you are locking people up," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program for Human Rights Watch. "You have to do at least the minimum, which is to acknowledge who you are holding."
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Amen.