GUANTANAMO BAY United States releases first list of detainees

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The U.S. government released the first list of detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison Wednesday -- the most extensive accounting yet of the hundreds of people held there, nearly all of them labeled enemy combatants.
In all, 558 people were named in the list provided by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit by The Associated Press. They were among the first swept up in the U.S. global war on terrorism for suspected links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
The list is the first official roster of Guantanamo detainees who passed through the Combatant Status Review Tribunal process in 2004 and 2005 to determine whether they should be deemed "enemy combatants."
Those named are from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and 39 other countries. Many have been held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay for more than four years. Only a handful have faced formal charges.
Some names are familiar, such as David Hicks, a Muslim from Australia charged with fighting U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. He is one of nine detainees selected to be tried by a military tribunal, on charges of attempted murder, aiding the enemy and conspiracy to commit terrorism.
Hicks allegedly fought for the Taliban, and Australian news media have said British authorities contend he admitted undergoing training with British Islamic extremists, including Richard Reid, who was convicted of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner with a shoe bomb.
In all, the detainees on the list came from 41 countries.
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