U.S. reveals names of detainees

Documents released last year had the detainees' names and nationalities blacked out.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon handed over documents Friday that contain the names of detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo. The release resulted from a victory by The Associated Press in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The Bush administration had hidden the identities, home countries and other information about the men, who were accused of taking up arms against the United States. But a federal judge rejected administration arguments that releasing the identities would violate the detainees' privacy and could endanger them and their families.
The names were scattered throughout more than 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings at Guantanamo Bay. The names were given only in the testimony -- when court officials referred to them by name in their remarks or when one detainee spoke of another detainee by name. The documents themselves released by the Pentagon did not identify each detainee who testified.
Not always clear
In some cases, even having the name didn't clarify the identity. In one document, the tribunal president asks a detainee if his name is Jumma Jan. The detainee responds that no, his name instead is Zain Ul Abedin.
Zahir Shah, an Afghan accused of being a member of an Islamic militant group and of having a grenade launcher and other weapons in his house, admitted to having rifles. He said it was for protection and insisted to the tribunal he did not fight U.S. troops.
"The only thing I did in Afghanistan was farming. Other than that, I did not do anything else in the country," Shah said, according to the transcripts.
The documents also contain the names of former prisoners, such as Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi, both British citizens. A handwritten note shows Abbasi pleading for prisoner-of-war status.
The status of other named detainees, such as Naibullah Darwaish, was not immediately clear. Darwaish was described as having been the chief of police for the Shinkai district in Zabol Province, Afghanistan, when he was captured.
Most of the men were captured during the 2001 U.S.-led war that drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and sent Osama bin Laden deeper into hiding.
Classification
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.
Documents released last year -- also because of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the AP -- had the detainees' names and nationalities blacked out.
The documents, transcripts from at least 317 hearings at Guantanamo Bay, should shed light on the scope of an insurgency still battling U.S. troops in Afghanistan, in part by detailing how Muslims from many countries wound up fighting alongside the Taliban there.
U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York ruled in favor of the AP last week, a major development in a protracted legal battle.
Some current and former Guantanamo detainees remained unidentified, even after the release of the documents Friday. An unknown number of the named prisoners have been freed or transferred to custody elsewhere.
A Pentagon lawyer delivered the documents Friday about 20 minutes after a 5 p.m. deadline. They were stored as 60 .pdf files on a CD-ROM. But within minutes, an officer returned and took back the CD-ROM, which contained letters from relatives of some of the prisoners that were not intended for release. A second CD-ROM was later delivered.
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