Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Innocents in Guantanamo
"A substantial number of the detainees appear to be either low-level militants or simply innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time" (2002 CIA report)
"Sometimes we just didn't get the right folks" (Brigadier General Jay Hood)
A study relying exclusively on Department of Defense data found that even if all of the Tribunal records were accepted as true, only 8% of the detainees could be characterized as Al Qaeda fighters. It has been determined that the majority have not committed hostile acts against the U.S. or its coalition allies (Seton Hall University Law school study, February 2006)
There are detainees, determined by the U.S. to clearly not be enemy combatants, who remain behind bars years after being exonerated of any wrong doing (Seton Hall Law School analysis of Department of Defense Data)
"There is continuing intelligence value…for somewhere around a few dozen, a few score at the most" (Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino).
"Of the 550 that we have, I would say most of them, the majority of them will either be released or transferred to their own countries" (Brigadier General Martin Lucent, October 2004). Two years after this quote 445 detainees still remain at Guantanamo.
Guantanamo has detained individuals as old as 105 and as young as 9 as alleged enemy combatants
"Officials of the Department of Defense acknowledge that the military's initial screening of the prisoners for possible shipment to Guantanamo was flawed" (CIA report)
86% of the detainees were not arrested by the U.S. but instead by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance (Defense Department Data). Pakistan was under great pressure to produce arrests. Bounties were offered of $5000 for those who captured terrorists. Inevitably foreigners and foreign-looking people were singled out
