The U.S. government has released the most extensive list yet of the hundreds of detainees who have been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp - including 132 from Saudi Arabia. In all, 558 people were named in the list provided by the Pentagon late Wednesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press. They were among the first swept up for suspected links to Al-Qaeda or the ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan.| There was a story headlined at yahoo news tonite, and for which link I am too lazy to find, that all the governments are squealing like stuck piggies, in paroxysms of astonishment that their princely citizens are vacationing in Cuba for the past five years. Truly professional grade handwringing. Bah. |
Some names are familiar, such as David Hicks, a Muslim from Australia charged with fighting U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.
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. Lesser-known detainees on the list include Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi who reportedly was supposed to be the 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks. Although his presence at Guantanamo had been reported, the military had previously declined to confirm it. U.S. authorities denied Qahtani entry at Orlando, Florida, before the suicide hijackings. But testimony in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui quoted an Al-Qaeda leader as describing Qahtani as the last hijacker for the mission who would "complete the group." The list also includes top former Taliban officials, such as the ousted regime's former Defense Ministry chief of staff, Mullah Mohammed Fazil; Taliban intelligence officials Abdel-Haq Wasiq and Gholam Ruhani, who are believed to still be in custody; and the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdel-Salam Zaeef, who was released in late 2005. Others on the list, such as an Afghan identified only as "Commander Chaman," remain mysterious.