Detainees Deemed a Threat Cleared for Release
Two dozen Guantanamo detainees are being allowed to return to their home countries even though military panels determined they posed a threat.
The secretary of defense overrode findings of the military’s Administrative Review Boards in 24 out of 55 cases, the Associated Press reports. Forty-one out of the 55 detainees cleared for release to authorities in other nations did not even participate in their review board hearings. Most of those released are freed once they return home.
“Pentagon documents obtained by the Associated Press show seemingly inconsistent decisions to release men declared by the Bush administration to be among America’s most-hardened enemies,” the story says. “Coupled with accusations that some detainees have been held for years on little evidence, the decisions raise questions about whether they were arbitrary.”
Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a reserve Army intelligence officer who served in the Pentagon unit running hearings for Guantanamo detainees, criticized the decisions to release. ”The decisions are not orderly nor analytic and only rational if you accept the premise that they are made for political and not legal reasons,” he said in an e-mail to AP.
