1 in 7 Transferred From Guantánamo Returns to Terrorism, Pentagon

[steven johnson]

Source: New York Times

Published: May 21, 2009
WASHINGTON - An unreleased Pentagon report provides new details concluding that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has returned to terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.
Past Pentagon reports on Guantánamo recidivism, however, have been met with skepticism from civil liberties groups and criticized for their lack of detail.
The Pentagon promised in January that the latest report would be released soon, but Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said this week that the findings were still "under review."
Two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report was being held up by Defense Department employees fearful of upsetting the White House, at a time when even Congressional Democrats have begun to show misgivings over Mr. Obama's plan to close Guantánamo.
Pentagon officials said there had been no pressure from the White House to suppress the report, and said they believed that the Defense Department employees, some of them holdovers from the Bush administration, were acting pre-emptively to protect their jobs.
The report is the subject of numerous Freedom of Information Act requests from news media organizations, and Mr. Whitman said that he expected it to be released shortly. The report, a copy of which was made available to The New York Times, says the Pentagon believes that 74 prisoners released from Guantánamo have returned to terrorism, making for a recidivism rate of nearly 14 percent.
The report was made available by an administration official sympathetic to its findings who said the delay was creating unnecessary "conspiracy theories" about the holdup.


Read more: http://mobile.nytimes.com/article ;jsessionid=F5291F06DF2208134B0A35AA27C8A804.w6?a=366018&f=19

[Xipe Totec]

1. in 7 Transferred From Guantánamo Turns to Terrorism

There is no proof they were involved before, or that they hated us then, but they sure have a reason to hate us now.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. 'zaclty

I would not have benevolent feelings towards any country that tortured me.

[MarjorieG]

10. true

[aquart]

21. Yah.

What kind of man would NOT become a terrorist after what we did?

Seriously, we should have hired Trump to build them a luxury hotel and casino, with unlimited alcohol and big screen tv with all the sports channels. It's just as unconstitutional as torture (under the "unusual punishment" thingie) but we would have had terrific photos to use for blackmail later and maybe we could even have sent them back as spies. Do we never think ahead?

[Mari333]

2. gee, if I were held without charges and tortured

how would I be when I came out of there?

and I dont believe a thing the DOJ says.

[high density]

3. So 86% of the people are innocent and peaceful

Great job.

[VWolf]

33. Yep. Name any prison system in the US

with that kind of success rate.

You can't.

[Tim01]

34. They don't get caught. Or they don't *return* to terrorism.

[Traveling_Home]

4. The reason....

they stopped priisoner exchanges during the Civil War was because the South, short on manpower, had many troops returning to fight.

During war time you can't release POWs to return to the battlefield against your troops.

Either Stop The War or keep all captured POWs forever or until the war is stopped.

[uncle ray]

23. there are no POWs in gitmo.

and few terrorists. there are many so called enemy combatants that were rounded up, often where there is no war being fought. one has to be captured on the battlefield to be a POW, and status as a POW would grant the prisoner rights that an enemy combatant is not allowed.

[annabanana]

5. I call Bullshit.

We've read the reports from people who went down there to figure out "what's what" and "who's who" and found that the records that have been kept on detainees, both those released and those still locked up are a MESS. Records kept in different locations, under different filing systems, records missing.. a real screw-up.

For them to make this claim is fantasy.

[stillcool]

14. I'm with you..

they're full of shit. The Pentagon is worse than Fox.

[SpankMe]

18. I second your call of bullshit...

...because if they have such weak-ass HUMINT that they can't find Osama bin Laden or prevent the awful car bombings and other terrorist acts in Iraq and Afghanistan, then what techniques are they using to verify these detainees have "returned" to terrorism?

They have to torture to get information on imminent terrorist acts because the terrorists are so "elusive and hard to detect" using conventional intelligence methods. Yet, they can somehow secretly track these released detainees to a high enough degree of fidelity to know they're committing terrorist acts?

Something here doesn't pass the smell test.

[harun]

35. Damn right it is BS.

[RandomThoughts]

6. Also, they classify talking about what happened to a reporter

As returning to terrorism in some of the reports. Its an ugly situation. Bush left a mess in many places.

[struggle4progress]

7. Well, let's see the report, and let's find out what lying little Bushbots are behind it

[tinrobot]

8. That's a considerably lower recidivism rate than US prisoners

The Justice Department has rates for US prisoners anywhere from 35-65%, depending on the crime.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/reentry/recidivism.htm

A 14% rate is very low.

[MetaTrope]

11. I suspect the number is lowballed

given the effect of this sort of treatment on the once-innocent.

[Garbo 2004]

13. You beat me to it. LOL. nt

[Garbo 2004]

12. That's a much lower "recidivism" rate than Fed stats on those released from US prisons.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism

Those detainees released had no trials or convictions to support that they were guilty of anything to begin with...so claims of "recidivism" are of course suspect. And how many of those released detainees were radicalized as a result of their treatment?

The unreleased report was made available by "an administration official sympathetic to its findings?" Findings that don't mean shit given what we know vs what US claimed re: detainees that included children and people "sold" to the US for bounties, rather than any evidence of terrorist activties. And the reason the Times gives for protecting his/her anonymity? Was this admin official in the Pentagon?

[L0oniX]

15. ...and we should believe them or their "stats"?

[USA_1]

16. Same Stat Was Reported Last Year

... and turned out to be wrong.

It's a good bet this will turn out to be lies once again.

[EFerrari]

27. It was crap then and it's crap now. Using the Pentagon's own numbers,

only a single guy could even be reasonably traced back to anything resembling a battlefield. I forget the name of the college that did the study but I know it's in tha transcript of the Delahunt hearing of 5/20/08 -- I've had to repost it so many times, the date is burned into my memory now.

[riverdeep]

30. Are you thinking of the Seton Hall Study?

"Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data

Mark Denbeaux
Seton Hall University - School of Law

Joshua W. Denbeaux
Denbeaux & Denbeaux

Among the findings of the Report:

1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.

2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.

3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that, in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed "fighters for;" 30% considered "members of;" a large majority - 60% - are detained merely because they are "associated with" a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners, a nexus to any terrorist group is not identified by the Government.

4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.

5. Finally, the population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants - mostly Uighers - are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants."

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=8856...
(this is only the abstract)

[EFerrari]

37. Yep. This is a great link, btw. Hang onto it. We'll need it again. n/t

[santamargarita]

17. 7 out 7 Republicans return to crime after stealing elections

[Old Hank]

19. How do they know they were terrorists the first time around?

How do they know they did not become terrorists after experiencing abuse in the prison and becoming hateful in there?

[Mithreal]

20. Are we supposed to be afraid? nt

[Oregone]

22. Thats an incredibly high rate of "rehabilitation"

Especially since their "rehab" consists of shoving brooms up their asses. Not bad at all.

[riverdeep]

24. This leak is total bullshit, and politically motivated.

The reason it was released is to try to influence the Gitmo debate, to try to scare the public and politicians not to move ahead with closing Gitmo. The Pentagon has changed the number of recitivist 'terrorists' 43 times. I put terrorists in quotes because we don't actually know they were ever terrorists because we NEVER HAD A TRIAL. A trial of any sort. A regular military tribunal, with full Geneva Convention rules would have been fine, but they renamed them to a different term so they wouldn't have to. Dark forces are at work here, dark dark forces.

Olbermann had this as his lead story tonight. Watch here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#30855671

[buckrogers1965]

25. When they say return to terrorism

They mean that 1 in 7 give interviews to the media when they get home, and report the horrors that were inflicted upon them.

[EFerrari]

26. This was already debunked TWICE and put into the Congressional record

during a May 20 2008 hearing of Mr. Delahant's human rights subcommittee. But that will NEVER stop these assholes from recycling their lies.

[EFerrari]

28. That link doesn't work.

[EFerrari]

29. Working link

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21gitmo.h...

[ronnie624]

36. Manufacturing consent for holding 'terrorists' without trial.

Clearly, the elites who own and/or control our government intent to continue prosecuting their war for control over hydrocarbons and supply routes in central Asia, regardless of which party has the advantage.

[merh]

31. information in an unreleased report?

I'm sorry, but if the information is there, they'd release the report.

The Pentagon is second only to the CIA when it comes to telling us lies and misleading us.

[No Elephants]

32. "The report, a copy of which

was made available to The New York Times, says the Pentagon believes that 74 prisoners released from Guantánamo have returned to terrorism, making for a recidivism rate of nearly 14 percent."


Sounds definitive to me. As long as the Pentagon really, truly believes it, I see no reason to look any further. I'm convinced.