Gitmo Transcripts Paint Shadowy Portraits

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Named detainees: 186, citizens of two dozen countries including Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Accusations: Recruiting for the Taliban, helping Osama bin Laden escape U.S. troops, harboring gunmen who attacked American special forces.
These details, and many more, emerge from more than 5,000 pages of newly released transcripts of detainee hearings at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But as much as they reveal about the U.S. war against terrorism, much more remains unknown -- the answers tantalizingly beyond reach.


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The lack of concrete evidence cited in the transcripts against detainees -- many of whom were captured in Afghanistan in the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- might create the impression they're being held unjustly, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military policy think tank.

"I think it is going to strengthen the perception that we've rounded up a bunch of bystanders -- that we just rounded up a bunch of Muslims to torment them," Pike said. He pointed out that pursuing shadowy enemy combatants is completely different from nailing common criminals. "The sort of evidence you're going to be able to gather is not going to be courtroom quality evidence," Pike in a telephone interview from Alexandria, Va. But attorney Gaillard Hunt, who represents a Guantanamo Bay detainee, said he has seen heavily censored classified evidence against his client, and described it as thin.

"It was underwhelming," Hunt said, adding that he is barred from discussing the evidence, even with his client, Pakistani millionaire Saifullah Paracha. Paracha is accused of laundering money for al-Qaida and plotting to smuggle explosives into the United States. Bill Goodman, of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said the transcripts contain no hint of significant classified evidence. "You would think that if they had something more substantial, that you would see shadows of it in the transcripts," Goodman said. "But you don't see it."

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