Lists of former Guantanamo Bay detainees alleged to have returned to terrorism

Background

Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a joint military prison and interrogation camp under the leadership of Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) which has occupied a portion of the United States Navy's base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since 2002. The prison holds people suspected by the executive branch of the U.S. government of being al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives, as well as those no longer considered suspects who are being held pending relocation elsewhere.

History

As early as 2004, the US government claimed that detainees released from Guantanamo Bay detainment camp had returned to the battlefield. American officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have claimed that detainees hid their real identities from interrogators, convincing them they were harmless to secure their release. Initially, government spokesmen claimed relatively small numbers of former Guantanamo captives had returned to the battlefield. In a press briefing on March 6, 2007 a "Senior Defense official" commented:

"I can tell you that we have confirmed 12 individuals have returned to the fight, and we have strong evidence that about another dozen have returned to the fight." On April 2, 2007, JTF-GTMO commander Harry Harris asserted that thirty former captives "resumed terrorist activities".

On Monday, May 14, 2007, Pentagon officials Joseph Benkert and Jeffrey Gordon repeated the assertion that thirty former captives had returned to the battlefield in testimony before the United States Congress. They identified six of the thirty by name. They offered the names of the three men previously identified: "Mullah Shahzada"; "Maulavi Abdul Ghaffar"; and Abdullah Mahsud. They tied "Mullah Shahzada" to Mohamed Yusif Yaqub, a Guantanamo captive who was listed on the official list. The other three names they offered were: Mohammed Ismail; Abdul Rahman Noor; and Mohammed Nayim Farouq.

On July 12, 2007 the Department of Defense placed an additional page on their site, entitled: "Former Guantanamo Detainees who have returned to the fight". This list contained one additional name, not on the list released on May 14, 2007, for a total of seven names. The new name was Ruslan Odizhev, a Russian who Russian police reported died while resisting arrest on June 27, 2007.

Some commentators questioned the credibility of these assertions. H. Candace Gorman, looked into the only three names that had been offered of captives who had been allegedly returned to the battlefield: Abdullah Mehsud"; "Mullah Shahzada"; and Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar. She wrote, on March 18, 2007, that she found that the name Abdullah Mehsud wasn't listed on the official list of Guantanamo captives released on May 15, 2006. She found that there were captives with names close to those of the two other men, but that the records showed these men were still in custody when according to the spokesmen's assertions they had not only been released, but had been killed in combat.

On 13 January 2009, the Pentagon said that 18 former detainees are confirmed to have participated in attacks, and 43 are suspected to have been involved in attacks. A spokesman said evidence of someone being "confirmed" could include fingerprints, a conclusive photograph or "well-corroborated intelligence reporting." He said the Pentagon would not discuss how the statistics were derived because of security concerns. National security expert and CNN analyst Peter Bergen, stated that some of those "suspected" to have returned to terrorism are so categorized because they publicly made anti-American statements, "something that's not surprising if you've been locked up in a U.S. prison camp for several years." If all on the "confirmed" list have indeed returned to the battlefield, that would amount to 4 percent of the detainees who have been released at that time.

According to a September 2014 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in July 2014 of the 620 detainees transferred out of Guantanamo, 107 have been "confirmed of re-engaging," and 77 are "suspected of re-engaging" in terrorist or insurgent activities.

2009 reports

Department of Defense spokesmen claimed in January 2009 that at least 61 former captives had returned to the fight. But they did not publish any of the men's names.

Saudi list

On February 3, 2009, the government of Saudi Arabia published a list of 85 most wanted suspected terrorists that included two former Guantanamo captives who had appeared in an alarming video, and nine other former captives.

BBC report

On February 18, 2009, the BBC News reported that UK officials had told them that an Afghan former captive repatriated in the Spring of 2008 had risen to a high-ranking position in the Taliban, in Pakistan, following his return. The BBC reports they had been told his name was Mullah Abdul Kayum Sakir. The USA did not list any captives with names close to Abdul Kayum Sakir. The five captives repatriated on April 30, 2008, are: Nasrullah, Esmatulla, Rahmatullah Sangaryar, Sahib Rohullah Wakil, and Abdullah Mohammad Khan.

Department of Defense

In March 2009, U.S. officials revealed that Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul (detainee #8) is now leading the Taliban's operations in southern Afghanistan.

The May 2009 "one in seven" claims

On May 21, 2009, Elizabeth Bumiller, writing in the New York Times, reported that they had secured access to an unreleased Pentagon report that asserted "one in seven" former captives "are engaged in terrorism or militant activity." According to the New York Times Pentagon officials had asserted 74 former captives had returned to terrorism, and had named 29 individuals. But, by May 21, 2009, the New York Times chose to publish only 15 of those 29 names because they couldn't correlate the names on the recent Pentagon lists with the earlier official lists of captives' names.

On June 6, 2009 Clark Hoyt, whose byline lists him as the New York Times "public editor" wrote an apology to the New York Times readers for Bumiller's article.

DoD list of May 27, 2009

On May 27, 2009 the Defense Intelligence Agency published a "fact sheet" Former Guantanamo Detainee Terrorism Trends that contained a Partial Listing of Former GTMO Detainees Who have Reengaged in Terrorism. Although it was published on May 27, it bears the date April 7, 2009.

2017

Abu-Zakariya al-Britani, also known as Jamal Udeen Al-Harith, murdered a number of Iraqi soldiers and killed himself via murder-bombing in 2017. The BBC reported that Tony Blair personally was involved with getting Abu-Zakariya freed from Guantanamo in 2004. The UK government paid $1 million as compensation to Abu-Zakariya al-Britani for his stay at Guantanamo.

Third party comments

In August 2011 UK captive Tarek Dergoul got into a scuffle with a parking official, who was giving his car a ticket at an expired parking meter. He received a one-year conditional sentence, and had to undergo a mental health assessment. Benjamin Wittes, a legal scholar who focuses on counter-terrorism issues, referred to the issue of competing assessment as to what percentage of former Guantanamo captives should be considered Guantanamo recidivists, when he asked whether Dergoul's conviction would make him a recidivist.