NEW YORK - May 15, 2007 – The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the detainees at Guantánamo and coordinates the work of more than 500 pro bono counsel, released this statement in response to the U.S. Department of Defense’s assertions that 30 former detainees have “returned to the battlefield”:

The U.S. Department of Defense has recently claimed again that 30 former Guantánamo detainees have taken up arms against the United States.

To the extent that this assertion is true, it is the government’s continuing refusal to provide a legitimate process of determining guilt or innocence that has created the problem. The Department of Defense releases these men unilaterally. They were not released by a court. The Department of Defense now admits claims now that they released the wrong people (and by implication are also detaining the wrong people). This assertion emphasizes the need for a fair process in federal court. We cannot just leave it to the Executive. Without a fair process and the right to habeas corpus, one can neither identify the guilty nor release the innocent.

We also find it shocking that after five years of imprisoning these men, the government is just now conducting an analysis of its data on these men and is trying to determine whether they are dangerous al Qaeda members or innocent bystanders. The Department of Defense’s processes in Guantánamo over the past six years have been full of inaccuracies and mistakes. We say that enough is enough.

As with many of the government’s assertions about Guantánamo and the detainees, this statement about former detainees returning to fight is based upon false information and is misleading.

Many of the detainees were never on any battlefield to begin with. Using the government’s own data and taking the government’s own assertions at face value, a study by Mark Denbeaux at Seton Hall University Law School found that only five percent of detainees were even captured by U.S. forces. The vast majority were turned over to the U.S. by Pakistan or by the Northern Alliance, at a time when the U.S. was offering huge bounties for the capture of suspected terrorists.

According to research conducted by Chicago attorney H. Candace Gorman, the information concerning at least four of the individuals described by the Department of Defense – Haji Shahzada, Abdullah Mehsud, Maulvi Abdul Gaffer, and Yusif Khalil Abdullah Nur – is inaccurate. Many of the supposed former detainees that the government offers up as proof of the “return to the battlefield” myth are in fact not on official government lists of detainees or were actually released after DOD claims they killed upon their return to the battlefield, raising the question of whether this assertion is based on fact or on fiction.

We repeat our demand for a fair hearing in federal court for each man in Guantánamo to finally determine his proper status. The right to habeas corpus for the detainees at Guantánamo must be restored.

About CCR
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a non-profit legal and educational organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights demonstrators in the South, CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

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