Author: John C. K. Daly
Publication: United Press International
Date: February 4, 2004
At least 160 of the 650 detainees
acknowledged by the Pentagon being held at the United States military base
at Guantanamo, Cuba -- almost a quarter of the total -- are from Saudi
Arabia, a special UPI survey can reveal.
In UPI's groundbreaking and detailed
breakdown of the nationalities of the detainees, some arrested far from
the 2001 battlefield of Afghanistan, the other top nationalities being
held are Yemen with 85, Pakistan with 82, Jordan and Egypt, each with 30.
Afghans are the fourth largest nationality
with 80 detainees, according to the detailed UPI survey that has now for
the first time established the homelands of 95 percent of the total number
of prisoners.
One member of the Bahraini royal
family is among those detained, according to his lawyer Najeeb al-Nauimi
of Doha, Qatar, who was Qatar's 1995-97 justice minister and has power
of attorney from the parents of about
70 prisoners.
The Pentagon's own list of nationalities
detained at Guantanamo may be flawed. Yemeni officials have told UPI they
fear more than twice as many of their citizens are held than the Pentagon
count.
Suspected terrorists are detained
by U.S. forces at a number of points around the world, including Diego
Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Bagram air force base outside Kabul. But
Camp Delta, the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo, has attracted the
most media attention and international protest.
Camp Delta was built at a cost of
$9.7 million by Brown and Root Services, a subsidiary of Haliburton by
contract workers from India and the Philippines. Camp Delta replaces Camp
X-Ray, the first improvised detention center constructed in January 2002
to house individuals detained in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon has kept a very tight
lid on material about the detainees; only the identities of those who choose
to correspond via the Red Cross are known. The Defense Department has repeatedly
declined to provide a breakdown of the detainees by nationality.
Sources close to the Pentagon have
admitted to UPI that "sensitive diplomatic considerations" were behind
the decision to keep the nationalities secret.
The large number of Saudi nationals
at Guantanamo, now it has been made public, is likely to intensify concern
in the U.S. Congress about the real state of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
A DoD spokesperson told UPI Wednesday
"such a list exists, but it is classified."
Drawing on a wide range of sources,
UPI has tentatively determined the nationalities of 619 of Camp Delta's
inmates from 38 countries.
Until the U.S. government is more
forthcoming with information, the figures below remain incomplete.
Complicating the issue is the sporadic
release of a number of detainees; in the wake of last week's release of
three teenagers, another 87 detainees have been transferred pending release.
In addition, four detained Saudis have been transferred to continue their
imprisonment in Saudi Arabia.
There is a rough correlation between
nations subjected to terrorism and the number of their citizens incarcerated
in Guantanamo. That Camp Delta currently holds 80 or more Afghans is hardly
surprising, as most of the detainees were captured there. However, Camp
Delta also holds seven Arab men handed over to U.S. authorities in Bosnia,
as well as five individuals arrested in Malawi last summer.
The magnitude of the Saudi presence
in Camp Delta raises troubling questions about their presence in Afghanistan
and whether the U.S. forces succeeded in capturing more than a fraction
of those who might have been there.
Emphasizing the global metastasizing
of terrorism, among the 85 Yemenis is an individual arrested in Sarajevo.
Yahya Alshawkani, Yemeni Embassy
deputy chief of communication in Washington told UPI that his embassy kept
in close touch with the U.S. authorities -- but questioned the accuracy
of the Pentagon's own count. His government cites domestic reports that
more than twice as many Yemenis were held as the Pentagon has told the
Yemeni government.
When queried if the number 85 was
accurate, Alshawkani replied, "We have been communicated 37 names by United
States authorities. I think it is more than 37. Domestic reports indicate
more than 70."
Asked to comment on the discrepancy
Alshawkani said: "We were communicated names that they were sure that they
were Yemenis, adding, "Perhaps the U.S. only passed on names of people
they could positively identify." Alshawkani remarked that Yemen had already
had "some preliminary discussion" about the Yemeni detainees; furthermore,
"We were told some Yemenis would be released, but we are not sure how many."
Jordan, a close ally of the U.S.
in its war on terror, has 30 of its citizens detained in Camp Delta, as
does Egypt. Jordan has worked closely with the U.S. in the initial processing
of prisoners, providing both interrogators and interpreters.
Morocco, site of an al-Qaida attack
on a synagogue in April 2002 that killed 21 people, has 18 of its nationals
in Guantanamo. Algeria, currently in the throes of a violent conflict between
Islamists and the government, has 19 prisoners in Camp Delta, six of whom
were arrested in Sarajevo.
Kuwait, liberated from Saddam Hussein
by Operation Desert Storm in 1991 has 12 citizens in Guantanamo; the Kuwaiti
government insists that all of its citizen were involved in charity and
relief work. China also has at least 12 its citizens in Guantanamo, although
they are all identified as ethnic Uighurs rather than Han Chinese. Next
on the list are Tajikistan and Turkey with 11 citizens each. Tajikistan
fought a bloody civil war in the aftermath of the collapse of communism
in 1991 and fundamentalists maintain a strong presence there. Turkey last
November was subjected to al-Qaida bombing attacks in Istanbul, which killed
62 people.
Nine British citizens of Muslim
background are in Guantanamo; they have proven to be a political liability
for Prime Minister Tony Blair, as calls have been made in Parliament for
their repatriation.
Both Tunisia and Russia have eight
of their nationals at Camp Delta; a Russian embassy spokesman was careful
to point out however that the eight Russian citizens are not ethnic Russians.
Rustam Akmerov, Ravil Gumarov, Timur Ishmuradov, Shamil Khadzhiev (originally
identified as Almaz Sharipov), Rasul Kudaev, Ravil Mingazov, Ruslan Odigov
and Airat Vakhitov are members of Russia's Muslim community. The Russian
embassy nonetheless is quietly pursuing negotiations with Washington to
extradite its citizens.
France and Bahrain both have seven
each of their nationals at Gauntanamo. Highlighting the problems of identification,
France only recently discovered its seventh national at Camp Delta. The
Bahraini detainees include a member of the royal family.
Kazakhstan has been quietly lobbying
Washington for the return of its citizens, as have Australia (2) and Canada
(2.) Australian David Hicks is one of the most high profile prisoners in
Camp Delta; a convert to Islam, Hicks fought as a jihadi in the Balkans
before shipping out to Afghanistan.
There are reportedly at least two
Chechens, two Uzbeks and two Syrians in Camp Delta. The Syrian detainees
especially interest U.S. intelligence, as one of the four workers at Camp
Delta under investigation for possibly aiding the prisoners, Air Force
translator Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi is accused of trying to pass messages
from the prisoners to Syria. There are also two Georgian and two Sudanese
nationals in Guantanamo.
Bangladesh, Belgium, Denmark, Germany,
Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Qatar, Spain and Sweden all have a single
citizen in Camp Delta.
The UPI survey was conducted by
painstaking compilation and analysis of the press and media reports from
countries all around the world along with interviews with foreign government
officials and concludes that nationalities of 38 separate countries are
represented in the U.S. military detention center.
