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US holding 325 non iraqi insurgents { January 8 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/international/middleeast/08detain.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/international/middleeast/08detain.html
January 8, 2005
CAPTURED INSURGENTS
U.S. Said to Hold More Foreigners in Iraq Fighting
By DOUGLAS JEHL and NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - After raids in recent months that captured hundreds of insurgents in Iraq, the United States has significantly increased the number of prisoners it says are foreign fighters, a group the Bush administration contends are not protected by the Geneva Conventions, American officials said.
A Pentagon official said Friday that the United States was now holding 325 foreign fighters in Iraq, a number that the official said had increased by 140 since Nov. 7, just before the invasion of Falluja. Many of the non-Iraqis were captured in or around that city.
Many of them are suspected of links to Al Qaeda or the related terror networks supporting the insurgency in Iraq, senior Bush administration officials said this week.
Some of the non-Iraqis who were involved in the insurgency there could be transferred out of the country for indefinite detention elsewhere, the officials said, as they have been deemed by the Justice Department not to be entitled to protections of the Geneva Conventions.
Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, testifying Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to become attorney general, noted that the Justice Department had issued a legal opinion last year saying non-Iraqis captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
"We had members of Al Qaeda, intent on killing Americans, flooding into or coming into Iraq," Mr. Gonzales testified. "And the question was legitimately raised, in my judgment, as to whether or not - what were the legal limits about how to deal with these terrorists."
"There was a fear about creating a sanctuary for terrorists if we were to say that if you come and fight against America in the conflict with Iraq, that you would receive the protections of a prisoner of war," he said.
He confirmed that the Justice Department had issued "some guidance with respect to whether or not non-Iraqis who came into Iraq as part of the insurgency, whether or not they would also or likewise enjoy the protection of the Geneva Convention. And I believe the conclusion was that they would not."
The disclosure about new foreign detainees comes as a high-level group in the administration is struggling to come up with a long-term plan for how to handle the hundreds of prisoners accused of links to the Taliban and Al Qaeda who are already in American custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Afghanistan.
The administration has asserted an authority to detain such prisoners indefinitely, as unlawful combatants, but officials have acknowledged that they cannot say how or when the war on terrorism might be deemed to have reached an end.
A senior American official said in an interview this week that the vast majority of the 550 prisoners now held at the American detention center at Guantánamo no longer had any intelligence value and were no longer being regularly interrogated. Still, the official said the Defense Department planned to hold hundreds of them indefinitely, without trial, out of concern that they continue to pose a threat to the United States and cannot safely be sent to their home countries.
"You're basically keeping them off the battlefield, and unfortunately in the war on terrorism, the battlefield is everywhere," a senior administration official said.
The extraordinary circumstances surrounding the suspected Qaeda and Taliban prisoners have prompted increasing statements of concern from members of Congress, who say the administration has shown little sign of willingness to put the prisoners on trial and who have questioned whether there is adequate legal basis for their indefinite detention.
"It is time for Congress to thoroughly consider whether locking them away for life on the coast of Cuba or wherever is the appropriate solution," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
As part of the plan for their long-term detention, a Pentagon proposal nearing final approval in the administration calls for the construction of a second, permanent prison at Guantánamo, at a cost of at least $25 million, to hold about 200 of the suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban who are seen as posing the highest security risk.
The original purpose of detaining the prisoners at Guantánamo was said to be to interrogate them for information about terrorist operations. But at least three-quarters of the 550 prisoners there are no longer seen as worthy of regular interrogation, the senior American official said, reflecting a judgment that he said had been made in recent months.
That assertion is at odds with statements made as recently as November by the top American commander at Guantánamo Bay, Brig. Gen. Jay Hood. He told reporters that the "vast majority" of the prisoners still had valuable information to impart.
"Are they still of potential intelligence value to our mission? Yes." General Hood said. Asked if many of the detainees were of little value, he said the vast majority were still useful as an intelligence resource.
The military has put in place two separate quasi-legal proceedings at Guantánamo that officials have said will confirm that almost all were properly imprisoned as enemy combatants and then will allow the authorities to reduce the population.
Most of the 550 prisoners at the camp have been through the first process and deemed to have been properly imprisoned as unlawful combatants. The military has just begun the second process, an annual review as to whether they could be released because they are no longer judged to be threats.
Military officials say no prisoners captured in Iraq have been transferred to Guantánamo. But government officials acknowledged last fall that about a dozen non-Iraqis suspected of ties to Al Qaeda had been transferred out of Iraq by the Central Intelligence Agency between March 2003 and March 2004 to undisclosed locations.
Asked about the review of non-Iraqi prisoners now under way, the officials have left open the possibility that more could be transferred to secret facilities run by the C.I.A. outside the United States. Those facilities are believed to house a total of about two dozen suspected high-ranking officials of Al Qaeda, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and others.
When administration officials first described the legal opinion on detainees in Iraq in October, they acknowledged that the transfer of non-Iraqis by the C.I.A. had already taken place.
Until last fall, the administration had asserted that the full protections of Geneva, including the prohibition on the transfer of prisoners, applied broadly to the conflict in Iraq, and had given no indication that any exception was being made for non-Iraqis.
Altogether, the United States military still holds about 8,500 prisoners in Iraq, including about 7,500 at three main prisons in Iraq and an 1,000 or so at temporary battlefield detention centers. All are classified as security detainees, American military officials say.
As for the American detention center at Guantánamo, intelligence veterans not associated with the prison camp have long indicated that it was highly unlikely that most of the detainees could still have any valuable intelligence.
A veteran interrogator at Guantánamo told The New York Times in a recent interview that it became clear over time that most of the detainees had little useful to say and that "they were just swept up" during the Afghanistan war with little evidence they played any significant role.
"These people had technical knowledge that expired very quickly after they were brought here," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"Most of the emphasis was on quantity, not quality," the interrogator said, adding that the number of pages generated from an interrogation was an important standard.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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