PAKISTAN: Pakistan has demanded the release of 58 of its citizens from Guantanamo Bay, officials said yesterday, amid a growing number of reports that none of the 598 inmates being held without charge at the US Caribbean base are al-Qaeda leaders. From Julian Borger, in Washington
Washington has refused to identify the detainees, arguing that it does not want al-Qaeda to know what the US has learnt about the group's operations, but leaks have suggested the prisoners are minnows and al-Qaeda's big fish remain at large.
A US intelligence official quoted by the Los Angeles Times said the inmates were "low and middle-level" fighters and supporters, not "the big-time guys" who might know enough about al-Qaeda's workings to help unravel its cell-based structure.
Another official who had visited the Camp Delta prison camp at Guantanamo Bay said: "Some of these guys literally don't know the world is round." Relatives of several of the seven Britons being held at the base, on the south-eastern tip of Cuba, have said they were simply caught up in the turmoil of the Afghan war while visiting Pakistan.
The British government, which has sent investigators to talk to the Britons, has declared itself satisfied with their detention. But the doubts about the calibre of the Guantanamo inmates are bound to fuel more demands for the detainees, from a total of 38 countries, to be released or handed over to their own countries for trial.
Pakistan sent a delegation to visit its 58 nationals at the base last week, and says they were low-level supporters of the Afghan Taliban militia and its al-Qaeda allies.
"Most of the Pakistanis who were caught were foot soldiers, none of them above the Taliban version of an NCO," a Pakistani official said yesterday. "If you don't have anyone of high value, why not release them?"
The US has designated the inmates as "enemy combatants", implying they do not have the same rights as prisoners of war under the Geneva conventions. They have not been charged, nor have they had access to a lawyer. They are kept in cells measuring 2.5 metres by 2 metres (8ft by 6ft 8in), and are given two 15-minute exercise sessions a week.- (Guardian Service)