WASHINGTON DC, U.S.A - The United States released dozens of so-called "high-risk" detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison facility and held more than 150 innocent men for years, according to new reports about a trove of leaked military documents. revealThe more than 700 classified military files, part of a massive cache of secret documents leaked to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, were made available to select US and European media outlets and made public on Sunday.
It was not clear if the media outlets published the documents with the consent of WikiLeaks - and it was not immediately possible to independently verify all of the leaked documents.- The files are reported to reveal new information about some of the men held at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including details of the more than 700 detainee interrogations and evidence the US had collected against the "terror" suspects.
- The files - called Detainee Assessment Briefs or DABs - describe the security intelligence value of the detainees and whether they would be a threat to the US and its allies if released.
- To date, 604 inmates have been transferred out of Guantanamo while 172 remain detained.
Thousands of pages of the files are reported to reveal that most of the prisoners who remain at Guantanamo - 130 of them - have been rated as posing a "high-risk'" threat to the US if they are freed without rehabilitation or supervision.Even more of the George W Bush-era "war on terror" suspects were branded "high-risk" before being released or handed to other governments, The New York Times, one of the newspapers that received the documents, reported.
- The documents show some inmates were described as more dangerous than previously known to the public and could complicate efforts by the US to transfer detainees out of the prison.
- However, the documents also show that dozens of detainees were found to be innocent, after being held for lengthy periods.
At least 150 people were innocent Afghans or Pakistanis, including drivers, farmers and chefs, who were rounded up as part of frantic intelligence gathering, and then detained for years.In several cases, senior US commanders were said to have concluded that there is "no reason recorded for transfer".
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