Less than one quarter of the 119 detainees named in the US Senate Intelligence Committee 2014 report on the CIA’s secret torture program are actually housed at the Guantánamo Bay military prison.
Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism recognized just 36 individuals originally sent to Guantánamo after CIA interrogations. Of these, 29 remain as of January 2015.
Seven of the 36 were released between March 2007 and January 2010, with six moved abroad and one sent to a maximum-security prison on the US mainland.
The Senate’s complete report ran to 6,700 pages, yet after White House objections only a 499-page summary was published in December 2014, with significant details redacted. The summary identified 119 of the CIA’s prisoners cycled through the program from 2002 until 2008, but offered no complete account of each prisoner’s internment.
The Bureau’s investigation has produced a database providing details of what occurred to each of the 119 individuals.
“This project to restore information blacked out in the Senate report reveals important data about former detainees’ time in the CIA’s detention system,” said Meg Satterthwaite, Director of the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law. “This kind of careful analysis is crucially important for those working to understand the US extraordinary rendition and torture program.”
Steven Watt, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, similarly remarked, “This research, confirming the dates and duration of the men’s confinement, is important not just for transparency purposes but also for the men themselves.”Top of Form
Source: Crofton Black, “CIA Torture Revealed: Only 29 detainees from secret CIA torture program remain in Guantánamo Bay,” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, January 15, 2015, http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2015/01/15/28-detainees-secret-cia-torture-program-guantanamo-bay/.
Student Researcher: Alison Gorrell (Florida Atlantic University)
Faculty Evaluator: James F. Tracy (Florida Atlantic University)