US must name Guantanamo captives, says judge

The US Defence Department must release the identities of hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a news agency, a judge has ruled.

US District Judge Jed Rakoff told the government to provide the information in the form of unedited copies of transcripts and documents related to 558 military hearings in which detainees were permitted to challenge their incarcerations.

Most of the prisoners at the US jail in Cuba have been held since the September 11 2001 attacks without being charged or publicly identified, which has troubled human rights groups.

The Associated Press filed its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the documents last year. The US government then turned over the transcripts of 558 tribunals but edited facts about each detainee’s identity.

The judge gave the government until Wednesday to decide whether to appeal to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals and ask him to suspend his order.

Earlier this month, the judge rejected government arguments that the detainees’ names should be kept secret to protect their privacy, but gave the government one last chance to change his mind.

In response, the government argued that releasing the identities could subject the families, friends and associates of the detainees to embarrassment and retaliation.

In a written ruling yesterday, the judge said he found that argument unconvincing. He said family members and the others “never had any reasonable expectation” of anonymity.

A spokeswoman for federal prosecutors, Heather Tasker, said the government had not seen the ruling and had no response.

AP lawyer David Schulz said he expected the government to appeal.

“The judge has rejected the defence department’s effort to use the privacy interests of detainees to prevent the public from learning information about the actions taken at Guantanamo Bay,” he said.

Last year, the judge ordered the government to ask each detainee whether he or she wanted personal identifying information to be turned over to AP as part of the lawsuit.

Of 317 detainees who received the form, 63 said yes, 17 said no, 35 returned the form without answering and 202 declined to return the form.

The judge said none of the detainees, not even the 17 who said they did not want their identities exposed, had a reasonable expectation of privacy during the tribunals.