After years of secrecy, evasions, half-truths and some downright lies, the US Defence Department has issued a list of those it held at Guantanamo. This list is incomplete. Others held at Guantanamo and elsewhere by other US agencies do not appear on this or any other list.
For instance, while the list includes the 10 detainees who have been charged with crimes, it does not include the most notorious US prisoners, such as alleged September 11 plotters Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and Ramzi Bin Al Shaibah, whose whereabouts remain a secret.
The list also does not specify what has happened to former Guantanamo Bay detainees. The fate of some is documented. All British nationals held at Guantanamo Bay, for example, were transferred back to Britain. But what has become of dozens of other detainees is not known. Some could be free. Others could be in secret US detention centres, or in torture cells of prisons in other countries.
Still, it is a beginning and this is the first time everyone who has been held by the Defence Department at Guantanamo Bay has been identified. It shows that international criticism of what goes on in Guantanamo has had some effect on policymakers in Washington.
But if this is a ploy to deflect further criticism, then it has failed just as Guantanamo itself has failed. According to Pentagon estimates, about 90 per cent of those held there had nothing to do with terror or terrorism. They were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a time in Afghanistan especially where bounties were being paid for terror suspects. The scope for abuse, to settle old grievances, was immense.
The best thing Washington could do to bolster its so-called war on terror is to shut its wretched camp in the corner of Cuba.
