U.S. releases 3 Guantanamo prisoners, 505 remain
By Charles AldingerWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Monday it has released three Guantanamo prisoners to Iran, Yemen and Tajikistan, leaving about 505 jailed at the U.S. military prison for foreign terrorism suspects.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, said the two men sent to their home countries of Yemen and Tajikistan were found to no longer be "enemy combatants" by a panel known as the Combatant Status Review Tribunal.
The detainee sent home to Iran was recommended separately for release by an annual administrative review board, Plexico said.
The Pentagon declined to identify the three men.
The United States opened the prison at the U.S. Navy Base in Guantanamo Bay on the southeast tip of Cuba in January 2002 and has faced steady criticism from human rights groups because of the detentions.
A total of 245 detainees now have been transferred out of the jail to other countries, either to be freed or for continued detention.
Most of the 505 terrorism suspects remaining at the prison were captured in Afghanistan and most have been held for more than three years. Only four have been charged, including Australian David Hicks.
Human rights groups have criticized the United States for the indefinite detentions and former Guantanamo prisoners have said they were tortured.
The United States has designated all of the prisoners at Guantanamo "enemy combatants" and denied them rights accorded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
The prisoner returned to Iran was the fourth sent back to his home country under an administrative process in which special boards review the status of each prisoner annually.
The men sent to Yemen and Tajikistan were among 38 who have been cleared for release by Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearings, set up to hear the case of each detainee to determine whether or not they should continue to be designated enemy combatants.
Twenty-nine of those men now have been sent home and nine are awaiting transfer.
The trials of the first four defendants began in Guantanamo last August but were halted in November by a U.S. federal judge's ruling that they violated military law and U.S. obligations to comply with the Geneva Conventions.
A federal appeals court recently reversed that lower court order and the Pentagon is preparing the resume the trials.
Copyright © 2010 Reuters
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