U.S. releases detainee after three years

WASHINGTON – A longtime captive at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be sent home to his native country after a military tribunal there determined that he is not an enemy combatant, Navy Secretary Gordon England announced Wednesday.

The decision ends nearly three years of incarceration for the man, who was picked up on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

England declined to provide details of the detainee’s case, including his name and nationality, referring to an agreement with foreign countries not to release such information until a transfer home is completed. Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detainee, who is not an Afghan national, was captured in January 2002 and held in a detention facility in Afghanistan for a few months before he was transferred to Cuba, where he has been incarcerated ever since.

Human rights advocates sharply criticized the government for the length of the detainee’s incarceration.

“It should not take more than two years for the U.S. military to determine that we were holding someone who is apparently not an enemy combatant,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement Wednesday. “While this announcement is welcome, hundreds of so-called enemy combatants still languish in legal limbo at Guantanamo Bay. The government’s assertion that it is entitled to lock people up indefinitely without any access to the courts violates our most basic notions of fundamental fairness.”

The detainee is one of 55 inmates who have received a complete review under a program begun recently by the military to determine whether detainees should continue to be considered enemy combatants, England said. A Navy admiral who must approve the tribunal decisions has decided 30 cases so far – ruling that 29 detainees are enemy combatants and that this one is not. More than 200 such tribunal cases are in various stages of the process, England said Wednesday.