U.S. Shifts, Giving Names of Detainees to the Red Cross

Source: NY Times

In a reversal of Pentagon policy, the military for the first time is notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of militants who were being held in secret at a camp in Iraq and another in Afghanistan run by United States Special Operations forces, according to three military officials.

The change begins to lift the veil from the American government’s most secretive remaining overseas prisons by allowing the Red Cross to track the custody of dozens of the most dangerous suspected terrorists and foreign fighters plucked off the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is a major advance for the organization in its long fight to gain more information about these detainees. The military had previously insisted that disclosing any details about detainees at the secretive camps could tip off other militants and jeopardize counterterrorism missions.

Detention practices will be in the spotlight this week. The Central Intelligence Agency on Monday is to release a highly critical 2004 report on the agency’s interrogation program by the C.I.A. inspector general.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/world/middleeast/23detain.html?hp

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Good but now isn't it time to close these prisons and bring the prisoners to trial?

However, since most of the 'evidence' against these men is hearsay and/or obtained from torture, I'm not sure that you can try them.

Better to release them to their home countries and track them.

and Afghanistan.