Who are the Guantánamo detainees?

The Brookings Institution has released a report which summarizes the available public-record information, mostly drawn from habeas petitions and U.S. Government statements, about the identities and affiliations of the detainees who remain imprisoned at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. As of December 16, 2008, there were 248 detainees at the base, composed mainly of (alleged or admitted) Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, but also including Uighurs with no apparent affiliation to either group and assorted others. The report's authors provide separate assessments of the detainees (and of how the prison's demographics have shifted over time) on the basis of U.S. Government allegations and on the basis of detainee statements. Here is a quote:

"The current population numbers less than a third of the total number of detainees who have passed through the facility since 2002. And the composition of the population has changed markedly as it has declined. Yet precisely how it has changed remains fuzzy. Which detainees are still there and which have been sent home? What allegations does the military make against the residual population and how serious are they? How have the detainees responded to these allegations? Are they, as the Bush administration has described the Guantánamo population, the “worst of the worst”? Or are they composed, as the New York Times once put it, of “hundreds of innocent men . . . jailed at Guantánamo without charges or rudimentary rights”? Or do they, perhaps, vary?"

One interesting conclusion is that, while U.S. Government statements indicate a concentration over time of the most dangerous detainees (as low-level operatives have been released or transferred to their home countries), detainee statements do not support this picture. Such dynamics could have complex implications for President-elect Obama's plans to close the facility, including the potential to try remaining detainees in military or civilian courts.