Pentagon reveals Guantanamo names

The names do not appear as a simple list, but are included within 6,000 pages of documents posted on the Pentagon's website.

They are transcripts of tribunals in which the 500 detainees were screened and their combat status assessed.

The transcripts have been released before, but with the names blacked out.

SOME OF THE NAMED DETAINEES

• Feroz Ali Abbasi, British - submitted written complaints about military police
• Abdul Gappher, Uighur from western China - accused of seeking to join Uzbek Islamist group but says he was training to fight the Chinese
• Mohammed Sharif, Afghan - accused of serving as a Taleban guard but said he was forced to work for them
• Abdullah Mohammed al-Hamiri, Yemeni - accused of association with al-Qaeda
• Zahir Shah, Afghan - accused of being member of radical group Hizb-i-Islamia
• Mahbub Rahman, Afghan - accused of spying on US forces
• Naibullah Darwaish, Afghan - accused of being Taleban-appointed police chief of Zabul province

Testimony excerpts

Veil of secrecy lifted

The files have been released as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Associated Press.

It is the first time most of the names have been made public.

However, is unclear how many names the transcripts contain. In most cases the person speaking is identified only as "detainee".

Names appear only when court officials or detainees refer to people by name.

However, human rights groups say the release of the full transcripts is a significant blow against US government secrecy.

Activists say the new information will help in piecing together the personal histories of the detainees and in judging how many of them really pose a threat to the US as the US military insists they do.

'Ghost' detainees

Detainees were screened at the Combatant Status Review Tribunals with a view to categorising them as "enemy combatants".

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The BBC's Pentagon correspondent, Adam Brookes, says it will take days, or even weeks, for the documents to be read and analysed, but soon much more will be learned not only about who the detainees are, but also the circumstances of their capture and detention.

However, our correspondent says only inmates who underwent Combatant Status Review Tribunals have been named - it is possible there are other prisoners, known as "ghost" detainees, at Guantanamo.

Force feeding

On Friday, a Kuwaiti man being held at Guantanamo Bay gave a rare interview to the BBC in which he described the force-feeding of hunger strikers at the camp, something which he says amounts to torture.

Answering the questions from the BBC's Today Programme through his lawyer, Fawzi al-Odah said hunger strikers were strapped to a chair and force-fed through a tube three times a day.

Mr Odah, who has been held at the base since 2002, was one of 84 inmates at Guantanamo who went on hunger strike in December. Just four are still refusing food.

He told how detainees were given "formulas" to force them to empty their bowels and were strapped to a metal chair three times a day, where a tube was inserted to administer food.

The UN Human Rights Commission said recently that it regarded force-feeding at Guantanamo as a form of torture, a charge the US firmly has repeatedly denied.

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