Talk:List of Guantánamo Bay detainees

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[edit] Point of view?

Discussions of the justice, or lack thereof, with which the Guantanamo detainees are treated, are emotionally charged. I'd like to request that anyone who thinks this list requires an {NPOV} tag be specific, and say why, in detail. -- Geo Swan 17:30, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Update from DoD List

Not all names from the list released by the DoD / AP on 19 April 2006 have been included in the article yet. Don't have time right now... Chrisahn 17:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sort order?

Should the list be sorted by nationality? I don't think so. The "List of alleged al Qaeda members" wasn't sorted by nationality. Then someone reorganized it. My personal opinion is that this didn't help.

Should the list be sorted by the detainee's last name? Maybe. It can be hard to tell last names in Arabic names, however. -- Geo Swan 17:30, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

In any case names that start with "Al" should probably not be sorted under A. DES (talk) 16:36, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Maybe names with a "bin" or a "ben" in them should be sorted under "b" -- like, for instance, "bin Laden". In arabic "al" is an article. I think maybe "ben" might be an arabic analogue to the German "von", as in "von Beethoven" -- Geo Swan 17:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
After several years I am now convinced these names should be sorted according to the captives' first names.
Arabic names generally don't use English-style surnames -- inherited from father to son. Some westernized muslims do seem to use the western style of surname. But it seems rare outside of Turkey, or among expats in Europe or North America.
Many captives had a series of different transliterations used by the DoD. Many captives had components added or removed in the different official lists. Geo Swan (talk) 09:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The real "worst of the worst"??

The article says that the most senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are held in more secret interrogation centers. Should this article include a list of those whose identity is known? Should they be listed in a separate article? -- Geo Swan 17:30, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Legalities

According to Ex parte Quirin, a combatant need not be captured during physical combat. This is separate from the issue of who should set the rules that distinguish a combatant from a criminal. Gazpacho 02:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Ex parte Quirin? I took a look at that page. I am not sure if I understand it. But if I do it runs counter to my reading of the Geneva Conventions. I checked on what they had to say about spies. A soldier caught, out of uniform, behind enemy lines, will probably be ruled to not be a "lawful combatant". But, according to my reading of the Geneva Conventions, if that soldier makes it back to his own lines, puts his uniform back on, and is captured on a subsequent occasion, he cannot be punished for the earlier activity. My understanding is that when an international treaty contradicts a national law, the treaty trumps the national law. Of course that assumes I understand it correctly. I will go back and look up the exact wording. -- Geo Swan 03:36, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Note the date of Ex parte Quirin. It's ruling is quite probably not consistant with the Geneva Conventions, particulartly the post WWII revisions of them. It was a wartime decision, motivated by fear, and might well have gone differently at another time. DES (talk) 16:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the issue of where these people were captured (which is still in the article). I removed the part that says they were captured while unarmed, because that isn't relevant to whether they were unlawful combatants. Gazpacho 18:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Are Dustum and the other "Northern Alliance" leaders "warlords"?

I called them warlords. I didn't expect this to spark controversy. That is what the Washington Post calls them:

When you have a country, with little or no central authority, and the real power is exercised by local, unelected strongmen, they are routinely called warlords. That is what local strongmen are called in Somalia, and what they were called in post-imperial, pre-communist China. -- Geo Swan 03:36, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not disputing it. It just helps to have a link to the group of warlords involved. Gazpacho

[edit] "Fall"

I noticed that within the dates captured column, the term "fall" is used for autumn. I'm suggesting that this be changed to autumn, or even "late XXXX" as many non-Americans (if not most) will not know what "fall" is as it is not a commonly used term. dr.alf 03:29, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

  • I think that's a good idea. My preference would be for a date like QX XXXX, because autumn happens at different times of the year in different places. --Apyule 12:03, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Polygraph test

I noticed that some of the articles relating to the individual detainees describe them having undergone a polygraph test. I am wondering if we should include information as to the polygraph's legal status (i.e. it is inadmissible in Australian courts...). I would do this myself but I have no idea if the polygraph test is admissible or not in US courts. I also put this on this talk page because I did not want to keep posting the same thing time and time again on the talk pages for the individual detainees. dr.alf 03:29, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I thought it was noteworthy when I came across it, because there was another detainee who requested a polygraph, but his tribunal turned him down. -- Geo Swan 03:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
In general, polygraph test results are not admissable in U.S. courts. This is not an absolutely invariable rule, but exceptions are very rare indeed. DES (talk) 16:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Whichever choice they make they should hold to for all the detainees. Note, when you read some of the documents from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals you will see the Tribunal Presidents spell out to detainees that the Tribunals are not courts -- that is justification for not allowing the detainees with access to legal advice. I have found that those detainees who already did have lawyers, where those lawyers advice on the CSRT can be determined, all told their clients to decline to particpate in their tribunals.
Where, in a criminal court, a suspect must be proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt", in the CSRT the suspects have already been deemed to be guilty. In theory. the CSRT provided an opportunity for them to establish their innocence. Except that the authorities had never provided the detainees with a full list of what they were accused of. So, they had to prove themselves innocent, without knowing what they were accused of, and the standard wasn't "reasonable doubt". They had to guess at the accusations and remove all doubt whatsoever. (See the article on Murat Kurnaz.)
Note, in particular, the transcript of the dialogue between Bisher Al Rawi and his Tribunal. Starting on page 16. The very first thing Al Rawi told his Tribunal was that his "Personal Representative" had only met with him twice, only spending 2.5 hours with him. After the Tribunal started the Tribunal President agreed to a recess when he learned that Al Rawi's PR had not allowed him to read all the unclassified documents the Tribunal was going to consider.
After reading Al Rawi's file, it seems likely that he was being held not because there was any evidence that he had any ties to terrorism, but rather that he knew an iman who was tied to terrorist activities. Al Rawi acknowledges doing favors for this iman, one Abu Qatada. He did some minor home repairs. He helped send some money to Qatada's aged father in Jordan. He had helped translate for him when Qatada was looking for a new apartment.
These mundane favours might have benefitted al Qaeda. But they only implicated Al Rawi if he knew Qatada was involved in terrorism. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that Al Rawi knew anything about Qatada's ties to terrorism. I was left wondering whether security officials suspected that Al Rawi may have known of Qatada's terrorist ties -- but they just had no evidence of these ties. Under a normal justice system he would have had to have been released. In GITMO even a sliver of suspicion was enough to repeat the classification that he was an "illegal combatant".
When innudendoes against someone are given so much weight, then I think it is no time to dismiss lie detectors because their standard of reliability was too low. -- Geo Swan 19:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Red Links

I think that we should have the full list here, but I really don't like all of the red links. One idea that I have had is to create a redirect at each person with a red link's page, back to this article, then remove the link from this page. What do people think? --Apyule 11:59, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The redlinks are being removed. Proto t c 11:14, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

Can someone please do the donkey work of providing sources for the claims made in the opening paragraphs? Quote sources would also be very useful. Vizjim 08:50, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sources for the individual detainees

The list was adapted from this list from the Washington Post. I added all the detainees who already had articles who weren't in the WaPo list. That was a couple of dozen individuals. The sources that document their detention in Cuba were all to be found in their articles. The WaPo list has footnotes, to a legend, to the press release, news article, whatever, where the detainee's name was first mentioned. Man

      • I have concerns about the sources, but am too busy today to address this, the VfD was to Keep, so I will return in a few days with my specific concerns. Joaquin Murietta 01:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I just added some child soldiers, who were named in this table. The table provided a link to an article about one young man, but none about the others. So I am going to suggest appending the link, in brackets, to the name, as per Naief Fahad Mutlaq Al Otaibi, Youssef al Shahri. This has the unfortunate side-effect that various uniquely numbered links will all point to the same web-page. -- Geo Swan 16:59, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] footnotes for each detainee

I added a section at the end which would provide a mechanism to put a footnote on each detainee's entry pointing to a footnote for the source of their information... -- Geo Swan 17:18, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] afd result

This article was nominated for deletion on 29 September 2005. The result of the discussion was Keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.


[edit] Other countries?

"Many of those arrested in the "war on terror" were arrested in other countries." I removved this sentence, because "other countries" needs a referent. (Else it means "other than Cuba", or possibly "other than U.S."!) Rich Farmbrough 16:57, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Citing the WaPo list constitute a copyright violation?

Another contributor put a copyright violation tag on the list, this morning, because they felt it constituted a copyright violation.

I'll agree a straight copy of the Washington Post list from their site to the wikipedia could, arguably, be a copyright violation.

But I think there are a number of reasons why the wikipedia list should not be considered a copyright violation of the Washington Post list:

  1. The Washington Post list is not the sole source of the names on the list. It contains dozens of names that are not on the WaPo list.
  2. The entries for some detainees in this list contain information on when they were captured -- information not present in the WaPo list.
  3. The entries for some detainees in this list contain information on when they were released -- information not present in the WaPo list.
  4. The Washington Post list is, itself, compiled from other sources, including press release, from accounts in other newspapers, and accounts from sites like http://cageprisoners.com. If compliling a list by comparing names found on other lists and other sources constitutes a copyright violation then the Washington Post would itself have violated copyright when then made their list.

-- Geo Swan 15:44, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Geo Swan on this. This is just a case of proper referencing and citing of sources, and the list should be reinstated in full, as per my post on User_talk:Joaquin_Murietta:
  • Joaquin, this is, at best, a misguided copy-vio notification. The article states at the outset that "This list of Guantanamo Bay detainees is compiled from various sources". Notwithstanding that statement, the referencing of the items on the list to the Washington Post (amongst other sources) does not constitute any copyright violation IMO, but is just the result of necessary hard work put in by Geo Swan to verify the article. The list in the article also contained names not on the Washington Post list, and you have no business deleting the entire list on that ground alone.
  • You stated on the article talk page, and on your own talk page, that you had concerns with the sources and you would return to address them when you had time. Most recently (10 October) you said you would do this at the weekend, which doesn't start until 15 October. Well, today you put up a copy-vio notice and deleted the entire list. A less generous interpretation than mine might construe this as vandalism. The correct course of action would surely be to have voiced your concerns about possible copy-vio problems on the talk page as you suggested you would do.
--Cactus.man ✍ 16:06, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response by User Joaquin Murietta 18:32, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Above at [1] the author states,

The list was adapted from this list from the Washington Post. I added all the detainees who already had articles who weren't in the WaPo list. That was a couple of dozen individuals. The sources that document their detention in Cuba were all to be found in their articles. The WaPo list has footnotes, to a legend, to the press release, news article, whatever, where the detainee's name was first mentioned.

There are hundreds of listings directly taken from the Washington Post Chart. There a a few dozen that are not. I believe, in good faith, that this is not fair use of the original research by the Washington Post. One alternative is to link to the Washington Post list for their entries and add the couple of dozen from the your list original or public domain sources. Kind regards, I know it is difficult to work on an article and have it criticized. Joaquin Murietta 18:31, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Joaquin Murietta Talk Page Discussion Moved Here

Set forth below is the discussion from my talk page. I have moved it here so that we can all talk in one place. Joaquin Murietta 18:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suspect sources for the "List of Guantanamo Bay detainees"

Last week you described as "suspect" the sourcing of the information for the detainees in the List of Guantanamo Bay detainees. I welcomed you to spell out what you found suspicious. You said you were too busy last Wednesday to state your specific concerns.

Well, since I've spent a lot of time trying to make sure the sourcing was clear, I'd really like to know what contribution you have to make. So, how about the 25 word summary version? -- Geo Swan 16:49, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I appreciate the time you have put into this article and I would like to give it the attention it deserves. I will try to take an hour this weekend to focus on my concerns, and if they are resolved I will post a comment to that effect. if they are not, I will post my concerns. Joaquin Murietta 19:28, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll look forward to it. -- Geo Swan 06:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
    • One concern is that you link to the Washington Post as a source, but the link takes us to the front page or home page for the paper. I'd like to see an online or print source for each name that goes beyond blanket cites to a newspaper homepage Joaquin Murietta 06:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. You meant here? -- Geo Swan 07:33, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
      • You obviously care much for this subject and have worked very hard. But, now that the sourcing is clarified, much of the article seems to be lifted from the Washington Post. It would be better to have a short article that refers to the Wash Post web site, instead of copying their list. Please see my copy vio listing under [2] Regards. Joaquin Murietta 14:11, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright violation?

You have trusted that I put the information to the wikipedia in good faith.

And I am trusting that you put the copyright violation up in good faith.

So, where is the appropriate place for this to be discussed? Your understanding of copyright differs from mine. I am going to take this to the Talk:List of Guantanamo Bay detainees for now, unless you can suggest a better venue. -- Geo Swan 15:07, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Joaquin, this is, at best, a misguided copy-vio notification. The article states at the outset that "This list of Guantanamo Bay detainees is compiled from various sources". Notwithstanding that statement, the referencing of the items on the list to the Washington Post (amongst other sources) does not constitute any copyright violation IMO, but is just the result of necessary hard work put in by Geo Swan to verify the article. The list in the article also contained names not on the Washington Post list, and you have no business deleting the entire list on that ground alone.
You stated on the article talk page, and on your own talk page, that you had concerns with the sources and you would return to address them when you had time. Most recently (10 October) you said you would do this at the weekend, which doesn't start until 15 October. Well, today you put up a copy-vio notice and deleted the entire list. A less generous interpretation than mine might construe this as vandalism. The correct course of action would surely be to have voiced your concerns about possible copy-vio problems on the talk page as you suggested you would do. --Cactus.man ✍ 15:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
      • response by Joaquin Murietta 18:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC) User:Geo Swan responded to my comment, that the sole source link was to the homepage for the Washington Post. He edited the article to give the link to the full Washington Post List of Detainees. I reviewed that link and immediately noticed that the article lifted the list. Again, I think that it would be a better Wikipedia article if you just link to the Washington Post list, let them keep it updated, and then add in the additional public domain information(or future FOIA releases) that you may aquire. I recognize you are invested in this topic, but it doesn't add anything to repeat what the Washington Post has listed. Even your table looks like the Washington Post table. Why subject Wikipedia to problems when there is an alternative? Joaquin Murietta 18:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Joaquin, this is my first experience with a page that has been tagged with a copyright violation. I am going to assume it is your first experience with this tag as well. If I understand the procedure outlined on the policy pages, normally the contributor who is concerned about a possible copyright violation raises the issue on the talk page, first.
When you said you were concerned about sourcing I thought you were echoing Proto's concerns that the source of the entries was insufficiently referenced. Consequently I continued the work of adding a link to each detainee's entry who did not have an article of their own. If the wikipedia consensus concurs with your concern, that this is a copyright violation, that work will turn out to have been a waste of time. It will turn out to have been an avoidable- waste of time.
So, let me urge you, if you ever consider adding a copyright violation tag to another article, would you do so differently? If you ever consider adding another copyright violation tag would you consider raising your concern on the talk page earlier than you did in this case, to avoid wasting other wikipedian's time? Would you consider discussing the issue on the talk page before you add the tag? -- Geo Swan 16:41, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response by Joaquin Murietta 18:39, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Here is what I posted on the discussion page for the article at [3]

Above at [4] the author states,

The list was adapted from this list from the Washington Post. I added all the detainees who already had articles who weren't in the WaPo list. That was a couple of dozen individuals. The sources that document their detention in Cuba were all to be found in their articles. The WaPo list has footnotes, to a legend, to the press release, news article, whatever, where the detainee's name was first mentioned.

There are hundreds of listings directly taken from the Washington Post Chart. There a a few dozen that are not. I believe, in good faith, that this is not fair use of the original research by the Washington Post. One alternative is to link to the Washington Post list for their entries and add the couple of dozen from the your list original or public domain sources. Kind regards, I know it is difficult to work on an article and have it criticized. Joaquin Murietta 18:31, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Joaquin Murietta 18:39, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] RESTART - Citing the WaPo list constitute a copyright violation?

The extremely confusing addition above, from his user page, by Joaquin Murietta has seriously disrupted the Copyright violation? thread. I will add here my comments on his last 'clean' posts, and hopefully discussion can continue from here without further obfuscation.

Adapted is a key word here - using information from the public domain (an international press organisation) is a valid method for validation of articles. There is new material in the article and the WaPo list is not reproduced verbatim. Joaquin is changing his position from copy-vio to a position that he does not consider it 'fair use'. I now believe his copy-vio listing was in bad faith and should be rescinded. I also suspect some undeclared POV agenda here. I repeat that he has no business deleting the entire list of detainees, on a spurious claim of copy-vio, without discussion. The list of detainees in the article existed for a long time before Geo Swan expanded it by referencing WaPo. --Cactus.man ✍ 19:25, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response by Joaquin Murietta 01:42, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Here is what I posted

Above at [5] the author states,

The list was adapted from this list from the Washington Post. I added all the detainees who already had articles who weren't in the WaPo list. That was a couple of dozen individuals. The sources that document their detention in Cuba were all to be found in their articles. The WaPo list has footnotes, to a legend, to the press release, news article, whatever, where the detainee's name was first mentioned.

There are hundreds of listings directly taken from the Washington Post Chart. There a a few dozen that are not. I believe, in good faith, that this is not fair use of the original research by the Washington Post. One alternative is to link to the Washington Post list for their entries and add the couple of dozen from the your list original or public domain sources. Kind regards, I know it is difficult to work on an article and have it criticized. Joaquin Murietta 18:31, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

With respect to the two additional issues raised in this section. The first argument is that the disputed list was online for a long time. User:Geoswanhas posted on Cactus' talk page that this list section is only two weeks old. This copyright violation was not immediately apparent until the author edited the link yesterday to the Washington Post. At that point, for the first time, it became obvious that 90% of the problem section was lifted from the Washington Post's table.

The second issue is the claim of obfuscation. Sorry! I dragged the talk page comments over here because you guys were posting in both venues, both my talk page and this discussion page. Let's keep the dicussion here and I certainly apologise if it was confusing.

Finally, as to the merits, the admins will decide this. If you are correct then the article will continue as is. If there is, however, a copyvio, then it is best to let them resolve it asap. All the best to you both. Joaquin Murietta 01:42, 12 October 2005 (UTC) ModifiedJoaquin Murietta 01:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I can see no reason at all for this to be a copyvio. Any lists of the same thing will normally share content (often exactly the same, listed in the same order) and I see no reason for this to be an exception. Also, there are many other places that this info could be referenced from, such as here, this article just uses the Washington Post for most of them. --Apyule 02:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Joaquin, I first encountered the detainees article on AfD, on 29 September, and didn't check the history properly. I made an assumption about the age of the list, so my statement about the age of the list is wrong. That doesn't change my view that this in not a copyright violation in any way. Geo Swan was just doing a great job of verifying the names on the list. --Cactus.man ✍ 08:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Research shows this is not a copyright violation

The wikipedian who placed the copyright violation tag on this article argued, in part, that it would be a copyright violation to take the facts the Washington Post worked hard to gather, because they worked hard to gather them. I did some homework in order to respond to this position. Our own wikipedia has an excellent article, Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service.

The Feist case went all the way to the US Supreme Court. Rural Telephone had sued Feist when they found Feist had copied all the names from their phone book into a their own third party phone book. The Supreme Court ruled that merely putting effort into a list of facts did not make it eligible to be copyright.

If I understand the implications of this case, there are circumstances where a list can be copyrighted. If the order of the facts in the list required judgement or creativity it can be copyright. But trivially obvious orders, like alphabetic order, don't rise to that standard.

Lists of facts that incorporate elements of judgement or creativity can be copyright.

Since the Washington Post list is just a list of facts -- name, nationality, and release state -- it is not eligible for copyright.

The wikipedia list however has a field available for brief remarks. The effort I put into composing those remarks represents less than 5% of the effort I put into this list. But I believe it is sufficient effort that the wikipedia list is eligible for copyright.

Users who wanted to use the wikipedia list in a way that was a violation of the GFDL can't copy the list unless the strip out the remarks field. -- Geo Swan 11:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Exactly, copyright relates to creative expression of ideas or information, not the ideas or information per se. The Feist Publications article cited confirms that, particularly in relation to the case of a simple, publicly available, alphabetically compiled list. Reformatting to a nationality based list would also completely destroy the copy-vio assertion made by Joaquin, but that is not necessary as no copyright has been infringed in the original article (IMO).
I am not so sure that the article as it was would be copyright to Wikipedia however, as all content is normally released under the GFDL, subject to some exceptions where declared, such as Public Domain and Fair Use. In general terms I think the GFDL License allows reproduction for any purpose as long as the terms of the License are preserved and attribution is given. --Cactus.man ✍ 18:57, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Responding to JM's Oct 13th entry on Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 October 11

JM made an entry on Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 October 11 yesterday. I found it full of misrepresentations.

Another wikipedian has described feeling that JM's conduct during this copyright violation dispute strongly suggests bad faith. After reading JM's response to my citation of Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, I have come around.

I too now strongly suspect that JM's misrepresentations are not a long unlikely sequence of honest mistakes. I too strongly suspect they reflect bad faith. I too strongly suspect that their labelling the wikipedia list as a "copyright violation" was done in bad faith, because they were unwilling to accept the consensus judgement that the list should include the names of all the detainees. -- Geo Swan 14:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Mispresenting Feist v Rural

JM presents a long quote from Supreme Court Justice O'Connor's ruling in the Feist v Rural case. Their quote is a passage from the ruling as to how even a list of "facts" that are in and of themselves not eligible for copyright can have an overall collection copyright, if they are presented in a creative order. That is not in dispute. The third paragraph of the section where I introduced Feist v Rural says the same thing. But, the Supreme Court link makes the same point as the excellent wikipedia article -- alphabetic order lists lack the "spark of creativity" necessary to earn it copyright protection. Quoting a long passage, and putting a part of it in bold, does not change the basic meaning of the ruling.

Here is the passage that JM put in bold:

Thus, even a directory that contains absolutely no protectible written expression, only facts, meets the constitutional minimum for copyright protection if it features an original selection or arrangement. See Harper & Row, 471 U.S., at 547 . Accord, Nimmer 3.03.

And here is the very next paragraph, which JM did not quote:

This protection is subject to an important limitation. The mere fact that a work is copyrighted does not mean that every element of the work may be protected. Originality remains the sine qua non of copyright; accordingly, copyright protection may extend only to those components of a work that are original to the author.

The Washington Post would not be able to copyright a simple list of people's names and nationalities, no matter how much work they put into compiling it, unless they presented it in a creative order. So the Supreme Court ruling doesn't give other judges much of a clue as to how high the bar is before an ordering of a simple list of non-copyrightable facts will make the list copyrightable.

There are a set of riddles, that amuse people by their surprising, unanticipated order. For example: Figure out the order of the six numbers in the list: 4, 5, 8, 9, 1, 7 and offer your prediction of the sequence of the next numbers. The answer is 6, 3, 2. The numbers are in alphabetic order, when they are written in English. I think whoever dreamed up that riddle could claim copyright on the list 4, 5, 8, 9, 1, 7.

But we don't have to worry about the dividing line between orders that are creative enough to make a list copyrightable and orders that are not. All that matters to us in this discussion is that alphabetic order is not sufficiently creative. -- Geo Swan 14:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] The Washington Post staff worked hard to compile their list?

JM points out that the Washington Post staff must have worked hard to compile their list. No one is disputing that. Hats off to them. But JM is ignoring the clear meaning of the Supreme Court's ruling. Counter-intuitive as it might seen, since 1991, the amount of hard work a list compiler puts in to making a list is irrelevant to whether it is worthy of copyright. The criteria is creativity.

JM says the WaPo staff exercised creativity in their choice of which articles they cited to document the names of detainees. JM says the WaPo staff exercised creativity and judgement in their choice of nationalities to attribute the detainees. Lol. Without regard to how hard they worked at determining the nationality let me suggest that this too is a what Justice O'Connor would call a "fact".

As to the judgement and creativity the WaPo staff exercised in choosing which articles to cite... Let's assume, for the sake of argument that a selection of articles to cite requires the spark of creativity required to make.a list of articles eligible for copyright. Did I copy the WaPo's list of articles? Um, no, I didn't.


[edit] Is the wikipedia list."essentially identical" to the Washington Post list?

JM writes that the wikipedia list is "essentially identical" to the Washington Post list. My friends who were pure math, back in University, used to mockingly refer to this kind of statement as a "proof by assertion".

The entries are in a different order because merging the lists meant changing the spelling, The entries are in a different order because new entries have been introduced.

The lists are far from identical because our list has a field for remarks that the Washington Post's list lacks.

In the entry of Mohamedou Ould Slahi of Mauritania I wrote that he was a "radical iman, an alleged mentor to the hamburg cell". The remark surely doesn't compare with William Shakespeare, or even Clive Cussler. But it, and the dozens of other remarks we composed for the wikipedia list, show sufficient "spark of creativity" to earn our list eligibility for copyright protection.

JM has repeated, in numerous places, that I said the Washington Post list was the "sole source" for the wikipedia list. They keep misrepresenting me with these repetitions. In fact I said the exact opposite.

  • I merged in the 59 names I found in the AP library of Combatant Status Review Tribunals.
  • I merged in the 14 names I found in the cageprisoners.com list "The kids of Guantanamo"
  • I merged in the names of detainees I found listed in newspaper reports. For the last year or so I have had google news alerts on things like "guantanamo bay" and "guantanamo hunger strike". Google mails me daily digests of articles that include these terms. I use my judgement, and I choose to read those with promising titles. If the article mentioned the name of a detainee, and provides enough detail to start an article, I start an article about them. I started over half of the wikipedia articles about Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Merging lists of arabic names is not rocket science. But it is not a trivial mechanical task, that can be automated, JM repeatedly and insultingly characterized my use of the Washington Post list as "lifting" it. That is nonsense, for any meaningful definition of "lifting". It was a lot of work.

One of the things that makes merging require a lot of effort is that Arabic names can be translitereated into English many different ways. Sometimes syllables will be merged to form separate words, or merged back together. Or they are known by nicknames that are used so universally that people thing it is their real names. The AP list of 59 names overlaps with the Washington Post list. Some of the detainees names were spelled the same. Some were the same, but had extra middle names. Some required real judgement as to whether they were the same. I generally used the name used in the official documents from the Combatant Status Review. Of course guys like Abdullah Kamel Abdullah Kamel Al Kandari, whose US dossier had documents that referred to him by half a dozen names.

[edit] JM's suggestion that the article merely link to the Washington Post article

The final two sentences of JM's last entry in Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 October 11 say:

Since the List of Guantanamo Bay detainees table is lifted from the Washington Post table, why not rewrite the section to avoid this copyright problem? Moreover, the Washington Post table will be continually edited and updated. It makes more sense to link to it rather than copy it.

I will point out, in my followup to their entry, that the discussion there is about whether the article violates a Washington Post copyright, not what direction they thinks the article should take.

JM asserts that the Washington Post list is being continually updated. I don't know where they got that idea. The Washington Post list was a sidebar to a long article about the Guantanamo detainees they published well over a year ago. They don't update it.

[edit] JM's claim of urgency suggests bad faith

JM copied the entire text of the discussions of the copyright violation from their talk page. This kind of copying blocks of comments from one talk page to another is very disruptive to the utility of the history mechanism. Someone told JM this. And JM said they didn't realize.

What it also is, is a misrepresentation. JM represents themselves as someone interested in protecting the wikipedia, as soon as he became aware of a dangerous copyright violation. JM represents themselves as so interested in protecting the wikipedia that they had to immediately delete our list of Guantanamo detainees, and put in motion the copyright violation process, without honouring their promise to actually discuss their concerns on the talk page. But this is not true. What JM did not choose to share was that when they cast their delete vote during the recent AfD, they said: *Delete the sourcing is suspect. needs clean up and sources. -- They don't choose to share that I took their concerns seriously and reached out one, two, three times to ask them to share their concerns. If they were going to wait six days between hinting at "concerns about sourcing" and placing the copyright violation tag, then it wasn't urgent. It wasn't so urgent that it required immediate action. It wasn't so urgent that they should break their commitment to come back to the talk page and share their concerns. If JM had come back to the talk page, as common courtesy, their previous commitment, and, the wikipedia copyright violation procedure recommends trying to contact the person who contributed the suspect material, before setting the procedure in motion, to avoid embarrassment when the suspicion is based on some kind of misunderstanding. -- Geo Swan 14:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] It is obvious JM didn't bother reading the article

JM obviously didn't bother reading the article. JM asks questions that expose they didn't read the article, and they say thing they couldn't say if they had really read the article. We live in democracies

JM asked for two things, early on October 11th, that exposed they hadn't really read the article: One concern is that you link to the Washington Post as a source, but the link takes us to the front page or home page for the paper. I'd like to see an online or print source for each name that goes beyond blanket cites to a newspaper homepage.

JM needed a link to the actual Washington Post list? Hello! That link was already in the article. It was already there in two places; at the end of the third paragraph, and in the external links section.

Granted, an ordinary user would want one in the subsection of the sources section devoted to the Washington Post. I thought I had one there too. Not having one there was an oversight. JM's flagging that that section didn't have one was a useful suggestion.

In this edit JM says:

"Geo Swan responded to my comment, that the sole source link was to the homepage for the Washington Post.

In fact I said: "The Washington Post list is not the sole source of the names on the list." -- The complete opposite of what JM asserted I said.

In the AP subsection of the sources section devoted to the 59 detainees whose dossiers were made available by the Associated Press the article says:

Their library of documents includes detainees not listed in the Washington Post list. There are also detainees listed there who may be in the Washington Post list, but with their names spelled differently, or listed with additional middle names.

[edit] Pasting in comments from other talk pages is disruptive

Pasting in comments from other talk pages is disruptive. It put timestamps in the page that don't correspond to the entries in the pages history list, because they were stamped in the other pages history. And retaining the indentation from the original page is disruptive because it confuses people (most of us) who follow the convention that are comments should be at one further level of indentation from the text one if following up. I know Apyule asked JM to respect the indentation convention, and they said they would. So when JM didn't respect the convention, and pasted in a big bunch of text from Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 October 11. It would be better if the discussions for copy-vio had links that took you right to the discussion you were interested in. But plunking in a big bunch of text is no solution. People could start replying in two different places. Chaos.

So I took the initiative to revert it. I too would be interested in what other readers of this page thought of the discussion on the copy-vio page. -- Geo Swan 17:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] How to Edit the Disputed Section to Avoid the Copyvio Issue

Have you considered editing your table to avoid the copyvio issue? If so, take a look at

  • The Associated Press Court Documents Archive It consists of a list of detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, with click-able links to Federal court documents, by detainee. These apply to those detainess who have filed lawsuits in Federal Court. The original source documents are archived in .pdf. Might be more accurate than just copying the table from a newspaper. Joaquin Murietta 15:55, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Joaquin, your link is interesing but would not help in informing the accuracy of the list. The PDF documents in the page are very useful though, and this would be exactly the sort of item that would best be posted in the external links section - I think I might just do that right now. Thanks JM. You are missing the bigger picture though, there is no copy-vio issue with the list as it was in the article. The table wasn't just copied from a newspaper, it was carefully researched, verified, built and expanded - almost single-handedly by Geo Swan. --Cactus.man ✍ 18:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
There is no need to edit the disputed section, as the disputed section is not a copyright violation. I was tempted to revert it myself, but will stay out of the way (except to offer my opinion). I am sure as the copy vio backlog clears, an administrator will concur and remove the notice. Proto t c 14:46, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright Status

I belive that Geo Swan has correctly stated the situation above.

Even had our list been an exact copy of the Washington post list, the copyright stats of that list would be at best minimal, given that it is an alphabetically arranged list of alleged facts, and newsworthy facts at that. The only "creative" work involved is determining which names to include, but that is creativity of fact and not of expression, and expression is all that copyright protects.

However, given that the wikipedia list isbased upon multiple sources, as descibed above, evne though the post list is a major source, and is the source for the karge majority of the entries, I think it ios quite clear that the list does not infringe the Post's copyright, and that the copyright violation tag should be removed. DES (talk) 15:15, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

One could also source the list from the filings of the Judge Advocate General's Corp (which I saw in the link above in this talk page). They are clearly not subject to copyright as the Judge Advocate Generals are employees of the United States Government, producing the documents as part of their official duties. I also agree with the above that a factual list would clearly not be subject to the Washington Post's copyright. Morris

Absolutely no questions not a copyright violation. A list of facts is not copyrightable (US Supreme Court decision in Feist vs ... phonebook case). --Zippy 09:10, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

To nitpick, creativity of facts is copyrightable, if it involves some sort of creative judgment about which facts to include and which to omit. However, that doesn't appear to apply here. --Delirium 09:44, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List restored

I have restored the list while leaving the copyvio tag in place. This will alow the list to be visiable and to be worked on, while the process proceeds at WP:CP. DES (talk) 20:58, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I've been bold and removed the copyvio tag altogether, as there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that there is no violation of copyright. Proto t c 11:47, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Bush administration"? Or "US government"?

Should the article attribute the claim that the detainees are not entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions to the "Bush administration"? Or should the claim be attributed to the the US government?

Today the phrase "Bush administration" was changed to "US government", because an editor felt that Bush administration was POV, and US goverment was NPOV. I disagree. And I am going to change it back again.

I am open to an explanation as to why "Bush administration" is POV. Here is my reasoning for why it is not:

  • The US government has three branches, with different powers and authority. They provide checks and balances against one another.
  • The judicial branch can overrule the executive branch, in certain circumstances.
  • The judicial branch has overruled the executive branch, to a certain extent, and forced it to obey some aspects of the Geneva Conventions. There are other legal challenges, in motion, which may force compliance with the Geneva Conventions in other areas, like, for instance, removing the executive branches authority to continue to keep the names of the detainees classified.
  • Although the executive branch announced that the detainees were not entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions, the judicial branch overruled them. The judicial branch forced the executive branch to provide the "competent tribunals" to review whether the detainees qualified for POW protection. The judicial branch is currently reviewing whether those reviews met the USA's Geneva Convention obligations. It is possible that the tribunals held in late 2004, early 2005 will be ruled insufficient. Joyce Hens Green, the judge who has reviewed all of the cases of detainees who have challenged their detention, seems to feel that they were insufficient. SCOTUS chief Roberts may argue that they were sufficient.

Since the judicial branch overruled the executive branch, at least to the extent of forcing the convening of tribunals of detainees's status, it is, IMO, POV to attribute the claim to the entire US government. It is, IMO, not only POV, it is also demonstrably untrue.

I am open to suggestions of other wordings, for "Bush administration". I considered putting "the US government's executive branch". But it is awkward, and confusing. I think "Bush administration" is clearer, and more correct. -- Geo Swan 20:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm comfortable with either "US government" or "Bush administration." I don't think the latter reflects an editor's POV. --Zippy 08:44, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Of the two terms I prefer Bush administration as it makes it clear which part of government is doing it. --Apyule 09:55, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
The trouble is that to me the term 'Bush administration' implies that all the actions that have (allegedly, in some cases) have been by George W Bush, when many of the policies have been in place before Bush came to power, and will continue to be enacted when he ambles off into the sunset. And I figured that the 'U.S. government' is lead by Bush anyway (or should be), which is why 'U.S. government' depersonalizes the activites of the U.S. in this situation. But if everyone else is fine with 'Bush administration', I don't have that a real problem with it, as it was just an off the cuff edit anyway. So it's all good. Proto t c 11:46, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
You are correct to assert that some of the controversial policies being carried out today predate the George W. Bush Presidency. The extraordinary rendition policy, for instance, predates the George W. Bush Presidency.
But extraordinary rendition is not the policy under discussion here. Indefinite detention, without charge, or the protections of the Geneva Conventions, is the policy under discussion. And this unprecedented policy is both purely a product of George W. Bush and his senior advisors, and is very publicly announced. -- Geo Swan 19:42, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Washington Post list being updated

It hadn't been updated in a while. But, it has been updated today. I am going to determine how different the updated version is from the original. -- Geo Swan 20:54, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Move pages

It has been proposed to move Guantanamo Bay to the correct spelling of Guantánamo Bay and create and extra article U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. ROGNNTUDJUU! 18:26, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Having a separate article for the naval base works for me. I don't really care that much about the spelling, although I recall in similar cases people have argued that since this is the English wikipedia the article names should stick with the least complicated English spelling.
I never agreed with the merging of Camp X-ray, Camp Echo into Camp Delta. The other partisan edits of the guy who did the merge suggest that his real intent was to reduce the overall number of hits people who did internet searches for both abuse and Guantanamo Bay would turn up by reducing the number of wikipedia articles that mention both terms. The lack of effort he made to make the merge seamless I believe supported my suspicion. This guy had been following around my edits, almost like a stalker. And vandalized all my edits.
In my opinion there should be a larger article entitled something like US Prisons and detention centres at Guantánamo Bay. It should have a paragraph or two about each of the camps used to detain suspects in the GWOT. It should have a section for the camp(s) where Haitian, Cuban, Dominican and other boat people, who were intercepted on their way to the CONUS were housed. At one time there were over ten thousand boat people detained at Guantanamo. Each subsection devoted to particular camp would use {{main|Camp Iguana}}. -- Geo Swan 19:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incorporating the DoD Guantanamo names

I think we have to do this with caution, because the DoD list is marred by many errors.

Take a look at User:Geo Swan/working/official Guantanamo names. Note that almost all the names are red-linked.

There are so many red-links mainly because of

inclusion of honorary titles
  • The DoD lists many subject's first name as mullah -- which is kind of like Reverend for Christians
  • The DoD lists many subject's first name as Hajj, al-Haj, Haji -- which is an honorary title given to those who made a pilgrimage to Mecca
spelling errors
Moazzan Begg Moazzam Begg
Mullah Mohammad Fazi Mohammad Fazil
  • I'll add more misspellings as I come across them...
truncated names
  • The list contains eight truncated names
96 AL SHIHRI, ABD AL SALAM GHAYTAN MURAYYIF AL ZAYDA--
108 AL HARBI, MAJID ABDALLAH HUSAYN MUHAMMAD AL SAM---
112 AL QADASI, KHALID ABD JAL JABBAR MUHAMMAD JUTHM---
153 AL HAMEYDANI, KHALID BIN ABDULLAH MISHAL THAMER---
175 JARABH, SAEED AHMED MOHAMMED ABDULLAH SAREM---
236 KHANTUMANI, ABD AL NASIR MUHAMMAD ABD AL QADIR---
238 ABD AL SATTAR, MUIEEN A DEEN JAMAL A DEEN ABD AL
368 AL GHAZZAWI, ABDEL HAMID IBN ABDUSSALEM IBN MIFTA---
duplicates names Some names in the list appear to be duplicates
duplicated syllables
  • The clerks who maintained the list of names obviously weren't Arabic speakers. Well, neither am I. But they also don't seem to have given a darn to get the names right.
  • Trying to twist the Arabic names into our convention, where we put the last name first, was clearly a mistake. In Arabic "al" is an article, like the in English. So, whoever was responsible for the list of names, should either have decided to include it as part of last names, or exclude it from all last names. Mixing them was a disaster.
  • My reading of this list was that extra syllables have been inserted through careless on the part of the Guantanamo clerks.
  • If you read some of the Guantanamo transcripts you will see for some of the detainees a major factor for their detention was that their name, or one of their aliases, was found on a hard drive captured from another al qaeda suspect. You'd think that if you were going to imprison someone, without charges, because his name was found in a suspicious place, you would think it was important to spell their names right.

My suggestion is that we not add any name that we haven't checked to see if it is an obvious misspelling of an existing name.

It might be best if, for the next month or so, we were extremely careful about adding the official names. Give them a chance to put up a reliable, accurate list. -- Geo Swan 20:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Are detainees notable?

Many of the articles on the individual detainees are simply copy and paste jobs describing the "Combatant Status Review Tribunal" and the "Administrative Review Board hearing". There is nothing notable mentioned in those articles about the individual. So, my question is, does being a Guantanamo Bay detainee make one notable? I would argue that that fact by itself does not; being in jail, even a notable jail, does not make one himself notable. I think the list is sufficient for individuals for whom we do not have information on actions that may be notable, or for whom there was some sort of incident regarding their stay there. Comments? ~MDD4696 14:38, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Are they notable? I think so.
I am going to encourage you to take a closer look at those articles. They are not "simply copy and paste jobs describing the "Combatant Status Review Tribunal" and the "Administrative Review Board hearing". The Department of Defense was forced, by court order, to release the identities of the detainees on March 3, 2006. Over the next couple of months they dribbled out revisions. On April 20, 2006 the DoD released a list of the names and detainee ID numbers of all the detainees who cases were considered by a CSRT. On May 15, 2006 the DoD released what they claimed was a list of the names and detainee numbers, and their estimated birth date and place of birth of all the detainees who had been in military custody in Guantanamo.
It wasn't until the release of the names, tied to the detainee ID numbers that it was possible to determine the identity of the detainees in each transcript.
The DoD released just over six dozen portable document format files, each containing multiple transcripts. The transcripts are almost all stamped with the detainee number on the bottom of each page. But they aren't in numerical order, or alphabetic order. So, in order to find the transcript for a particular detainee you would have to scan through all 6,000 pages looking for pages with their detainee ID number in the bottom corner. This would take hours, per detainee.
I went through all the files, and recorded which files contained which transcripts. I recorded which page numbers within those files the transcripts started on. This represented several dozens of hours of work on my part. It was considerably complicated by the DoD's inability to use one consistent spelling for each detainee. I then wrote a script to generate individual files that contained the explanatory paragraphs you refered to, but each reference contains a link to the correct pdf file to find the transcript of that detainee, and contains the page number the transcript starts on.
I think this is very valuable information. And, given the effort I put into making the difficult information available, I think you do me a disservice to refer to my work as a "simple cut and paste job".
I have spent further dozens of hours adding the allegations against detainees, and sometimes summaries of their testimony, and other notable things about their testimony.
I believe that the allegations themselves are noteworthy. There is no reason why I should hog information so I am the sole person adding summaries of the detainee's testimony to the individual articles. I did the work necessary to let any other contributors, or general reader, to go directly to the transcripts. Similarly, I don't have to be the sole person adding the allegations, or doing a web search to see if the detainee's name has been mentioned in a newspaper article, or reasonable equivalent.
By going through this process I have already found many notable things about the lists.
Many detainees names are spelled differently on the two official lists, even though they were released less than a month apart.
And a number of Guantanamo detainees names are not listed, even though the DoD claims they released the complete list.
If you have been following the discussion about these detainees you will know that some of the detainees remain in detention because they were captured wearing a casio digital watch - the Casio F91W. By going through the transcripts I found the names of a dozen detainees held, in part, for this reason. I don't believe this information is available anywhere else on the internet.
By going through the transcripts I found that many of the detainees were captured in the international students residences at a University in Faisalabad, Pakistan, on September 11, 2002. I learned that there are a number of other detainees who were captured from the same house in Faisalabad where senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was captured, and four of the ten detainees who face charges before the military commissions. There seems to be a reason why Faisalabad is a center of jihadist activity, or is suspected of being a center of jihadist activity.
I saw you put submitting these article for {afd} on your to-do list. Well, I consider the information in the articles valuable, even the articles where no one has gotten around to adding allegations, summaries of testimony, or references to, and summaries of what other external links may have to say about them. So, I hope you will reconsider. -- Geo Swan 16:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd only AFD articles we deemed non-notable. If we determine that they're all notable, then there's no problem! Better that I raise the question and we establish their notability now than to have others make a series of rash deletions. You've already provided more than enough reason for me to believe that these stubs have the potential to grow into proper articles. I commend the considerable amount of effort you put into generating them, and I didn't mean any ill will with the copy and paste comment.
Surely you can see why I would have said that, however. The Combatant Status Review Tribunal and Administrative Review Board hearing sections are identical in many of the articles, and they discuss not the detainee in question but the subject in the heading. I think it would be appropriate to move these sections into their own article or into an existing one, and then link to them in the "Al Nahdi chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal" sentences. Replicated paragraphs like these tend to diverge, so I think a centralized location that describes the tribunal and hearing would be more valuable and much easier to maintain. Wouldn't you agree? ~MDD4696 20:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I am confident that they can all grow into proper articles.
Originally I created shorter articles, without those explanatory paragraphs, that merely gave the name, nationality, ID number, and stated "Al Xxxx chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal," -- followed by the link to his transcript I got some complaints about those articles being "unencyclopedic". I thought briefly providing some context would address those complaints. -- Geo Swan 21:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need an update on Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi al-Utaybi

Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi al-Utaybi just hanged himself but was "among 141 prisoners due to be released", apparantly having been designated a "safe person, free to be released" - but not told [6]. I can't be sure which chap this is, so leave the updating to those more familiar.

[edit] discussion

[edit] total rewrite?

I think this article needs a total rewrite, needed a total rewrite for almost a year now.

I offer an (incomplete) example of one possible rewrite, here, which I explain below, and a description of a couple of other possible rewrites. I'd like people to offer opinions about this suggestion. Thanks.

[edit] The name portion needs a total rewrite

The DoD released what it called a full list of all the captives who had been held in Guantanamo, in military custody. So we know of 773 names. In addition there are about two dozen names of men who have been identified as having been held in Guantanamo who can't be matched to names on the full official list.

  • Some of those missing names came from post release interviews, and the released captives may have transliterated their names so differently from the DoD choice of transliteration that they can't be matched.
  • Some of those missing names came from articles by Guantanamo captive's lawyers, or quotations from them. The most recent one I came across last night, in this article. The author is a lawyer for two captives. One of whom she is told is an Algerian named Raziq Ali. There are only a couple of dozen Algerians in Guantanamo, and none of them has a name remotely like Raziq Ali. There was a similar confusion over the name of one of the three dead men the DoD claims committed suicide:
    • The Saudi's transliterated his name one way.
    • After his death the DoD transliterated his name a second way. That name was not on the full official list -- even though it had been issued less than one month before his death was announced!
    • Eventually the Miami Herald article sorted it out, and revealed captive ID number. An unrecognizably different version of his name had been on the official list. The Miami Herald revealed that the DoD had, earlier, transliterated his name in yet another unrecognizably different transliteration.
    • His lawyers had not been allowed to visit him, or even correspond with him, because the DoD kept telling them, that they didn't have any captives under the name they were using.
    • One can't help wondering whether the DoD hasn't been engaging in an obfuscation campaign, to prevent the captives from seeing their lawyers, by continually changing how they transliterate the captive's names, and then telling the lawyers, "we don't have anyone by that name.
  • There are discrepancies between how names are spelled on the official list released on April 20, 2006 and the official list released on May 15, 2006. In a couple of dozen cases those discrepancies are so large we should doubt that the two names refer to the same individual.
  • The DoD has released other documents that have the captives names on them. On March 3, 2006 the DoD released 59 large .pdf files. 56 of those files contained transcripts, where the captives were identified only by their official Captive ID number. However, three of those files contained Summary of Evidence memos, that identified the captives by name, not by ID number. Those memos all dated back to late 2005. About one third of those names were transliterated differently than they were on the full official list. And four of those names were so different I couldn't match them to any of the names on the official list, at all.
  • Finally, some of the names not on the official list had been released, or leaked, by administration officials.
    • Vice President Cheney, for example, personally cited the case of "Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar". According to Cheney he was a senior Taliban leader, who had tricked his interrogators into thinking he was just a simple, harmless, illiterate, monoglot villager, who was captured by mistake. According to Cheney, based on his interrogators assessment he was harmless, he was one of the first captives to be released — whereupon he "returned to the battlefield", raised hell, and was finally killed in action. Well, the release of the full official list reveals that:
      1. Abdul Ghaffar must be a common name in Afghanistan. The official list contains both an Abdul Ghaffar and an Abdul Ghafour.
      2. Both men were still in Guantanamo in 2005, and participated in their Administrative Review Board hearings. They were still in Guantanamo long after Cheney said Abdul Ghaffar was killed in action. They might still be in Guantanamo. (Maulvi is an honorific, not part of a man's name, like Mullah, Haji, or Reverend.) -- Geo Swan 23:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible candidate(s)?

In my rough notes maintained a list of all the names, with some marginal notations about who the captives were. One of my correspondents suggested that a list like that, with a link to the place in the .pdf file where their transcripts could be found. I got about three quarters of the way through making these changes. I stopped when the file got to be about 400K bytes. Here is the current version: User:Geo Swan/working/total official names as of May 15. The names in that list are organized by ID number.

  • Another possible order is to forget about having a union list, and merely directing readers to individual lists, by nationality.
  • Another possible order would be to list the captives by the order in which they were found in the pdf files. This would have the advantage of only placing the URL to the .pdf in the document once, not dozens of times, shrinking the file by about half. But, it wouldn't list any of the captives we know about who didn't attend their CSRT. And, the transcripts from their Administrative Review Board hearings are in a totally different order. Some captives attended their ARB, and not their CSRT. Some captives attended both. And some captives didn't attend either, but we know details about their cases from Summary of Evidence memos prepared for their CSRTs or ARBs. The Associated Press made the full dossiers prepared for the CSRTs of 58 captives available for download in 2005, and some of these men didn't attend either the CSRT or ARB. -- Geo Swan 23:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Total rewrite of the section that describes the sources, and the history of the release of names?

I think it is long past time for a total rewrite of this portion of the article as well. I think this article shouldn't contain many details, but should point to a whole separate article, or possibly several related articles, that address the history of the release of names. Why several articles? Well, a whole article, that could stand on its own, could be written about the legal battle over the Associated Press Freedom of Information Act requests that lead to the release of the names, and the transcripts.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 23:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting suggestion

Instead of "surnames beginning with A, B, C" and so forth as section headings, consider making one of those funky alphabetized lists of contents, similar to Category:Uncategorized pages. YechielMan 15:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Interesting, but I don't think I can understand how it could usefully be emulated here. IMO alphabetic is not a particularly useful way to organize this list. Most of the captives who are related don't have clues to this relation in their name, because Arabic names don't work that way.
  • ID number, like the list in my rough notes, User:Geo Swan/working/total official names as of May 15]]
  • By nationality.
  • By capture date -- except we don't know the capture date is for 95% of the captives.
Cheers! Geo Swan 02:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] comment

As I have noted above, this list has not really had the wholesale rewrite is has needed since the first official lists were published in the Spring of 2006.

No one has really commented on my re-write suggestions, so I plan to go ahead on my own.

[edit] Shoehorning the names into "Surname", "First name" order was a disaster

Most English speaking people use names made by combining a "given name" with a "surname"; and those surnames are generally inherited from one's parents. The Washington Post's list, and the DoD's list(s) made the disastrous mistake of trying to interpolate what the captive's English-style surnames were. But almost all people with Arabic names don't have anything like a surname, they inherit from their father. My understanding is that someone with an Arabic name will have their name made up from their given name, followed by their father's given name. Which would be further modified with a grandparent's given name, and/or a village name, and/or tribal name, and/or occupation name.

I started this article, and I made the mistake of followed the example of the Washington Post, and trying to inappropriatedly interpolate an-English-style surname. Lots of captives had their names transliterated multiple ways. And a significant minority of those whose names were transliterated inconsistently had unrecognizably different trailing components.

So, I plan to list them in order by their ID numbers. Except for those missing from the official lists. I'll list them alphabetically, by their first names. Geo Swan (talk) 20:49, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I first plan to replace the names compiled from various sources with names from the Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 20:49, 14 May 2008 (UTC)