WASHINGTON — The story of how Guantanamo Bay prisoner No. 111 ended up in U.S. custody is stranger than most. An Iraqi, he was a member of Saddam Hussein's vaunted Republican Guard. But as a Shiite he was treated badly. When he tried to flee, he said Hussein's henchmen put him in a Baghdad prison.
He escaped and found his way to Pakistan, where members of what he knew as a religious group -- the Taliban -- took him in and gave him food. While driving trucks for the Taliban in Afghanistan, he was captured by men fighting with Abdul Rashid Dostum, the famed general of the Afghan Northern Alliance.
His Zelig-like journey continued through his captivity, where he apparently met and spoke with Johnny "Mike" Spann, the CIA agent who became the first American killed in the Afghanistan war, and appears to have met "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh as well, before being sent to Cuba.
The unnamed Iraqi's story was one of dozens told by Guantanamo detainees to American military officials and included in 2,700 pages of transcripts and related documents made public Monday by the Pentagon, the second such release in response to a court ruling that legal proceedings at the island prison must be made public.
The tales told by detainees are varied, some more credible than others. But like the transcripts released earlier this year, those made public Monday offer a rare and occasionally insightful view into who is being held by American authorities and how they have lived their lives over the last four years in the desert scrub of southeastern Cuba.
According to the Pentagon, 490 detainees still are at Guantanamo. The transcripts released Monday detail hearings held by camp officials late last year as part of their first review, to be repeated annually, of whether those still being detained remain a threat to U.S. security or whether they have any intelligence value. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said 120 detainees have been transferred to their home governments as a result of the review process, and another 15 have been released.
Most of those who agreed to appear before the review tribunals -- which were made up of mid-level American officers -- pleaded their innocence, saying they were in Afghanistan only to teach Arabic, or to look for work, or to help the poor. The findings publicly issued against them by the military are frequently vague or based on inconclusive evidence. Almost all detainees insisted that if released, they would return to their home countries and find a wife, or take care of their families, or look for a job.
