Arecent report from the Pentagon found that 74 of the 534 men freed from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility were "confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terrorist activities."
That may be a high number -- other studies have found that only about 4% of the detainees have returned to terrorism after their release. But any recidivism raises a crucial question: Are the United States and its allies doing enough to prevent released detainees from "returning to the battlefield"?
President Obama has said he will close the Guantanamo prison by January 2010, and it appears likely that a substantial number of the approximately 240 detainees who remain there will be sent home or relocated to third countries. If the past is any indication, these men are likely to have trouble building new lives.
Last year, we interviewed 62 released Guantanamo detainees from nine countries in Europe, the Middle East and Southern Asia. We found that although many harbored negative feelings toward the U.S. government, most simply wanted to reintegrate into their families and communities. But they found it difficult to do so.
Nearly all suffered from what we call the "Guantanamo stigma," a presumption in their communities that they were dangerous men, even though the U.S. had never convicted them of a crime. Only six of the 62 had been able to find permanent jobs. Many had lost property, and their families had been driven into debt during their absence.
One released detainee, a highly educated businessman whose family had lived in Europe while he was in captivity, said his children found it complicated to explain why their father was in Guantanamo, so they simply told people he was in jail. "You can't express to a child that there is something in this world called 'detention without trial,' where the rule of law doesn't exist," he said, noting that children assume that "if you're in jail, you must be bad, because that's what society does to bad people."
Other former detainees reported that they were rejected by their families or were shunned and unable to find wives. The wife of a man from the Middle East left him while he was in Guantanamo and returned to live with her family. Now, he said, "I have a plastic bag that I carry with me all the time. I sleep every night in a different mosque."
