1 in 5 released from Gitmo go back to fighting, Pentagon says

WASHINGTON — Administration officials said Wednesday that a classified Pentagon report concludes that of some 560 detainees transferred abroad from the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, about one in five has engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or extremist activity.

The finding comes amid reports that one former Guantánamo detainee released in 2007 under the administration of President George W. Bush is involved in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a group in Yemen that President Obama has said sponsored the attempt to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.

Obama said Tuesday he was suspending the transfers of additional detainees from Guantánamo to Yemen, even though he said he remained committed to his plan, now delayed, to close the prison.

A Pentagon report released last May found that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners who had been transferred had engaged in terrorism or militant activity or was suspected of doing so.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, would not confirm the findings in the most recent Pentagon report, but he said Wednesday that "the trend hasn't reversed itself." He said that determining which Guantánamo detainees should be released was an "inexact science" and that officials were "making subjective calls based upon judgment, intelligence, and so there is no foolproof answer in this realm."

Civil-liberties and human-rights groups criticized the May 2009 report and earlier Pentagon reports during the Bush administration concluding that substantial numbers of former Guantánamo detainees had engaged in terrorism or militant activity. The groups said the information was too vague to be credible and amounted to propaganda in favor of keeping the prison open.

Obama inherited 242 detainees at Guantánamo when he took office, and he has released or transferred 44. Of the 198 remaining, about 92 are from Yemen. Of those, just under 40 have been cleared for release.

An administration official said the White House had "been presented with no information that suggests that any of the detainees transferred by this administration have returned to the fight." The official was critical of the Bush administration for what the official said was a sloppy, ad hoc process for determining which detainees would be released.