US forced to disclose names of indefinite Guantánamo detainees

The Obama administration has been forced to disclose for the first time the names and nationalities of the 46 Guantanamo detainees marked for indefinite imprisonment without trial.

Of the 166 men still being held at the prison camp in Cuba, the US government assigned four dozen to a legal limbo where they are considered too dangerous to release but cannot be tried in court and so face a potentially endless imprisonment.

On his first day in office in January 2009, President Barack Obama ordered the prison camp to be closed down and assigned a task force to review each detainee's case and advise on whether it was safe to release them.

Four years later Guantanamo remains open but part of the task force's conclusions have been made public following a lawsuit by The Miami Herald and Yale Law School.

The Department of Defense list shows that 26 of the 46 men slated for indefinite detention are from Yemen, 12 from Afghanistan, three from Saudi Arabia, two from Kuwaiti, two from Libya, a Kenyan, a Moroccan and a Somali.

Two other Afghans are included on the list but have died since the 2010 report was compiled. Awal Gul was killed by a heart attack in February 2011 while a man known simply as Inayatullah hanged himself with a bed sheet in May 2011.