A Pentagon report reveals that one out of every seven prisoners that got detained at the US prisons in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba went back to terrorist activity after being transferred abroad. There had already been 534 former Gitmo detainees that were transferred elsewhere.

74 ex-detainees are said to have re-engaged in terrorism. 29 of these have been identified by name such as Said Ali al-Shihri, a leader of al-Qaeda Yemeni branch and suspected in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Sana, and Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul a.k.a. Mullah Abdullah Zakir, an Afghan Taliban commander.

This pattern of recidivism forms the strongest argument against the Obama administration move to shut down Guantanamo by January. Democrats in Congress have opposed this plan. Now, human rights advocates oppose holding prisoners without being charged and criticizing any such reports as vague.

There is a plan in relocating the present 240 prisoners after Guantanamo is decommissioned: transfer some to the custody of other governments such as those countries in the EU that have signified their agreement to take custody of these detainees, and transfer the rest to penal installations within the United States while awaiting either their military or civilian trials or hold some without charges.

It is the proposal to move these prisoners to other facilities in the US that is meeting some opposition in Congress. The sentiment was explicitly expressed by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III when he talked about the risk as “the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States.”

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Via The New York Times