A BBC article titled; ‘Wikileaks: Many at Guantanamo ‘Not dangerous’, states that 220 of the prisoners were deemed dangerous terrorists, whilst the other 150 were innocent people from Pakistan or Afghanistan. Obviously, this has meant that these people were locked in one of the most dangerous prisons in the world for, as it would seem, no reason. The American government perhaps had cause to believe these people to be dangerous, but as WikiLeaks has exposed, these beliefs were found to be false. However, the Pentagon has argued that ‘the files released could damage anti-terrorism efforts’ (BBC, 2011). They believed that the detainees were hoarding information about Al Qaeda troops.
It is inevitable that the American government would be unhappy about the release of these cables. The cables expose that many of the detainees were held due to being ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’ or ‘mistaken identity’ (BBC, 2011). Worringly, in some cases, US commanders admitted to having ‘no reason recorded for transfer’ (BBC, 2011), which shows that even the commanders did not know why some of the prisoners had been detained!
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