Apparent inconsistencies in Gitmo decisions

Man went to Afghanistan to lose weight?
One of the men who was transferred was Mohammad Akhtiar, an Afghan who told the panel he had worked for the U.S.-allied Karzai government in Afghanistan and that he was steadfastly opposed to the Taliban. He listed several senior Afghan officials, including the minister for refugees and repatriation, who he said could vouch for him.

In December, Akhtiar was flown to Afghanistan and immediately released, said his U.S. lawyer, Dicky Grigg. Grigg considered it a happy ending, saying: "I believed that Mohammed Akhtiar was not a terrorist."

But some of the Administrative Review Board results were murkier.

Abdul Rahman Mohammed Hussein Khowlan, a Saudi, said he went to Afghanistan to lose weight and to find the Prophet Muhammad's clothing — even though the founder of Islam had never been in that country.

A board member asked Khowlan to explain the search, but the detainee, who allegedly was carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle when he was captured, responded: "There's nothing to add."

England ordered Khowlan sent home to Saudi Arabia, whose government is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East.

During the Administrative Review Board hearings, the transcripts show, military officers painstakingly questioned detainees to gauge the truth of their accounts. The panel's recommendations are censored from the Pentagon memos, however, meaning only England's final decisions are publicly known. But the military said those decisions differed from the panels' recommendations only occasionally.

Critics: Panels may be for show
Human rights groups say the documents bolster their suspicions the review board hearings are window dressing and that the panels aren't really the mechanism for determining who gets out of Guantanamo and who stays.

"The findings suggest the transfer and release determinations were made independently based on security risks, relations with other countries and other factors that are independent of the ARB process, and that the ARB process may be for show," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch.

Lawyers said lobbying by detainees' home countries is a major factor in release decisions. Of the 55 men slated for transfer last year, 30 were from Saudi Arabia, which has a reintegration program that provides former detainees with guidance from psychiatrists, clerics and sociologists.

Wizner, the ACLU attorney, said he did not feel dangerous men were being released from Guantanamo, but rather that the Pentagon was labeling them as threats to avoid accusations it had imprisoned innocent men.

Some ex-detainees 'failed' hearings
One lawyer said the U.S. even sent away two detainees who "failed" their hearings. England determined last year that both Isa al-Murbati and Jumah al-Dossari should continue to be held, but both got out of Guantanamo this summer, said their New York attorney, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan.

Navy Capt. Lana Hampton, a military spokeswoman, said England on occasion "may change his decision, based on the receipt of additional information or for other reasons," even without another hearing.

Colangelo-Bryan said al-Murbati was released upon arrival in his native Bahrain, an island state in the Persian Gulf that is home to the U.S. 5th Fleet. Al-Dossari, who holds dual Bahraini-Saudi citizenship, is in the Saudi reintegration program and will be home soon, the lawyer said.

"If a government is on good terms with the United States and presses for a detainee's release, the release will happen regardless of the ARB findings," Colangelo-Bryan said. "I believe that is what happened with Isa and Jumah."

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