Report: Most Gitmo detainees misidentified

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, June 15 (UPI) -- The United States has wrongly held dozens, perhaps hundreds, of men as terrorists based on flimsy or fabricated evidence, a report published Sunday claims.

After an eighth-month investigation in which it interviewed 66 released terrorism detainees and local officials mostly in Afghanistan, McClatchy Newspapers says it found most of those imprisoned at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are low-level Taliban members, innocent villagers or ordinary criminals.

The newspaper chain said its investigation concluded that many of the Guantanamo detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies, and most still being held because U.S. officials are wary of mistakenly letting a terrorist go free.

McClatchy said its interviews with the released detainees were the most ever conducted by a U.S. news organization and that, in many cases, it did more research on the men than either the U.S. military or the detainees' attorneys.

Its findings indicate U.S. forces frequently didn't know whom they were holding, and that prisoners were beaten and abused by military police.

The Pentagon's only response was a statement that read, "These unlawful combatants have provided valuable information in the struggle to protect the U.S. public from an enemy bent on murder of innocent civilians."