WASHINGTON — U.S. President George W. Bush's administration is hurrying to release large numbers of the 600 detainees held in Cuba after a Supreme Court decision to examine whether those held incommunicado in the stark Guantanamo Bay prison camp may be entitled to legal rights.
"There's definitely a connection," said Michael Greenberger, the director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland.
He has been tracking the spate of cases filed on behalf of detainees.
"I think the Supreme Court decision [to hear a jurisdictional case] came as a big shock" to the U.S. Defence Department, which deliberately chose to keep the detainees offshore and thus beyond the protection of American laws.
After releasing only 84 detainees since the prison camp was set up nearly two years ago, the Pentagon is expected to ship out well over 100 in coming weeks.
U.S. military officials again declined to say Monday whether Omar Khadr -- the last known Canadian held at Guantanamo Bay -- will be among them.
But legal analysts and lawyers for groups representing some of the detainees said the spate of releases is clear evidence that the Supreme Court's decision has forced Washington to undertake a sweeping review of those men and boys who are still there.
"It's fairly obvious that many of those people are being held for no good reason at all," Mr. Greenberger said in an interview Monday.
Richard Boucher, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, acknowledged only that the prison camp has "been controversial."
He added, "We also have an ongoing process of looking at these cases, looking at the people, and deciding when it is that they can be released, when they might no longer pose a danger."
But a Pentagon official, speaking on condition he not be named, conceded that "you'd have to be crazy" not to say that the Supreme Court decision had an impact.
Mr. Greenberger suggested that the government's effort to rid Guantanamo Bay of all but "the so-called bad guys" may damage its claim that holding enemy combatants at the prison camp is justified.
"They may believe they are strengthening their position . . . but it's a double-edged sword," Mr. Greenberger said. "All these detainees were supposed to be in a dark, legal hole -- and now, instead, by releasing some, it has opened up for the world what an ugly human-rights mess has been created."
Mr. Greenberger also said he expects at least some of the released detainees to file legal actions against the U.S. government for wrongful imprisonment or unlawful detention.
Barbara Olshansky, deputy legal director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented some of the detainees before the Supreme Court, said she was concerned that the releases might result in some detainees being turned over to governments where they might receive even worse treatment.
Of the 84 transferred out of Guantanamo Bay so far, four have been directly turned over to foreign governments.
The rest appear to have been freed, mostly in Afghanistan. "It's hard to know which of these evils is the lesser evil," she said yesterday.
Ms. Olshansky, whose group is also preparing a lawsuit on behalf of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was deported to Syria after a secret middle-of-the-night court hearing and says he was tortured there, said she was also concerned about detainees being held in Iraq and at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Although the Pentagon has provided some accounting on the numbers of prisoners that are being held at Guantanamo Bay, there are no figures for those held in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"We probably wind up keeping a small percentage," General Richard Meyers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week in reference to those held in Iraq. He offered no details.
Ms. Olshansky said the planned releases of detainees held in Cuba "amounts to an admission by the United States that it has imprisoned people for two years who cannot be charged with anything, and that they are innocent."
