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QUESTION: Women in Guantanamo

Submitted by Anonymooose on Tue, 07/17/2007 - 5:54pm
question / pregunta: 

I'm trying to find information about female inmates in the American-run Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. I would like to know if any women have been held in Guantanamo since 2002 (I am not interested in female Haitian/Cuban refugees held prior to 1993). Thanks

Answers

Answer posted by: MRM

We are still working on this, but the most relevant tidbit I've found in the meantime is the following:

"Journalists Release Guantanamo Bay Report" by Ashfaq Yusufzai (Inter Press Service (IPS), July 31, 2006)

[excerpt]

"Startlingly, [two Afghan journalists released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay] also claimed to have seen evidence of female inmates in Guantanamo. 'We saw forms filled in by female inmates at the office of the investigators.'

"One of the forms, left lying around carelessly on a table by U.S. military investigators, had apparently been filled in by a woman from Lahore, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, and it showed that she was pregnant, they said."

It was also pointed out by another Rad Ref librarian that this is not the sort of solid, confirmable information likely to be found published anywhere. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists have come up with less. Even the International Committee of the Red Cross reports on Guantanamo detainees are confidential and not released to the general public:

The ICRC's work at Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay: Overview of the ICRC's work for internees

Answer posted by: MRM

Take a look at the background report on Cageprisoners.com:

[excerpt]

"The report currently is limited to presenting the names of the male detainees. However, it is now [May 2004] believed that there are also female inmates in Guantanamo, at least one of these - whose nationality and age are unknown - has been reported in the press, as an alleged “al-Qaeda member” arrested in Afghanistan and transported to Cuba."

There are news headlines in the Guantanamo category on this site as well.

There is a Wikipedia entry on the Guantanamo Bay detainees with links to other lists of names.

Answer posted by: MRM

"Guantanamo's Forgotten Souls of War without End" (Irish Independent, February 17, 2006) flatly states that "there are no women detainees at Guantanamo."

[excerpt]

"During a rare visit by journalists this week to Camp Delta, the sprawling, heavily-guarded network of buildings where the inmates are held, I found a variety of detainees of varying ages and backgrounds still trying to come to terms with their incongruous surroundings on a Caribbean island.

"I came across an elderly Pashtun tribesman with an immaculately groomed long, white beard and fierce, brown eyes, standing proudly outside his prison cell. There was a group of young Pakistani men in their early twenties engaged in a highly competitive game of football.

"These, according to American officials, are some of the most dangerous men on earth (there are no women detainees at Guantanamo)."

But who can really say for sure?