No leader of the terror network of al-Qaeda has been found among the 598 detainees held on a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a report in today's Los Angeles Times.
A spokesman for the base, refused comment on the report, only confirming the latest transfer of 34 prisoners from Afghanistan, which occurred August 5th.
The newspaper said that the failure of US interrogators to identify lieutenants in the terror network of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden severely restricts the intelligence and military communities' capacity to better understand and thwart future actions by al-Qaeda.
A US official quoted by the daily on condition of anonymity said that while some information provided by the detainees, nationals of some 40 countries, has been useful, "it's not roll-up-plots, knock-your-socks-off-kind of stuff."
They are mostly "low and middle-level" fighters, he said, not the "big-time guys" counter-terrorism experts were hoping would aid in the harvesting of valuable information about global terror structures and operations.
The prisoners held at the maximum security facility have been classified as "enemy combatants," not prisoners of war - a legal status that keeps them outside the realm of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war and holds them indefinitely beyond the reach of US courts.
Even efforts to identify the prisoners have been thwarted, as a court last week postponed by two weeks the forced release of their names while the administration appeals the verdict in a US District Court here.
AFP