Pentagon hands over list of Guantanamo detainees

The Pentagon handed to The Associated Press on Monday the first list of everyone who has been held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Pentagon handed to The Associated Press on Monday the first list of everyone who has been held at Guantanamo Bay, more than four years after it opened the detention center in Cuba.

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None of the most notorious terrorist suspects were included on the list, however, raising questions about where America's most dangerous prisoners are being held.

The handover marks the first time that everyone who has been held by the Defence Department at Guantanamo Bay in the Bush administration's war on terror has been identified, according to Navy Lt Commander Chito Peppler. A total 201 of the names had never been disclosed by the Defence Department before.

"This list takes us one step closer to our goal of fully reporting who has been swept into US military custody in Guantanamo, and how they and their cases are being handled," said David Tomlin, the AP's assistant general counsel, adding that the Pentagon did not give all the information the AP sought in a Freedom of Information Act request.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the names of all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were previously kept classified because of "the security operation as well as the intelligence operation that takes place down there."