---

Records Give Voice to Guantanamo Detainees
WASHINGTON - In a development the Bush administration had hoped to avoid, the stories of about 60 detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base have spilled out in court papers.

A U.S. college-educated detainee asks plaintively in one: "Is it possible to see the evidence in order to refute it?"

In another transcript, the unidentified president of a U.S. military tribunal bursts out: "I don't care about international law. I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law."

Expressing defiance in some instances and stoic acceptance of their fate in others, the once-nameless and still-largely faceless detainees appeared last year before tribunals that, after quick reviews, declared they were unlawful enemy combatants who could be held indefinitely.

The government is holding about 550 terrorism suspects at the Navy base in Cuba. An additional 214 have been released since the prison opened in January 2002 — some into the custody of their home governments, others freed outright.

Little information about them has been released through official channels. But stories of 60 or more are spelled out in detail in thousands of pages of transcripts filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, where lawsuits challenging their detentions have been filed.

Omar Rajab Amin, a Kuwaiti who graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1992, wanted to see the evidence. The tribunal president — the de facto judge for the proceeding — said he could review only unclassified evidence.

Some of the exchanges grew heated.

"You are not the master of the Earth, sir," Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman, told a tribunal president.

Feroz Ali Abbasi was ejected from his September hearing because he repeatedly challenged the legality of his detention.

"I have the right to speak," Abbasi said.

"No, you don't," the tribunal president replied.

The tribunal found Abbasi to have been "deeply involved" in the al-Qaida terror network. Yet four months later, the government released him, saying his home country of Britain would keep an eye on him. ...