An Internment Serial Number (ISN) is an identification number assigned to captives who come under control of the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...

(DoD) during armed conflicts.

History

On March 3, 2006, in compliance with a

court order A court order is an official proclamation by a judge (or panel of judges) that defines the legal relationships between the parties to a hearing, a trial, an appeal or other court proceedings. Such ruling requires or authorizes the carrying out ...

from District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, the DoD released 57 files that contained transcripts from the Guantanamo Bay inmates'

Combatant Status Review Tribunal The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were esta ...

s (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board hearings. These transcripts were only identified by the prisoners' ISNs. On April 20, 2006, the DoD released the first of two official lists of captives, which contained the captives' ISNs, names, and nationalities. That list provided information about the 558 Guantanamo captives whom the DoD acknowledges were held in Guantanamo in August 2004 and whose status as "

enemy combatant Enemy combatant is a person who, either lawfully or unlawfully, engages in hostilities for the other side in an armed conflict. Usually enemy combatants are members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. In the case ...

s" was confirmed or disputed by a CSRT. On May 15, 2006, the DoD released a longer list of 759 individuals, which they asserted listed all those who had been held military custody at Guantanamo. The two lists contain incompatible names for numerous individuals. Several dozen men who are known to have been held in Guantanamo are not present on either official list. A ghost detainee originally known only as Triple X was not assigned an ISN because his secret imprisonment was requested by the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. On January 16, 2010, the DoD published a list of 645 captives who were held in the

Bagram Theater internment facility The Parwan Detention Facility (also called Detention Facility in Parwan or Bagram prison) is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. durin ...

, in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bord ...

. Historian

Andy Worthington Andy Worthington is a British historian, investigative journalist, and film director. He has published three books, two on Stonehenge and one on the war on terror, been published in numerous publications and directed documentary films. Artic ...

, author of '' The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison'', published an annotated version of the list, in which he noted that the numbers were not always assigned sequentially. Three former Guantanamo captives were re-apprehended after their release, and are held in Bagram under their original ISN.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Guantánamo's faceless victims
guardian.co.uk Guantanamo Bay captives legal and administrative procedures Serial numbers

History

See also

References

External links