Talk:Guantanamo detainees missing from the official list

{{cn}}?

Another wikipedian put a {{cn}} on the passage: "There seem to be a certain number of Guantanamo detainees missing from the official list the Department of Defense released in compliance with a court order from US District Court Justice Jed Rakoff." [1]

I am going to ask them to return here and discuss their concern more fully.

The article cites the two official lists, that are supposed to list all the Guantanamo captives. Each of the names listed in this article is there because an authoritative, verifiable source named htem as a Guantanamo captive, but his name is missing from the official lists.

I don't understand what further citations the concerned wikipedian thinks the article lacks.

Cheers! Geo Swan 09:18, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Who says there seem to be a certain number of detainees missing from the list? This is original research by synthesis, as I think we discussed on your talk page a while ago. Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me, I didn't remember discussing this with you before. I didn't remember having any discussions with you before. You did give me a headsup about applying this tag, and I guess I didn't remember beccaus was very distracted becasye I felt my contributions were being unfairly attacked by another administrator who left me with the impression he thought being an administrator freed him from the obligation to comply with WP:CIV.

Regarding the interpretation you left on my talk page six months ago, that the thesis needs references, not just raw data. If I understand you, you see that first sentence as advancing a thesis. I think the first sentence of this article should merely sammarize what the referenced sources show -- that there are lots of verifiable sources that name Guantanamo captives who are missing from the official list.

I don't see this as a "thesis". The way I see it, that the names in the sources are not on the official list can't really be challenged by any serious person. I don't see the work I put into compliling the list as "research". I see it as simple correlation.

The way I see it, a novel synthesis of ideas, that would have to cite verifiable, authoritative references, would be if the article tried to offer an explanation as to WHY the names were missing from the official list.

The article doesn't try to explain why the names were missing, so I really don't understand why it needs to cite any additional references.

If you are satisfied that the names listed are sufficiently well referenced, perhaps all that would be required, to satisfy your concern, would be a rewrite of that first sentence, or that first paragraph. Do you have any suggestions?

Cheers! Geo Swan 23:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Gouled Hassan Dourad

Gouled Hassan Dourad is not on either of the official lists -- but that is because he was ansferred to Guantanamo, from the black sites, after the list was released. His detention hasn't been a secret since September 6 2006 Thirteen other "high value detainees" were transferred at that same time. And two further detainess were transferred since then.

I figured that this article would most usefully be about captives about whom there was some discrepancy between when the DoD has acknowledged, and what the other verifiable sources disclose -- not about men whose names and locations aren't actually in dispute. But I don't own this article.

I propose we either remove Gouled Hassan Dourad, or add all sixteen of the men transferred to Guantanamo since the list list were released.

Cheers! Geo Swan 09:18, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

The merge

I think it may be easier for anyone working on the merge to, as we move the info to it's new home, we delete it on this page so that we don't end up duplicating efforts. BWH76 (talk) 16:23, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I am sure all the work you have performed represents your best efforts. But I would like to ask you to pause, and discuss how this merge should be done, before you carry on.

As I pointed out in {{afd}}, a proper merge of this information to List of Guantanamo Bay detainees poses several problems -- which you have ignored.

As I pointed out in {{afd}} practically zero work has been done maintaining List of Guantanamo Bay detainees in the last two years. It is based on information available prior to the publication of:

• OARDEC (April 20 2006). "List of detainee who went through complete CSRT process" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Retrieved 2007-09-29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• OARDEC (May 15 2006). "List of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Retrieved 2007-09-29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

A very large fraction of the names on List of Guantanamo Bay detainees are spelled differently than they are spelled on the DoD's official lists.

When List of Guantanamo Bay detainees was started a serious mistake was made. One of the sources for this list, a list published by the Washington Post made the mistake of trying to put the names into the English-style naming scheme of surname first. List of Guantanamo Bay detainees repeats this mistake.

• Most people from Arabic speaking countries, or from Afghanistan and Pakistan, don't inherit their father's surnames. Only the most westernized Arabic speakers use English-style surnames. In addition, in many cases, the different official DoD spellings of these men's names drop or add trailing components of their names.

Treating the trailing components of Arabic names as a surname was a big mistake. Please let's discuss how to make sure we don't compound this mistake.

Candidly Geo Swan (talk) 15:19, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. Well, it sounds like you may be talking about editing List of Guantanamo Bay detainees as opposed to editing this page. It may make more sense to talk about it there.

Anyway, while I've been transferring info from this page to the other, I've been checking the DoD list that is referenced in this article as well as the articles on Wikipedia about these individual detainees and doing cursory Google searches on them. When there is a name discrepancy, I've tried to track it down. When I've found no discrepancy, then I've not.

I'm confident that you're correct in that there is much work to be done on the merge-to page. Let's continue the discussion on how to improve that page there!

BWH76 (talk) 18:23, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

More merge issues

I'm unsure where to place the remaining three detainees as each could actually be already listed on the merge-to list, though the spellings of the names are not the same. I'm guessing that this is due to mistakes in the transliteration of each detainees name, but there is no source material to justify/reference that. Specifically:

• Wazir (unnumbered Guantanamo detainee) - could be Abdullah Wazir, or Abdullah Wazir.
• Muhassen Al-Asskari - I'd guess this is most likely Mohsin Ali Al Askari
• Abdur Rahim - I think it is more likely that this is prisoner 897, Abdul Rahim - the ages seem to match, though the Post source shows that they are 2 different people.

BWH76 (talk) 16:13, 24 April 2008 (UTC)