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 secu ...
(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 o ...
Jed S. Rakoff
Jed Saul Rakoff (born August 1, 1943) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Education
Rakoff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 1, 1943. He grew up in ...
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
The Administrative Review Board is a United States military body that conducts an annual review of the detainees held by the United States in Camp Delta in the United States Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The purpose of the Board is to re ...
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
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous.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 foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
.
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. during t ...
, 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 bordere ...
.
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.
See also
*
Guantanamo Bay files leak
The Guantánamo Bay files leak (also known as The Guantánamo Files, or colloquially, Gitmo Files) began on 24 April 2011, when WikiLeaks, along with ''The New York Times'', NPR and ''The Guardian'' and other independent news organizations, began ...