Newark, NJ – Professor Mark Denbeaux, of Seton Hall University School of Law, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security this morning on the findings of the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research latest report on the detainees at Guantánamo. Denbeaux testified on the misinformation, if not disinformation, that has surrounded the debate about Guantánamo resulting from the government’s failure to accord the detainees basic legal rights.

The latest Seton Hall Law report shows that, despite government claims to the contrary, few ex-detainees have joined the battlefield upon release, and that the Department of Defense’s claims that released detainees returned to the battlefield are refuted by the Department of Defense’s own data.

The report, “The Meaning of ‘Battlefield’: An Analysis of the Government’s Representations of ‘Battlefield Capture’ and ‘Recidivism’ of the Guantánamo Detainees,” available at http://law.shu.edu/news/guantanamo_reports.htm, shows that the government’s own data fails to support the false statements by the Department of Defense that many of those released from Guantánamo have “returned” to the battlefield upon release and that government officials have been misleading the public by reporting that ex-detainees in significant numbers have been recaptured or killed on the battlefield.

Government officials repeatedly have stated that at least 30 released detainees had been killed or recaptured on the battlefield. Yet an analysis of the Department of Defense’s own data, by Professor Denbeaux, his son Joshua Denbeaux, and Seton Hall Law students working with the Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research, show that the department actually can confirm that only one detainee had been killed or captured on a battlefield after being released from Guantánamo.

“Just as it has been proven untrue that many of the detainees initially were captured on the battlefield, we now find that the government’s claims that ex-detainees have returned to the battlefield are equally false,” said Joshua Denbeaux. “What the government has been reporting is not even supported by its own data.”

Professor Denbeaux adds, “The students again have rummaged through the government’s own data to show the government’s representations are wildly inflated. Once again, a group of volunteer law students has shown that the administration has misled the American public and Congress.”

The report notes that the Department of Defense has continually relied upon the premise of battlefield capture to justify the indefinite detention of so-called “enemy combatants” at Guantánamo. But as a previous analysis released by Seton Hall Law last month, “The Empty Battlefield and the Thirteenth Criterion,” also available at http://law.shu.edu/news/guantanamo_reports.htm, showed that of all the detainees who completed a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, only 24 were captured by U.S. forces, only 21 were accused of having been on the battlefield, and only was captured by U.S. forces on the battlefield.

Department of Defense reports list 15 detainees who allegedly returned to the fight following release, consisting of five Uighers, the Tipton Three and seven others who are the only ones the department identified by name. Neither the Tipton Three nor the Uighers joined a battlefield upon release. The Tipton Three, three childhood friends from England, have been living in their native Britain since release and none has been charged with a crime. And the Five Uighers, ethnic Chinese who practice Islam, were extradited to Albania where they were taken in as refugees. Of the seven detainees the Department of Defense identified by name, at least three cannot be confirmed as ever having been in Guantánamo, two have not been caught or killed, and another was killed far from the Afghani battlefield by Russian authorities in an apartment in Russia.

“In its most recent reports, the Department of Defense has dropped the terminology ‘return to the battlefield’ to ‘return to militant activities’ and included engaging in ‘anti-US propaganda’ within that terminology,” noted R. David Gratz, of Denbeaux and Denbeaux, a 2007 graduate of Seton Hall Law and one of the authors of the Seton Hall Law Guantánamo reports.

“In short, the government is now trying to say that speaking out against the U.S. or Guantánamo constitutes a ‘return to the fight,’” said Professor Denbeaux. “It’s the only way it can try to maintain the illusion that Guantánamo consists of the ‘worst of the worst’ and include such ex-detainees as the Uighers and The Tipton Three on its list of those who have returned to the battlefield.”

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The only private law school in New Jersey, Seton Hall University School of Law was founded in 1951, and is located in the city of Newark. Seton Hall Law School offers both day and evening programs leading to the Juris Doctor (J.D.), Master of Laws (LL.M.) and Master of Science in Jurisprudence (M.S.J.) degrees. For more information on Seton Hall Law School, visit law.shu.edu.