Mauritanian detainees at Guantanamo Bay

On May 15, 2006 the United States Department of Defense acknowledged that there have been three Mauritanian captives held in Guantanamo. The Guantanamo Bay detainment camps were opened on January 11, 2002 at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba. The Bush administration asserted that all captives taken in the "global war on terror" could be held there, in extrajudicial detention, without revealing their names. So far as the captive's families and friends would know, they would just disappear.

However, the Associated Press had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the names of all the captives. The Department of Defense filed justifications for why they should not be obliged to release the information the Associated Press requested. They justified keeping the information secret not to protect the United States "national security", but merely because they were concerned to protect the captive's privacy.

The Department of Defense exhausted their legal appeals and were forced, by a court order, to release the identities of all the Guantanamo captives.

WTOP reports that one of the Mauretanians held in Guantanamo was handed over to the USA by former leader Maaouya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya.