The Detainee Policies

The Detainee Policies are a series of more than 100 classified or otherwise restricted US Department of Defense files on the rules and procedures governing detainees in US military custody, which I released in chronological order over about a month from 25 October 2012. They include standard operating procedures for detention camps in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay, interrogation manuals, operation orders and fragmentary orders (FRAGOs) amending detainee policy. Many relate to Camp Bucca in Iraq; others concern Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and US Army prison facilities in Europe.

The first release included the 2002 Camp Delta standard operating procedures, the earliest Guantánamo operating manual; I said that with our earlier publication of the 2003 and 2004 editions we had now released the main Guantánamo manuals for all three years. The files also cover routine matters such as staffing, legal visits, medical records and the items detainees were allowed to keep.

I drew particular attention to a 2005 policy on assigning detainee internment serial numbers, which I said allowed detainees to be passed to other US agencies without entering central military records, and a 2008 FRAGO removing the requirement to record interrogations at theatre internment facilities. I also cited a 2005 Multi-National Force–Iraq interrogation policy listing approved approaches such as 'Fear Up (Harsh)'. These characterisations are our own.

I published the series on our own site; no media partners are named on our release page. The release was reported by, among others, AFP (carried by Hürriyet Daily News) and GlobalPost (carried by PRI's The World), which noted that five documents had been published on the first day.

I have not identified the source of the Detainee Policies, and no court has established it. The US Department of Defense did not publicly confirm the documents in the coverage reviewed.