[An effort to release] "many of the terror suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied because the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments," officials said.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0430gitmo0430.html

Abuse concerns stymie Guantanamo Bay releases

Tim Golden New York Times Apr. 30, 2006 12:00 AM

A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of concern among U.S. officials that the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments, officials said.

Administration officials have said they hope eventually to transfer or release many of the roughly 490 suspects now at Guantanamo. As of February, military officials said, the Pentagon was ready to repatriate more than 150 of the detainees once arrangements could be made with their home countries.

But those arrangements have been more difficult to complete than officials in Washington anticipated or have previously acknowledged, raising questions about how quickly the administration can meet its goal of scaling back detention operations at Guantanamo.

"The Pentagon has no plans to release any detainees in the immediate future," said a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon of the Navy. He said the negotiations with foreign governments "have proven to be a complex, time-consuming and difficult process."

The military has so far sent home 267 detainees from Guantanamo after finding that they had no further intelligence value and either posed no long-term security threat or would reliably be imprisoned or monitored by their own governments. Most of those who remain are considered more dangerous militants; many also come from nations with poor human rights records and ineffective justice systems.

But Washington's insistence on humane treatment for the detainees in their native countries comes after years in which Guantanamo has been assailed as a symbol of American abuse and hypocrisy, a fact not lost on the governments with which the United States is now negotiating.

The push for human rights assurances now, some officials said, also reflects a renewed effort by the State Department to influence the administration's detention policy, even as the United States continues to face criticism for sending terror suspects to be interrogated in countries known to torture.