Defining the Detainees

“Detainee” is the all-purpose designation for those caught up in the U.S. war on terrorism. The numbers taken into custody without charges (and in some cases still held) since Sept. 11, 2001 -- up to 2,200 in the U.S., 800 at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and 50,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are estimates at best. The administration has divided the detainees into legal categories with the aim of holding them as long as it deems necessary. Following are six examples of such categories. -- Compiled by Michael Soller

Immigrant Detainees

Shakir Baloch: A family physician from Pakistan, he became a Canadian citizen in 1994 and illegally entered the U.S. to study at a New York hospital. Picked up as an illegal immigrant, Baloch spent seven months at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center, five of them in solitary confinement. Deported in April 2002 to Canada, he is a plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging that his detention and treatment violated his civil rights. Like Baloch, as many as 2,000 noncitizens have been detained on “pretextual” grounds, such as expired visas, in post-9/11 sweeps by the FBI’s anti-terrorism task forces. The most notorious immigrant detainee is Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen alleged to be the “20th hijacker,” who was nabbed in August 2001. He is the only person charged with involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

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Citizen Enemy Combatants

Yaser Esam Hamdi: Born in Louisiana and raised in Saudi Arabia, he was captured in Afghanistan and confined at Guantanamo for nearly three years. Today Hamdi is free, stripped of his citizenship and back in Saudi Arabia after the U.S. Supreme Court, asserting that the war on terrorism is not a “blank check for the president” to undermine citizens’ rights, granted him the right to challenge his detention. John Walker Lindh, the most famous citizen enemy combatant, is serving a 20-year sentence for fighting with the Taliban. Jose Padilla, who grew up in Chicago and was detained there in an alleged “dirty bomb” plot, remains in jail after the Supreme Court denied his petition to challenge his detention on a technicality.

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Noncitizen Enemy Combatants

Shafiq Rasul: The British citizen was interrogated 200 times by U.S. and British security forces and spent 26 months imprisoned in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Like 200 others released from the U.S. detention facility since 2001 -- and the roughly 560 still detained -- Rasul was never charged with a crime. The Supreme Court and a U.S. district judge have challenged the administration’s “military commission” plan to deal with other enemy combatants. Last week, the administration suspended the commission trials pending a review. Rasul and three other British citizens are seeking $10 million in damages for their treatment under U.S. and international law.

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High-Value Detainees

Saddam Hussein: The ace in the spider hole was arraigned in July, and the Iraqi ex-president and 11 other former government officials will be tried in Iraq under Iraqi law. The new government lifted Hussein’s immunity, and he could face the death penalty for his alleged role in the mass killings during his 24-year rule.

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Ghosts

Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul: “Triple X,” as he is called, is the only named “ghost detainee,” the group of up to 100 terror suspects whom U.S. authorities have hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Captured in 2003, Rashul has been interrogated once. The Army’s report on Iraq prison abuses called the practice of ghost detainees “deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine and in violation of international law.” The CIA has transported as many as a dozen of these detainees to secret prisons outside Iraq for interrogation. The Geneva Convention requires that the Red Cross have access to all lawful prisoners in armed conflicts. But a Justice Department memo says “protected persons” may be interrogated outside Iraq for “a brief but not indefinite period.”

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Other Detainees

Abu Ghraib: The hooded prisoners of Abu Ghraib are the faces of detention. Few have been identified, but experts believe most of the roughly 12,000 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan are a mix of former soldiers, insurgents, terrorist suspects and common criminals. U.S. authorities recognize at least five categories: criminal detainees, security internees, intelligence detainees, retained persons and other detainees. Experts predict most will end up in the Iraqi justice system, if they are prosecuted at all.

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All information from The Times, except as noted: Intro: David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center; Amnesty International Immigrant Detainees: Center for Constitutional Rights; Department of Justice; media reports. Noncitizen Enemy Combatants: The Observer; court documents. Ghosts: U.S. News & World Report; The Washington Post. Other Detainees: Human Rights Watch; U.S. Marine Corps Staff Judge Advocate