*Taliban soldiers who were detained in the now-concluded war between the United States and the government of Afghanistan, unless they are being prosecuted for war crimes;
*civilians who have no meaningful connection to al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and probably should never have been sent to Guantanamo in the first place; and
*suspected terrorists whose detention had nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan, unless they are charged with a crime and prosecuted.

“There are people being held at Guantanamo who shouldn’t be there,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “The United States cannot simply hold the detainees for as long as it wants.”

The Taliban soldiers captured during the war between the United States and Afghanistan should have been repatriated by now because the war ended last year with the formation of the government of Hamid Karzai. Under the Geneva Conventions, the United States must release those soldiers unless they are being charged with war crimes or other criminal offenses.

The Geneva Conventions permit the extended detention of civilians captured in a war zone only after criminal prosecution or for “imperative reasons of security.” To invoke the security rationale, a decision must be made for each individual civilian in a regularized process that includes appeal and a review every six months. If people being held at Guantanamo had no connections to the Taliban or al-Qaeda, it is difficult to conceive how their detention could be considered “imperative” for national security.