WASHINGTON (CN) - A Vice News reporter seeking records about the five Guantanamo Bay prisoners exchanged for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl filed four federal complaints this week.
Bergdahl, the soldier whom the Taliban held captive in Afghanistan from June 2009 to May 2014, is the subject of the reporter Jason Leopold's earliest complaint this week, filed Tuesday.
Leopold, of Beverly Hills, Calif., claims to have submitted a request to the State Department about Bergdahl under the Freedom of Information Act on July 24, 2014. Bergdahl had just returned to active duty at the time, two months after the Taliban released him as part of a trade for five of its members being detained indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.
Guantanamo's chief prosecutor Brig. Gen. Mark Martins told reporters back in May that he reviewed all of cases against these five men, and none of them could have been prosecuted.
Leopold wants all State Department records on "the exchange of any of the five Guantanamo detainees (Mohammed Fazl, Khairullah Khairkhwa, Mullah Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Mohammed Nabi Omari)," his complaint states (parentheses in original).
He also wants to know about the U.S. government's "other efforts ... to gain information about, or the release of, Sgt. Bergdahl after his disappearance from his post in Afghanistan from June 30, 2009 to the present."
Bergdahl fell into Taliban hands shortly after leaving his combat outpost in the Paktika province on June 30, 2009.
An investigation into Bergdahl's disappearance and capture remains ongoing, and the Government Accountability Office announced in August that it was illegal for the Defense Department to keep Congress in the dark about the prisoner exchange.
Leopold says the State Department acknowledged receipt of his request in August, and granted him a fee waiver, but that it has not otherwise answered him. The department refused to expedite Leopold's request, according to the complaint.
Another records request that Leopold submitted to the State Department this past June, also pertaining to Guantanamo, met a similar fate, a separate action alleges.
This complaint, filed Thursday, pertains to Leopold's request for records on a Jan. 22, 2009, executive order.
Leopold says the order involves the "review and disposition of individuals detained at the Guantanamo Bay naval base and closure of detention facilities."
A section of the order regarding "diplomatic efforts" says that "the secretary of State shall expeditiously pursue and direct such negotiations and diplomatic efforts with foreign governments as are necessary and appropriate to implement this order,'" Leopold says.
The Vice News reporter, who notes that he has been published by The Guardian, Wall Street Journal and other publications, filed two other federal FOIA complaints Thursday.
One complaint against the State Department involves a woman who was released from a Pakistani prison in fall 2012 and "air-lifted from the prison in a helicopter piloted by a person bearing a shoulder patch with the marking 'Department of State Air Wing.'"
