The Obama administration has filed classified notices with Congress of plans to transfer six Guantánamo detainees to foreign countries under a new congressional reporting rule created to hamper the closure of the controversial prison camps, a source familiar with the process said on Tuesday.

All six so-called risk assessments and notification of transfers were filed Aug. 7, meaning the first transfers under the new notification bureaucracy could occur over the weekend at the earliest.

The source was not authorized to speak on the matter and described the process to The Miami Herald on condition of anonymity.

The Justice Department has already confirmed that it provided notice to Congress that it planned to send Afghan detainee Mohammed Jawad to his homeland. A federal judge ordered Jawad's release in July after ruling there was insufficient evidence to prove that he had hurled a grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers in a Kabul bazaar in 2002.

The other five included plans to send two detainees approved for release to Ireland, two to Portugal and a fifth to a not yet decided nation. The source would not identify the detainees.

The White House established the reporting bureaucracy in July after Congress enacted legislation that bans the release of Guantánamo detainees into the United States.

It also sets waiting periods before they could be jailed in the United States or transferred abroad in the Guantánamo portion of the Supplemental Defense Appropriations Act, which expires in September.

Meantime, the regulation requires the Obama administration to provide Congress with a classified filing on each of the other 223 detainees the government wants to transfer elsewhere as part of President Barack Obama's order to empty the prison camps by Jan. 22, 2010.

Also Tuesday, the senior Pentagon official overseeing the military commissions rejected a request by Jawad's war court defense team to fund travel for a pair of U.S. Marine Corps lawyers to Afghanistan "to aid in Mr. Jawad's repatriation.''

"You and your fellow defense counsel were assigned to represent Mr. Jawad before a military commission; those charges were dismissed on 31 July 2009,'' wrote Susan Crawford, the so-called Military Commissions convening authority. "While I appreciate your concern for Mr. Jawad's situation, the actions you propose far exceed the scope of their official duties.

"Finally, if Mr. Jawad is repatriated, actions on behalf of the United States must be handled by representatives of the Department of State.''

The defense lawyers, Marine Maj. Eric Montalvo and Marine Capt. Chris Kannady, had previously traveled to Afghanistan to gather evidence in his case, which Crawford since dismissed. Among their findings: Jawad, who was born in a Pakistan refugee camp, had been sent to Guantánamo for interrogation at age 14, not as an adult.

While there, the lawyers met with Red Cross, Afghan Human Rights Commission and UNICEF representatives to try to ease any return to Afghan society following years at the prison camps in southeast Cuba. Air Force Reserve Maj. David Frakt, who had championed the Jawad case in both civilian and military courts, said the defense team was turning to "human rights organizations and donors'' to fund Montalvo and Kannady's travel.

The latest developments came as two foreign delegations are traveling to Guantánamo this week to interview detainees approved for release. Reports from Brussels have said Belgium sent one delegation.

Meantime, the State Department was still negotiating this week with the Pacific island nation of Palau to take some Chinese citizens of the ethnic Uighur minority who have been ordered freed from Guantánamo but cannot go home for fear of religious persecution as devout Muslims.