Proof CIA still using secret prisons

Photo by Trevor Paglen

Last September, the Bush administration made noise announcing that no more secret prison facilities would be used by the CIA to hold prisoners seized in the "war on terror." Since then, sporadic reports have questioned the truth of this assertion.

Now, with the handover of Al-Qaeda suspect Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi to Guantanamo, it becomes clear he was held in detention in a secret place for months prior.

Why are secret prisons necessary, especially when they have been declared closed by the President? Why must this Administration constitently flaunt the rule of law? And who will hold them accountable?

According to the New York Times:

The Pentagon announced the transfer, giving few details about his arrest or confinement.

Mr. Iraqi’s case suggests that the C.I.A. may have adopted a new model for handling prisoners held secretly — a practice that Mr. Bush said could resume and that Congress permitted when it passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Unlike past C.I.A. detainees, including the Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was held by the agency for several years after being seized in Pakistan in 2003, Mr. Iraqi was turned over to the Pentagon after a few months of interrogation. He appears to have been taken into C.I.A. custody just weeks after Mr. Bush declared C.I.A. jails empty.[...]

Intelligence officials said that under questioning Mr. Iraqi had provided valuable intelligence about Qaeda hierarchy and operations. It appears he gave up this information after being subjected to standard interrogation methods approved for the Defense Department — not harsher methods that the C.I.A. is awaiting approval to use.

A debate in the administration has delayed approval of the proposed C.I.A. methods.

Military and intelligence officials said the prisoner was captured last fall on his way to Iraq, where he may have been sent by top Qaeda leaders in Pakistan to take a senior position in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. That group has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing last year of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Black sites open til end of '06, says HRW

A Human Rights Watch report came out this week, recounting the experience of "ghost detainee," Islamic militant Marwan Jabour. The report insinuates that until the US discloses more information about the Black Sites it operated, it is possible that the CIA still holds a number of people in secret custody. This in spite of the Bush administration's declaration last year that "ghost detainees" would be either accounted for or released.

HRW focuses on the Jabour case and demonstrates how inhumane "disappearance" is for families of those taken away.

Jabour was released in November 2006, a full two months after the US claimed the last ghost detainees were accounted for. He had been in custody in Jordan for the early part of 2006.

From the summary

When Marwan Jabour opened his eyes, after a blindfold, a mask, and other coverings were taken off him, he saw soldiers and, on the wall behind them, framed photographs of King Hussein and King Abdullah of Jordan. He was tired and disoriented from his four-hour plane flight and subsequent car trip, but when a guard confirmed that he was being held in Jordan, he felt indescribable relief. In his more than two years of secret detention, nearly all of it in US custody, this was the first time that someone had told him where he was. The date was July 31, 2006.

A few weeks later, in another first, the Jordanians allowed several of Jabour’s family members to visit him. “My father cried the whole time,” Jabour later remembered.

Marwan Jabour was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 9, 2004. He was detained there briefly, then moved to the capital, Islamabad, where he was held for more than a month in a secret detention facility operated by both Pakistanis and Americans, and finally flown to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prison in what he believes was Afghanistan. During his ordeal, he later told Human Rights Watch, he was tortured, beaten, forced to stay awake for days, and kept naked and chained to a wall for more than a month. Like an unknown number of Arab men arrested in Pakistan since 2001, he was “disappeared” into US custody: held in unacknowledged detention outside of the protection of the law, without court supervision, and without any contact with his family, legal counsel, or the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The details of the abuse he suffered in American custody, which only years ago would have deeply shocked the world, now seem horribly "normal":

Jabour was arrested in Lahore, he believes by the Pakistani intelligence services, and the worst physical abuses he endured took place while he was in their custody. He alleges that they beat him severely, burnt him with a red hot iron, and tied a tight rubber string around his penis, causing enormous pain. On this third day in Pakistani custody, three people he believes were Americans questioned him; the following day he was transferred to a secret facility in Islamabad. This facility had both US and Pakistani personnel, but the Americans seemed to be in charge.

Both in the Lahore facility and in Islamabad, Jabour endured many days of forced sleeplessness and forced standing, with little respite. Twice he collapsed, falling unconscious.

After a month in Islamabad he was flown to a secret prison, which he believes was in Afghanistan, where all of the personnel (except possibly the interpreters) were American. There, he was held completely naked for a month and a half, filmed naked, and interrogated naked. He was chained tightly to the wall of his small cell so he could not stand up, placed in painful stress positions so that he had difficulty breathing, and warned that if he did not cooperate he would be put in a suffocating “dog box.”

As the months went by, some aspects of Jabour’s treatment improved: his clothes were slowly returned; the physical mistreatment ended; he was placed in a larger cell; he got better food. Other aspects, however, changed slowly or not at all. He spent nearly all of his time alone in a windowless cell. He went a year and a half without a glimpse of sunlight. He wore leg irons for a year and a half. Worst of all, he spent more than two years with almost no contact with any human being besides his captors. Although he worried incessantly about his wife and three young daughters, he was not even allowed to send them a letter to reassure them that he was alive.

Italy indicts CIA agents

An Italian judge has indicted 26 Americans related to the abduction of an Egyptian born cleric (Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr) who was kidnapped in Milan in 2003 and eventually "rendered" to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured over the course of his 4 year imprisonment. Most of the indicted are CIA officers, and one is an Airforce pilot. The New York Times believes it is very unlikely any will ever stand trial.



Cryptome provides us with the arrest warrant, for those who would like to name names. Ex-CIA Milan bureau chief Robert Seldon Lady is apparently on the lamb and Italian authorities seized his house in Italy to pay for court costs last month.

EU report on CIA flights

An EU temporary commission convened to investigate the "extraordinary rendition" flights and their numerous stops in European countries approved the final version of its report, for eventual discussion in a plenary session of Parliament.

photo by Trevor Paglen

The report states that the governments of Poland, UK, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Germany and six others were aware of these flights, and of their irregular and suspicious nature.

The report concluded there was not adequate evidence to support the claim that the CIA operated a secret prison in Poland. The Council of Europe has dated information about its investigations available here.

The report is likely to be endorsed by the Parliament next month.

Year in Review

As this blog was dormant for much of the year, here we provide a detention/interrogation year in review:

January

Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen held at Guantanamo Bay who was a minor when he was detained by US forces in Afghanistan, was arraigned by a military tribunal.

General Geoffrey Miller testifies before Congress regarding the use of dogs on detainees in Abu Ghraib.


February

The final soldier charged with involvement of in the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar was acquitted by US Military Courts.

Human Rights First concludes that 34 prisoners had died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, and that 8-12 were tortured to death.

Federal judge David Trager throws out the suit by a Canadian who was sent to Syria to be tortured. (In 2002, Canadian citizen Maher Arar, born in Syria was passing through a New York airport, detained and subsequently "rendered" to Syria and tortured)

Prisoners riot at Policharki Jail in Afghanistan, demanding retrials.


March

Times exposes alleged abuses by the secret task force "6-26" in Iraq.

Army Sargeant Michael J. Smith is found guilty on 6 of 13 counts of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, for the use of dogs on detainees. He gets 6 months jail time, when the maximum sentence would have been 8 years.


April

AP Photographer Bilal Hussein is imprisoned in Ramadi. The US claims he was apprehended with two other militants, surrounded by bombs making material. Journalist defense groups try in vain to get more information on his case.

New data released by the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project alleges that over 600 military and contractors may have been involved in detainee abuse in Iraq. Only 40 members of the armed services have been sentenced to jailtime, and one civilian.


May

A federal judge dismisses the civil law suit against the American government brought by Khaled El-Masri, a German Lebanese-born man who was abducted by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia in 2003. The rationale: the suit would endanger the US' national security.


June

Limited theatrical release of Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo in the US.


July

Iranian-American filmmaker Cyrus Kar filed suit with the US government over his detention in 2005.


September

America turns Abu Ghraib, empty, over to Iraqi control. Its prisoners were moved to Camp Cropper.

President Bush claims the CIA's secret prisons across the world have been emptied.

A new Army manual for interrogation is published, banning hooding, forced nakedness and other stress positions.

AP goes public with their photographer's detention in Ramadi in April, calling for the US to either charge or release him.


October

President Bush signs the Military Commissions Act into law, according to many legal experts, denying habeas corpus rights to non-US citizens and legal aliens in the US. There is debate as to whether it denies habeas rights to American citizens. The Times calls it "a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy".

Afghanistan's Reconciliation Commission visits Bagram in a bid to get more prisoners released. The number of detainees is thought to be around 500 at the time.

The US (apparently) bombs militants in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, killing 80 people in Pakistan's tribal area. Many were civilians.

HRW questions NATO's move towards reliance on "close air support" and bombing of civilian regions, and suggests they create a mechanism to compensate civilians affected by bombing.


November

ICG releases a report called "Countering Afghanistan’s Insurgency: No Quick Fixes" suggesting that priority be given to rule of law and fixing the judiciary.

The European Commission concludes that many EU countries were aware of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" flights.


December

The US releases 26 detainees from Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Around 475 are believed to remain.

An ex-Navyman and security contractor in Baghdad reveals to the Times he was kept prisoner for 3 months at Camp Cropper after attemping to blow the whistle on suspicious activities by his firm. He claims he received "less legal council than Saddam."

Pakistan announces it detained over 500 Taleban and handed 400 of them over to the Afghan government.

US court: green light for CIA renditions

This week the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff analyzes the decision of a federal judge to throw out a suit by a Canadian citizen, alleging the US sent him illegally to be tortured in Syria.

In 2002, Maher Arar, who was born in Syria, was stopped while in transit through the US home to Canada. After being held incommunicado, he was "extraordinarily rendered" by the US to Jordan and then Syria, a country that State Department alleges tortures people regularly. In Syria, Arar was tortured and held in solitary confinement for nearly a year.

The Voice calls Judge David Trager's decision last month to throw out Arar's civil suit "startling" and "ominous." The suit was seeking damages from former US Attorney General John Ashcroft.



According to the Voice article, Trager's decision is a green light for the government to continue the CIA "extraordinary renditions." The conditions placed on detainee treatment by Congress last year do NOT apply to the CIA. Trager, unsurprisingly, is one of a large crop of Bush administration appointees.

The Trager decision tramples on the concept of "judicial review" of the Legislative and Executive branches of government. In his decision he writes the other branches of government decide where judicial oversight is appropriate.

What about the separation of powers? Ah, said Trager, "the coordinate branches of our government [executive and legislative] are those in whom the Constitution imposes responsibility for our foreign affairs and national security. Those branches have the responsibility to determine whether judicial oversight is appropriate."

Gee, I thought that the checks and balances of our constitutional system depend on the independence of the federal judiciary, which itself decides to exercise judicial review.

Judge Trager went further to protect the Bush administration's juggernaut conduct of foreign policy: "One need not have much imagination to contemplate the negative effect on our relations with Canada if discovery were to proceed in this case, and were it to turn out that certain high Canadian officials had, despite public denials, acquiesced in Arar's removal to Syria."

"More generally," Trager went on, "governments that do not wish to acknowledge publicly that they are assisting us would certainly hesitate to do so if our judicial discovery process could compromise them."

But judge, the Canadian government itself is now actively involved in an inquiry to discover, among other things, what happened to Arar, and how. And in Europe, there is a fierce controversy over whether governments there have been covertly involved in facilitating the CIA's kidnapping of terror suspects from other lands.

Is it the job of a federal judge here to protect other governments from embarrassment and eventual punishment by their own courts for helping the United States commit crimes?

And what about our own government's criminal accountability? The February 17 New York Law Journal noted that "Judge Trager said that even assuming the government had intended to remove Maher Arar to Syria for torture, the federal judiciary was in no position to hold our government officials liable for damages 'in the absence of explicit direction by Congress . . . even if such conduct violates our treaty obligations or customary international law.' " (Emphasis added.)

CIA "investigating" worst renditions

The CIA's Inspector General, who is charged with independently investigating the organization, is looking into about 10 alleged cases of "erroneous rendition" -- i.e. kidnapping and delivering to other governments, coincidentally those that torture.

The US government estimates that up to 150 people have been apprehended all over the world by US government agents and sent to third countries for "interrogation" (often countries where interrogation is synonymous with torture like Jordan and Egypt).

The Inspector General is specifically looking into the cases of Khaled Al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin, and Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian. It is not concidental that one man is suing the US government, and the other has threatened to sue the Australian government.

This CIA investigation is announced shortly after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a public denial of any "rendition" to a country where a detainee would likely be tortured. Isn't it the very same State Department which issues yearly reports on Human Rights in countries like Egypt ("the security forces continued to mistreat and torture prisoners"), Jordan ("reported continuing abuses included police abuse and mistreatment of detainees, allegations of torture"), and Syria ("continuing serious abuses included the use of torture in detention, which at times resulted in death")? And, for the record, the US denies "rendering" any detainees to Syria, but a Canadian citizen Maher Arar is suing the US for his "rendition" to Syria.

The War on Terror: literally, a flying circus

To help us end the year on a "it's-better-to-laugh-than-to-cry" note, Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) has made a fine contribution. His "prizes" for 2005 were featured in the Guardian today.

To Dick Cheney (who swept the prizes this year), Jones awards the "Abu Ghraib Trophy for Human Rights":

We now come to the Abu Ghraib Trophy for Human Rights, and ... yes, it's another triumph for the VP! Dick Cheney has stood firm against a wicked cabal of Republican senators - John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina - who tried to sneak a clause into the 2005 military spending bill that would outlaw "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" to military prisoners. How can the US champion human rights unless it is allowed unrestrained access to any torture techniques it considers fit, to use against enemies that are both sub-human and have forfeited any rights to be treated as our fellow creatures?

Terry Jones' book War on the War on Terror was published this year in the US by NationBooks. In it he writes, "How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender."

Secret "dark prison" in Afghanistan

Human Rights Watch published a new press release documenting the existence of a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan until at least late 2004. The so-called "dark prison" has been independently described by various detainees in US custody (or ex-detainees). There were no uniformed US personnel operating in the "facility" which was kept in near total darkness. The report claims detainees were strapped up against walls, sleep deprived, and subjected to days and days of heavy metal and hip-hop (specifically Eminem and Dr Dre). They were often kept in shackles which caused their hands to swell.

Read the entire story at the HRW site.

Alleged CIA "black sites" in E. Europe

The Washington Post's story revealing two secret prisons in Eastern European nations made shockwaves this week in Europe and around the world.

Dana Priest's reporting, which necessarily relied on anonymous "intelligence officers" as sources, details the creation of a web of secret prisons starting with the war in Afghanistan in 2001. At one point there were prisons in Thailand, Afghanistan and "small democracies in Eastern Europe." The CIA subsequently shut the prison in Thailand at the request of the Thai government.

The "Salt Pit" (referred to in abuse documents) remains open in Afghanistan. According to Priest's report, in total the CIA holds about 30 "high-value" prisoners, an unknown number remaining in the two mentioned sites in Eastern Europe.

Since the article's publication November 2, Human Rights Watch came forward with evidence that the CIA's "rendition" program made repeated trips with charter jets to airfields in Poland and Romania, suggesting that these were the two countries hosting secret CIA facilities.

Following this report, there was swift reaction in Europe, as it would seem rather scandalous that EU member states could host prisons which are in contravention of numerous European and international laws and treaties. Polish officials admitted that a plane did in fact touch down on the tarmac at a remote, rarely-used airfield on the very day that HRW claims a CIA-chartered plane landed there. Romanian officials denied entirely the insinuation that the CIA holds prisoners at one of its airport facilities.

The Council of Europe's Human Rights chief Alvaro Gil-Robles was the most outspoken, following the HRW allegations, calling for an investigation.

But a European Union spokesman said only with more evidence would the EU investigate the allegations, which both Polish and Romanian officials have denied.

One wonders whether for lack of further evidence, this story and investigation into the possibility of CIA "black sites" in Eastern Europe will die. Interesting are to be raised, if indeed the allegations are true: why Europe? Why didn't the CIA use Central Asian airbases? Why wasn't the "Salt Pit" in Afghanistan sufficient to hold the 30 "high value" prisoners?

US Senate demands "clarification" from Pentagon

After growing pressure from the mainstream media and the general public, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to demand a "clarification" from the Pentagon in its policy for detainee treatment. The Whitehouse opposed the measure, which was attached to a defense spending bill. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell supported the measure, as did highly decorated war-veteran and Republican Senate leader John McCain.

This measure does not restrict the activity of the CIA or other government agencies, specifically the "rendition", or kidnapping of suspects and delivery to countries which practice torture.

The House must reconcile its version of the bill to the Senate version for it to become law.

"Rendition" to Egypt means heinous torture

A new Human Rights Watch report describes the torture common in the Egyptian detention system, including "beatings with fists, feet, leather straps, sticks, and electric cables; suspension in contorted and painful positions accompanied by beatings; the application of electric shocks; and sexual intimidation and violence." Detainees "rendered" or "delivered" by the CIA to Egypt are likely to face this sort of treatment. Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian citizen captured in Pakistan who was rendered to Egypt by the United States, claims he was subjected to grueling physical and psychological torture, including life-threatening kicks to the abdomen, cigarette-burns, electric shocks, cigarette burns, hanging from the ceiling, and beating with wooden sticks. He also says interrogators lied to him about the whereabouts of his family, putting him in severe psychological distress.

The 53-page report, "Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt," identifies some 60 individuals, mostly alleged Islamist militants of Egyptian origin, whom other states rendered to Egypt since 1994. The sending states have mainly been Arab and South Asian countries, but include Sweden as well as the United States.

"Sending suspects to a country where they are likely to be tortured is strictly prohibited under international law," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Egypt's terrible record of torturing prisoners means that no country should forcibly send a suspect there."

[...]

"The Bush administration knows full well that Egypt tortures people in custody, and that its promises not to torture a given suspect are not worth the paper they're written on," Stork said. "This fig leaf doesn't hide U.S. complicity in the terrible abuses that await suspects sent to Egypt."

Spending ban on 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of detainees

The New York Times reported a very important step by US Congess to ban 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of persons in US custody, whether in the US or abroad, in an Appropriations, or spending bill. Congress has long attempted to direct the Pentagon with budgetary restrictions where human rights comes to bear, with mixed results, see the issue of bans on joint military training. Yesterday's measure, which was not opposed by the Bush administration, and supported by prominent Republicans, and was a very important step according to the ACLU.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the passage of the antitorture provision "clearly shows that there's growing traction on this issue in Congress, when you have even Republicans willing to break ranks and raise concerns" about the treatment of prisoners.

The only issue which remained unclear with the Appropriations Bill language is that of "rendition," the practice of secretly sending detainees to governments which practice torture, like Egypt.

The provision approved Tuesday does not include any specific references to intelligence officers. Instead, it says that no money appropriated in the bill can be used "to subject any person in the custody or under the physical control of the United States to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that is prohibited by the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States."

Human rights advocates said it was unclear whether the prohibition would restrict the ability of the C.I.A. or other government agencies to conduct so-called renditions - that is, to send terrorism suspects to be interrogated in other countries, even those that are known to engage in abusive treatment of prisoners.

CIA under growing scrutiny

Following a 60 Minutes report about rendition, and stories in the Washington Post about CIA responsibility for a Bagram detainee death, the CIA appears to be under increasing scrunity. The CIA is attempting to put off any form of public review until its at least six in-house reviews are completed. (Unlike the handful of military to be prosecuted for Abu Ghraib, to date, the only CIA-related prosecution for abuse is against a CIA-contracted former military officer who worked in Afghanistan.)

And Republican Senator Pat Roberts has indicated he will block special inquiry into the CIA's role in interrogation in Senate Intelligence Committee. But after the Military has undergone such scrutiny over abuses in Abu Ghraib and Bagram, promising to make changes to its policy and procedures, won't the CIA be forced to either defend or drop its practices of rendition, "ghost detainees" and abusive interrogation?

"Rendition" AKA Outsourcing Torture

The full story of "rendition" or the tactic used by the US government to detain "suspected terrorists" either on US or foreign soil and hand them over to notoriously human-rights-abusing and torturing governments has long been documented. But the fact is, very few people are aware this happens. And it does. Read the story of Syrian-born Canadian immigrant below, from the New Yorker.

Arar, a thirty-four-year-old graduate of McGill University whose family emigrated to Canada when he was a teen-ager, was arrested on September 26, 2002, at John F. Kennedy Airport. He was changing planes; he had been on vacation with his family in Tunisia, and was returning to Canada. Arar was detained because his name had been placed on the United States Watch List of terrorist suspects. He was held for the next thirteen days, as American officials questioned him about possible links to another suspected terrorist. Arar said that he barely knew the suspect, although he had worked with the man's brother. Arar, who was not formally charged, was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet. The plane flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan.

During the flight, Arar said, he heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of "the Special Removal Unit." The Americans, he learned, planned to take him next to Syria. Having been told by his parents about the barbaric practices of the police in Syria, Arar begged crew members not to send him there, arguing that he would surely be tortured. His captors did not respond to his request; instead, they invited him to watch a spy thriller that was aired on board.

Ten hours after landing in Jordan, Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, "just began beating on me." They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. "Not even animals could withstand it," he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. "You just give up," he said. "You become like an animal."

A year later, in October, 2003, Arar was released without charges, after the Canadian government took up his cause.