In his national televised address from the White House last Wednesday, just five days before the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush for the first time acknowledged the existence of these "black sites" inhabited by "ghost" prisoners beyond the reach of any authority, whether Congress, the Red Cross or US and international law.
According to officials and reports here, there were eight camps in all. Among the locations were Afghanistan, Qatar, Thailand, the Indian island base of Diego Garcia (leased by the US from Britain) as well as Poland and Romania. The system was set up at the start of 2002. In the four and a half years since, some 100 inmates have passed through the network.
These were no ordinary prisoners, however. They were the highest-value targets - terror kingpins who, the CIA believed, possessed information about ongoing terrorist plots. To obtain this information, all means were considered justified. Some inmates were kept for a period in the camps and then - their value to the Americans exhausted - sent on under the practice known as "rendition" to friendly countries, Jordan, Pakistan and Egypt among them, where they faced equally brutal treatment, if not worse. Others, it is believed, were sent on to Guantanamo. A few, however, stayed.
The 14 new inmates at Guantanamo include the most famous al-Qa'ida captives: among them Abu Zubaydah, a key coordinator of the organisation, seized in Pakistan in March 2002; Ramzi Binalshibh, a facilitator for 9/11; and the main planner of the attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. In the past few days, more details have become available of the "enhanced" interrogation techniques to which these prisoners were subjected.
The cooperation between an unlikely coalition of intelligence agencies did not end there. The intelligence report gives a rare glimpse into the favors exchanged between governments during the CIA renditions. One day after Germany learned that the Syrians were holding Zammar, the CIA offered the German foreign-intelligence agency BND the chance to put written questions to their prisoner. The intelligence report doesn't make clear whether CIA interrogators had direct physical access to Zammar. In June 2002, Syrian officials offered German interrogators access to Zammar in prison, according to the 263-page report by the BND, marked "Geheim" (Secret). That same day, the BND chief asked Germany's federal prosecutors to drop their charges against Syrian intelligence agents who had been arrested in Germany for allegedly collecting information on Syrian dissidents.
The German intelligence report cites another deal, an "urgent request [by the United States] to avert pressure from the EU side [on Morocco] because of human-rights abuses in connection with [Zammar's]arrest, because Morocco was a valuable partner in the fight against terrorism." Grey, who had the report translated, says he obtained the classified report from a German investigator, who remains anonymous. The German government has acknowledged that they dropped the charges against the Syrian intelligence officers because of their cooperation in anti-terrorism, but they deny that the decision was specifically linked to the Zammar case.
With deep political mistrust between Syria and the United States, the two countries are hardly ready-made partners in the war on terrorism. Yet by the end of 2002, Zammar was one of at least four prisoners jailed in the Palestine Branch cells in Damascus who had landed there as part of the CIA renditions, according to the book, which is being published by St. Martin's Press. It is widely believed that Zammar, who has never been charged with anything, is still being held without trial in Syria at an unknown location. He was last heard from in 2005, when he sent a letter from Syria to his family in Germany through officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"She is the most important catch in five years," former CIA terrorist hunter John Kiriakou said when she was apprehended. The odd thing about Siddiqui's case is that she has not been charged now with being a collaborator or accomplice in terrorist attacks, but with the attempted murder of US soldiers and FBI agents -- whom she allegedly attacked with a weapon in Afghanistan. If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison.
The charges against Siddiqui are spectacular because she is a woman. Western life is also not alien to her: She comes from an upper middle-class Pakistani family and spent more than 10 years studying at elite universities in the United States. She studied biology on a scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a PhD in neuroscience at Brandeis University, where she was considered an outstanding scientist.
Five years ago, Siddiqui disappeared from her home in Karachi, together with her three children, Ahmed, 7, Mariam, 5, and Suleman, 6 months. The two older children are American citizens. Siddiqui claims that Americans abducted her and locked her away in a secret prison, and that she was tortured there. Her children, she says, were taken away, and two of them are still missing.
The CIA denies that its agents had anything to do with Siddiqui's disappearance. Michael Scheuer, a member of a unit that pursued al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, says curtly: "We never arrested or imprisoned a woman. She is a liar." But if it is true that a woman was tortured and disappeared into a secret dungeon, it would be a first in the post-September 11 world -- and yet another example of the decay of standards in America.
Just look how we've forgotten the CIA's secret prisons. In Afghanistan, a Fisk source who has never – ever – been wrong, tells me that there are at least 20 of these torture centres still active in the country, six in Zabol province alone. But we don't care about Afghans.
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which a black project is conducted. Recently the term has gained notoriety in describing secret prisons operated by the CIA, generally outside of the mainland U.S. territory and legal jurisdiction, and with little or no political or public oversight. It can refer to the facilities that are controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used by the U.S. in its War on Terror to detain alleged unlawful enemy combatants. One of the alleged purposes is to detain suspected terrorists outside of the Intelligence Oversight Act which authorizes Congressional supervision.[citation needed] Another purpose, according to the February 2007 European Parliament report, is for detaining suspects while CIA flights used in the extraordinary rendition program make their way through European territory [1].
US President George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on September 6, 2006.[2][3] A claim that the black sites existed was made by The Washington Post in November 2005 and before by human rights NGOs.[4]
Many European countries[who?] have officially denied they are hosting Black Sites to imprison terrorists or cooperating in the US extraordinary rendition program. Not one country has confirmed that it is hosting black sites. However, according to the EU report, adopted on February 14, 2007 by a majority of the European Parliament (382 MEPs voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining), the CIA operated 1,245 flights, and stated that it was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centres were operated in Poland and Romania. This 2007 report "regrets that European countries have been relinquishing control over their airspace and airports by turning a blind eye or admitting flights operated by the CIA which, on some occasions, were being used for illegal transportation of detainees" [1][5].
An investigation on the origins of the leaks has also been opened by the U.S. Justice Department to investigate what may have been illegal release of classified information.
"Over the past eight years," points out Lowell Greathouse of First United Methodist Church in Portland, "the United States has made torture a part of what we have become."
This is not what you'd call a recommendation.
During that time, the stories from Abu Ghraib, from Guantanamo and from various secret prisons around the globe have redefined what America now means to the world. And despite Bush's insistence that the United States doesn't torture people, his administration has virtually admitted it by repeatedly rejecting congressional efforts to limit prisoner interrogation techniques to those included in the Army Field Manual.
Then, when congressional opponents (led by Sen. John McCain) succeeded in implanting the limit in the Pentagon appropriations bill, Bush issued a signing statement that he wasn't bound by the law, because waterboarding is one of the fundamental constitutional powers of the president.
Just like James Madison intended.
President-elect Barack Obama may know from his own family that torture turns potential friends into lifelong enemies. The Times of London reported this week that Obama's paternal grandfather was brutally tortured by the British during Kenya's Mau Mau uprising. The news story was based on information from Obama's Kenyan relatives.
The Times' account said Hussein Onyango Obama, Obama's paternal grandfather, became involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after the war. He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.
"The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed," said Sarah Onyango, Hussein Onyango's third wife, the woman Obama refers to as "Granny Sarah." She said that Hussein Onyango told her "they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down," she said. The torture was said to have left Onyango permanently scarred, and bitterly anti-British. "That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies," Mrs. Onyango said. "My husband had worked so diligently for them, only to be arrested and detained."
The Times' report came out on the same day that retired U.S. generals and admirals urged Obama to reverse the controversial interrogation, detention and rendition policies of the Bush administration.
At a meeting with Vice President-Elect Joe Biden and senior members of Obama's transition team, the retired generals and admirals presented a long list of "things that need to be done and undone." The group was headed by Gen. Joseph Hoar, a retired Marine who headed the Central Command region from 1991 to 1994.
The generals were motivated by concern that the use of waterboarding, secret prisons, the abuse at Abu
Ghraib and the detention without trial for six years of prisoners at Guantánamo had sullied the global reputation of America and its military. The generals are surely preaching to the choir. Obama in the Senate and during the campaign has been a consistent critic of the Bush administration's use of what has been euphemistically called "enhanced interrogation techniques."
In mid-2007 my mother sent me a George Bush Countdown Calendar. I have been tearing off the leaves, each with its quote from George W. That happy occasion, the final page, comes on January 20 2009.
Happy for most in Guantánamo Bay, that is. The people remaining there find themselves in three groups - some 40 who will be taken to the US for a trial (somewhat fairer, at least, than the current military commissions); 150 will simply go home (at last); and a final 60 refugees, many long since cleared for release, must hope that Obama spends some of his political capital to find them an asylum state.
Yet the justifiable joy at Obama's ascendancy must be tempered with the knowledge that Guantánamo always has been a diversionary tactic in the "war on terror". The 250 men there represent fewer than 1% of the 27,000 prisoners being held by the US beyond the rule of law. There is a reason why most people have never heard of the plight of these unfortunates - they are ghost prisoners in secret prisons.
Obama has yet to speak of the missing 99.1%. It is not clear how much he even knows about them. With America at war in two countries, new captives are being taken every day. They aren't coming to Cuba, so where are they being held?
Thirteen journalists were held in Eritrea, which was the fourth jailer of journalists worldwide behind China, Cuba and Burma. The survey found more Internet journalists jailed worldwide today than journalists working in any other medium.
CPJ’s survey found 125 journalists in all behind bars on December 1, a decrease of two from the 2007 tally. (Read detailed accounts of each imprisoned journalist.) China continued to be world’s worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 10 consecutive years. Cuba, Burma, Eritrea, and Uzbekistan round out the top five jailers from among the 29 nations that imprison journalists. Each of the top five nations has persistently placed among the world’s worst in detaining journalists.
Eritrea’s secret prisons held but four of at least 17 journalists worldwide held in secret locations. Eritrean authorities have refused to disclose the whereabouts, legal status, or health of any of the journalists they have been detaining for several years. Unconfirmed reports have suggested the deaths of at least three of these journalists while in custody, but the government has refused to even say whether the detainees are alive or dead.
Two other Eritrean journalists were being held in secret in neighboring Ethiopia, while the government of The Gambia has declined to provide information on the July 2006 arrest of journalist “Chief” Ebrima Manneh. Many international observers, from the U.S. Senate to the West African human rights court, have called on authorities to free Manneh, who was jailed for trying to publish a report critical of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh.
About 13 percent of jailed journalists worldwide, including those imprisoned in Eritrea, Ethiopia and The Gambia, face no formal charge at all. Countries as diverse as Israel, Iran, the United States, and Uzbekistan also used this tactic of open-ended detention without due process. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 16 out of 23 journalists were behind bars without charge.
Antistate allegations such as subversion, divulging state secrets, and acting against national interests are the most common charge used to imprison journalists worldwide, CPJ found. About 59 percent of journalists in the census are jailed under these charges, many of them by the Chinese and Cuban governments, but also by countries like Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast.
The survey found that 45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors. Online journalists represent the largest professional category for the first time in CPJ’s prison census. At least 56 online journalists are jailed worldwide, according to CPJ’s census, a tally that surpasses the number of print journalists for the first time.
This trend applied in Sub-Saharan Africa where at least one online journalist remained imprisoned as of December 1, 2008.
The Chinese government reacted angrily on Monday to what it called a slanderous United Nations report that alleges systemic torture of political and criminal detainees. The government said the authors were biased, untruthful and driven by a political agenda.
The report, issued Friday by the United Nations Committee Against Torture, documented what the authors described as widespread abuse in the Chinese legal system, one that often gains convictions through forced confessions.
The report recounts China’s use of “secret prisons” and the widespread harassment of lawyers who take on rights cases, and it criticizes the government’s extralegal system of punishment, known as re-education
through labor, which hands down prison terms to dissidents without judicial review.
“The state party should conduct prompt, impartial and effective investigations into all allegations of torture and ill treatment and should ensure that those responsible are prosecuted,” said the report, which was written by a 10-member committee of independent experts.
Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called the document “untrue and slanderous,” and said that China cherished human rights and opposed torture. “To our regret, some biased committee members, in drafting the observations, chose to ignore the substantial materials provided by the Chinese Government,” he said in a statement posted Monday on the ministry’s Web site, adding that they “even fabricated some unverified information.” The ministry did not describe the material it had provided to the United Nations committee.
