[Ppnews] Dozens of CIA "Ghost Prisoners" Missing

[Political Prisoner News]

Dozens of CIA "Ghost Prisoners" Missing

April 30, 2009 By William Fisher
Source: <http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46629>IPS
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21312

NEW YORK, Apr 24 (IPS) - At least three dozen 
detainees who were held in the CIA's secret 
prisons overseas appear to be missing - and 
efforts by human rights organisations to track 
their whereabouts have been unsuccessful.

The story of these "ghost prisoners" was 
comprehensively documented last week by Pro 
Publica, an online investigative journalism group.

In September 2007, Michael V. Hayden, then 
director of the CIA, said, "fewer than 100 people 
had been detained at CIA's facilities." One memo 
released last week confirmed that the CIA had 
custody of at least 94 people as of May 2005 and 
"employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees 
in the interrogations of 28 of these."

Former President George W. Bush publicly 
acknowledged the CIA programme in September 2006, 
and transferred 14 prisoners from the secret 
jails to Guantanamo. Many other prisoners, who 
had "little or no additional intelligence value," 
Bush said, "have been returned to their home 
countries for prosecution or detention by their governments."

But Bush did not reveal their identities or 
whereabouts - information that would have allowed 
the International Committee for the Red Cross to 
find them - or the terms under which the 
prisoners were handed over to foreign jailers.

The U.S. government has never released 
information describing the threat any of them 
posed. Some of the prisoners have since been 
released by third countries holding them, but it 
is still unclear what has happened to dozens of 
others, and no foreign governments have acknowledged holding them.

Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney with the Centre 
for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents 
Majid Khan, a former ghost detainee at 
Guantánamo, told IPS, "The Obama administration 
must change course from its ‘forward-looking' 
path because it leaves too many critical 
questions unanswered, including those about the 
fate of ghost prisoners held by the United States."

"The United States is strong enough to examine 
the CIA and other agencies' activities, to punish 
individuals who violated our laws, and to ensure 
that our nation does not slip to the dark side again," she said.

Pro Publica reported that former officials in the 
Bush administration said that the CIA spent weeks 
during the summer of 2006 - shortly before Bush 
acknowledged the CIA prisons and suspended the 
programme - transferring prisoners to Pakistani, 
Egyptian and Jordanian custody.

The organisation said the population inside the 
programme had been shrinking since the existence 
of the prisons was detailed in a Washington Post 
article in November 2005. Renewed diplomatic 
relations between the U.S. and Libya in May 2006 
made it possible for the CIA to turn over Libyan 
prisoners to Moammar Gadhafi's control.

Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism and 
Counterterrorism Programme at Human Rights Watch, 
said, "If these men are now rotting in some 
Egyptian dungeon, the administration can't 
pretend that it's closed the door on the CIA programme."

"Making the Justice Department memos on the CIA's 
secret prison programme public was an important 
first step, but the Obama administration needs to 
reveal the fate and whereabouts of every person 
who was held in CIA custody," she said.

The Red Cross has had access to and documented 
the experiences of only the 14 so-called "high 
value detainees" who were publicly moved out of 
the CIA programme and into the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In June 2007, human rights groups released the 
names of three dozen people whose fates remained unknown.

"Until the U.S. government clarifies the fate and 
whereabouts of these individuals, these people 
are still disappeared, and disappearance is one 
of the most grave international human rights 
violations," said Margaret Satterthwaite, a law 
professor at New York University. "We clearly 
don't know the story of everyone who has been 
through the programme. We need to find out where they are and what happened."

In a related development, the American Civil 
Liberties Union (ACLU) has asked the Obama 
administration to make public records pertaining 
to the detention and treatment of prisoners held 
at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act 
(FOIA) request for records pertaining to the 
number of people currently detained at Bagram and 
their names, citizenship, place of capture and 
length of detention. The ACLU is also seeking 
records pertaining to the process afforded those 
prisoners to challenge their detention and designation as "enemy combatants."

"The U.S. government's detention of hundreds of 
prisoners at Bagram has been shrouded in complete 
secrecy. Bagram houses far more prisoners than 
Guantánamo, in reportedly worse conditions and 
with an even less meaningful process for 
challenging their detention, yet very little 
information about the Bagram facility or the 
prisoners held there has been made public," said 
Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project.

She told IPS, "Without transparency, we can't be 
sure that we're doing the right thing - or even 
holding the right people - at Bagram."

Recent news reports suggest that the U.S. 
government is detaining more than 600 individuals 
at Bagram, including not only Afghan citizens 
captured in Afghanistan but also an unknown 
number of foreign nationals captured thousands of 
miles from Afghanistan and brought to Bagram.

Some of these prisoners have been detained for as 
long as six years without access to counsel, and 
only recently have been permitted any contact 
with their families. At least two Bagram 
prisoners have died while in U.S. custody, and 
Army investigators concluded that the deaths were homicides.

"When prisoners are in American custody and under 
American control, no matter the location, our 
values and commitment to the rule of law are at 
stake," said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with 
the ACLU National Security Project. "Now that 
President Obama has taken the positive step of 
ordering Guantánamo shut down, it is critical 
that we don't permit ‘other Gitmos' to continue elsewhere."

The ACLU's request is addressed to the 
Departments of Defence, Justice and State, as well as the CIA.

A federal judge recently ruled that three 
prisoners being held by the U.S. at Bagram can 
challenge their detention in U.S. courts, in 
habeas corpus suits brought by a group of human rights legal advocates.

The prisoners, who were captured outside of 
Afghanistan and are not Afghan citizens, have 
been held there for more than six years without 
charge or access to counsel. The Obama administration is appealing the ruling.




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