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<font size=3>CIA Secret Prisons Exposed<br>
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<br><br>
<br>
The disappeared: Are they dead? Are they alive? Ask Congress. Ask the
president.<br>
<b>by Nat Hentoff<br>
</b>May 7th, 2006 7:59 PM<br><br>
<img src="cid:6.2.5.6.2.20060511080956.02a46050@freedomarchives.org.0" width=250 height=194 alt="[]">
<br>
illustration: Matthew Leake<br>
<i>CIA officers soon learned one thing for sureprisoners sent to Bright
Light and [other CIA secret prisons] . . . were probably never going to
be released. "The word is that once you get sent to Bright Light,
you never come back," said the CIA's Counterterrorism Center
veteran.</i> <b>James Risen, <i>State of War: The Secret History of the
CIA and the Bush Administration</i></b> <br><br>
<br>
May is the month that the United States has been summoned to Geneva by
the United Nations Committee Against Torture to, as Reuters reported on
April 18, "provide information about secret detention facilities and
specifically whether the United States assumed responsibility for alleged
acts of torture in them." <br><br>
The committee also wants a list of all these secret prisons. So do
Ialong with every major human rights organization and some members of
Congress on both sides of the aisle. However, Kansas Republican Pat
Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, rigidly keeps
refusing to authorize an investigation into these "black
sites," as they are called in CIA internal communications. (The
United States is a faithless signatory to the UN Convention Against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and
is now being called to account.) <br><br>
Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte said the
prisoners in these hidden gulags will be there as long as "the war
on terror continues." He added, in an April 12 <i>Time</i>
interview: "I'm not sure I can tell you what the ultimate
disposition of those detainees will be."As far as their families are
concerned, these "detainees" have vanished from the face of the
earth. <br><br>
<i>Time </i>says that Negroponte's comments "appear to be the first
open acknowledgement of the secret U.S. detention system"
(authorized by the president soon after 9-11). <br><br>
Actually, when the CIA recently fired senior official Mary O.
McCarthyfor allegedly providing classified information about CIA secret
prisons in Eastern Europe to <i>The Washington Post</i>'s Dana
Priestthat public accusation also officially revealed the existence of
the "black sites." (McCarthy denies that she was a source for
Priest.) <br><br>
The cover has long ago been blown on these dungeons by Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the ceaseless
researchers at NYU law school's Center for Human Rights and Global
Justice. And in the <i>Voice</i>, I've been writing on what I can find
out about them since the end of 2002. <br><br>
But the CIA, the president, Alberto Gonzales, Condoleezza Rice, and
Donald Rumsfeld have nothing to say about these gulags, which are wholly
removed from American law and the international treaties we have signed.
<br><br>
Now, however, in an explosive, documented April 5 Amnesty International
report"Below the Radar: Secret Flights to Torture and
'Disappearance' "there is direct testimony, for the first time,
from three men who have been salted away in these secret CIA prisons.
<br><br>
This 41-page report, currently reverberating throughout Europe, also
includes a wide range of detailed information about the CIA's kidnapping
and "renditions" of suspects to countries known for torturing
prisoners. But most revealing are Amnesty International's interviews with
the three men from Yemen who were "held in at least four secret
US-run facilities . . . probably in Djibouti, Afghanistan, and somewhere
in Eastern Europe." <br><br>
In their last "black site," where they were disappeared for 13
months, Muhammad Bashmilah, Salah Ali Qaru, and Muhammad al-Assad were
imprisonedthey believe it was in Eastern Europewhere "they were
never allowed to look outside. . . . And for month after month, the men
had no idea whether it was day or night . . . or whether their torment of
spending endless days staring at blank walls, or being interrogated,
would ever end." <br><br>
Why they were finally returned to Yemen is unknown; but therewhere they
were first arrested two and a half years ago before falling into CIA
crevassesthey were charged on February 13, 2006, with having forged a
travel document. Amnesty International emphasizes: <br><br>
"None was charged with any terrorism-related offense; [and] the
Chief of Special Prosecution in Yemen told Amnesty International that
they were not suspected of any such involvement." <br><br>
On the old forgery charge, the judge in Yemen sentenced them to time
served, the trial record notes, "in an unknown place by the
USA." <br><br>
They were then released. But, AI adds, "All continue to suffer the
dire mental and physical health consequences of torture and
ill-treatment, including the prolonged periods in isolation."
<br><br>
As Eric Olson, acting director of government relations at Amnesty
International USA, says, their long-term solitary imprisonment can, by
international standards, "be considered cruel and inhuman
treatment," and two "were in a facility where they were chained
to a ring on the floor permanently." <br><br>
But what of the others who have been disappeared in the CIA's secret
prisons? In the <i>Voice</i> nearly two years ago, I quoted Jack Cloonan,
a 27-year veteran of the FBI who, in New York, as senior agent on the
FBI's bin Laden squad, headed the investigation of the master Al Qaeda
strategist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Cloonan had been directing the
interrogation of Mohammed in a once secret CIA interrogation center at
Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan (which Dana Priest exposed in <i>The
Washington Post</i>). <br><br>
Concerned at the time about the network of still hidden CIA interrogation
centers around the world, Cloonan asked: "What are we going to do
with these people when we're finished . . . with them? Are they going to
disappear? Are they stateless? . . . What are we going to explain to
people when they start asking questions about where they are? Are they
dead? Are they alive? What oversight does Congress have?" <br><br>
Will the elite Washington press finally ask this question of presidential
press secretary Tony Snowand Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat
Roberts? And especially George W. Bush at his next press conference? What
are these American values, Mr. President, we stand for against the
terrorists? <br><br>
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