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‘Off the record’ secret CIA detention

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

Three groups file lawsuit seeking information about “ghost” detention

In the most comprehensive accounting to date, six leading human rights organizations today published the names and details of 39 people who are believed to have been held in secret US custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. The briefing paper also names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.

In a related action, three of the groups filed a lawsuit in US federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking the disclosure of information concerning “disappeared” detainees.

The 21-page briefing paper, Off the Record: U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the “War on Terror”, includes detailed information about four people named as “disappeared” prisoners for the first time. The full list of people includes nationals from countries including Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan and Spain. They are believed to have been arrested in countries including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan, and transferred to secret US detention centres.

The listdrafted by Amnesty International (AI), Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law (CHRGJ), Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Reprieve draws together information from government and media sources, as well as from interviews with former prisoners and other witnesses.

Off the Record highlights aspects of the CIA detention programme that the US government has actively tried to conceal, such as the locations where prisoners may have been held, the mistreatment they endured, and the countries to which they may have been transferred.

It reveals how suspects’ relatives, including wives and children as young as seven, have been held in secret detention. In September 2002 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s two young sons, aged seven and nine, were arrested. According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention centre for at least four months while US agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts.

Similarly, when Tanzanian national Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was seized in Gujarat, Pakistan, in July 2004, his Uzbek wife was detained with him.

The human rights groups are calling on the US government to put a permanent end to the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation programme, and to disclose the identities, fate, and whereabouts of all detainees currently or previously held at secret facilities operated or overseen by the US government as part of the “war on terror”.

In a related action, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), CCR and the International Human Rights Clinic of NYU School of Law today filed a lawsuit in US federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking disclosure of information concerning “disappeared” detainees, including “ghost” and unregistered prisoners. AIUSA, CCR and the NYU International Human Rights Clinic filed FOIA requests with several US government agencies, including the Departments of Justice and Defense, and the CIA. These FOIA requests sought information about individuals who are or have been held by, or with the involvement of, the US government, where there is no public record of the detentions. Though a few departments produced documents containing little relevant information, no agency provided a list of secretly-held detainees or an assessment of the legality of the secret programme.

The documents that the groups are seeking are known to exist. President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of CIA-operated secret prisons in September 2006; 14 detainees from these facilities were transferred to Guantnamo, and the US Department of Justice has issued an analysis concluding that the secret detention programme is legal.

Yet information about the location of the prisons, identity of the prisoners, and the types of interrogation methods used has never been publicly revealed. This prevents scrutiny by the public or the courts, and leaves detainees vulnerable to abuses that include torture and other ill-treatment.

The secrecy surrounding the programme also means that no one outside the US government knows exactly how many prisoners have been detained and how many remain “disappeared”. The transfer in April 2007 of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi from CIA custody to Guantnamo indicates that the programme continues to operate, although some prisoners may have been transferred to prisons in other countries, possibly as a form of proxy detention. Off the Record indicates that some missing detainees may have been moved to countries where they face the risk of torture and where they continue to be held secretly, without charge or trial.

Interviews with prisoners who have been released from secret CIA prisons indicate that low-level detainees have frequently been arrested far from any battlefield, and held in isolation for years without legal recourse or contact with their families or outside agencies. Those who have been released have received no acknowledgment of their detention or any legal or financial redress.

Quotes:

Clive Stafford Smith, Legal Director of Reprieve, said: “It’s time for the US government to come clean: these 39 people have been missing for years, and the evidence shows they were in US custody at some point. Where are they and what has been done to them?”

Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Director at Human Rights Watch, said: “What we’re asking is where are these 39 people now, and what’s happened to them since they ‘disappeared’? It is already a serious abuse to hold them in secret CIA prisons. Now we fear they may have been transferred to countries where they face further secret detention and abuse.”

Professor Meg Satterthwaite, Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law, said: “Since the end of Latin America’s dirty wars, the world has rejected the use of ‘disappearances’ as a fundamental violation of international law. Despite this universal condemnation, our research shows that the United States has tried to vanish both the people on this list, and the rule of law. The United States cannot ignore human rights by hiding detainees in shadowy black sites. Enforced disappearances are illegal, regardless of who carries them out.”

Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said: “Our client Majid Khan was subjected to torture and abuse while in secret CIA detention for three years. His family didn’t know if he was alive, let alone where he was. The only reason to make someone disappear is to be able to operate outside the law and hidden from public view. Ghost detention is incompatible with basic respect for human rights and the rule of law. The US government must cease this shameful practice at once.”

Moazzam Begg, Spokesman for Cageprisoners and former Guantnamo detainee, said: “Representing individuals detained by the world’s most powerful democracy has become more of an exercise in chasing ghosts than it is about providing justice. Concepts such as habeas corpus bear no meaning to those being detained in black sites or darker more sinister holes. For many of those detained, simply gaining the right to speak the truth unhindered by the need to escape the signing of a false confession means more than the fact they have been detained.”

Claudio Cordone, Senior Director for Research at Amnesty International, said: “The duty of governments to protect people from acts of terrorism is not in question. But seizing men, women and even children, and placing people in secret locations deprived of the most basic safeguards for any detainees most definitely is. The US Administration must end this illegal and morally repugnant practice once and for all.”

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9/11 Firefighters and Families Truth Group Protest Giuliani

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

By Glenn Blain
THE JOURNAL NEWS

On a recent night this spring, Rosaleen Tallon stood outside a Bay Ridge catering hall waiting for Rudy Giuliani to arrive for a cocktail party that raised money for his presidential campaign.

Tallon, a Yonkers resident whose firefighter brother was killed on Sept. 11, 2001, was not there to cheer the former New York City mayor. Instead she was among a group of protesters looking to dispel what they say is the myth of Giuliani’s much-praised response to the attacks on the World Trade Center.

“I think if they knew the truth, (people) wouldn’t vote for him,” said Tallon, who is a leader of a group calling itself Sept. 11th Firefighters and Families for Truth. “We haven’t had a chance to go national, but we will. You can bet on that.”

The truth, according to Tallon and others involved in the protest, is that Giuliani’s actions as mayor, especially his failure to address long-standing problems with radio communications, made matters worse on Sept. 11 and cost lives.

“We need to tell the truth about the failures of the Giuliani administration before, during and after 9/11,” said fellow protester Sally Regenhard of the Bronx, whose son Christian died on Sept. 11.

Whether Tallon and her fellow protesters can influence the presidential election is uncertain, but their efforts could prove troublesome for a Giuliani campaign that draws heavily on his response to the terrorist attacks.

“His constituency, his platform, his base, is 9/11,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “That’s what made him, got him the ‘America’s mayor’ title.”

Though Tallon’s group counts only a few dozen active members, she was joined at the May 29 fundraiser by representatives of city fire unions, including Peter Gorman, then head of the city’s Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

Former New York City Fire Commissioner Howard Safir, responding on behalf of Giuliani’s campaign, downplayed the protests and said the mayor did all he could to support firefighters.

“The fact is that nobody cares more about firefighters than Rudy does,” said Safir, who also served as police commissioner during Giuliani’s tenure. “Rudy has a real affinity with firefighters and policemen.”

Safir argued that radio communications will always be problematic in a city as large and as densely populated as New York.

“The fact is that to this day there are not adequate radios,” Safir said. “Radio signals do not go through steel and concrete.”

Safir praised Giuliani’s response to the terrorist attacks and said he had never met a person better equipped to deal with a crisis than Giuliani.

“I travel the country all the time,” Safir said. “I speak to firefighters and policemen. I speak to ordinary citizens. They believe that Rudy did an outstanding job on 9/11.”

Yet some of the people most directly affected by Sept. 11 - firefighters and relatives of firefighters killed on that day - are opposing Giuliani’s candidacy. And their efforts appear to be reverberating across the nation.

“Rudy Giuliani was certainly not the hero that his campaign portrays him to be,” said John McDonnell, who took over leadership of the city firefighters union on June 1. “We’ll be at every (Giuliani event) in New York and we will speak to our brother and sister members across the country.”

The International Association of Fire Fighters, a national umbrella organization, sent a letter in March to its members describing what it termed as Giuliani’s “egregious treatment of our fallen 343 on Sept. 11th, their families and our members following that horrific day.”

In addition to radio problems, union officials also faulted Giuliani for limiting the number of firefighters involved in the search for victims at Ground Zero and rushing the cleanup at the expense of finding human remains.

“Mayor Giuliani’s actions meant that firefighters and citizens who perished would either remain buried at Ground Zero forever, with no closure for their families, or be removed like so much garbage and deposited at the Fresh Kills landfill,” the letter stated.

It has also been reported that the IAFF is producing a six-minute video to distribute to its member unions around the country detailing Giuliani’s failures.

Bill Glanz, a spokesman for the IAFF declined to comment when asked about the organization’s efforts concerning Giuliani.

Safir rejected criticism from the unions and the IAFF as simple “union politics” and expressed doubt that it would hinder Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

And the feelings of Tallon and members of her group are not universal among relatives of firefighters killed in the attack. Some still hold Giuliani in high regard.

“I felt that he did a good job, handling everything,” said Perry Sikorsky, a Wesley Hills resident whose brother was a firefighter killed Sept. 11. “I never had a problem with him.”

Quinnipiac’s Carroll said there’s no sign that the protests by firefighters or relatives of victims are having an impact on Giuliani’s standing across the country. Most polls show him to be the leading Republican candidate.

After so much time, Carroll added, it will be difficult for the unions and other protesters to change the image many people have of Giuliani.

“Giuliani, he personified what was going on that day for people who were at home watching on television,” Carroll said. “Can they tear that down? I don’t know.”

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Police inspector used fingerprinting ‘as excuse to rape’

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

By Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News

Police inspector Marius Strydom, 36, allegedly raped a 36-year-old in the toilets of the Bethelsdorp police station, UK, using fingerprinting as an excuse to get her alone, the Port Elizabeth magistrate‘s court has heard.

Strydom was investigating an assault case in which the woman was a suspect.

At 11.15am on June 4 he and a colleague allegedly went to the woman‘s house and pretended they needed to speak to her about the case.

Strydom allegedly tricked the victim into accompanying him back to Bethelsdorp police station to retake her fingerprints, where in the men‘s toilet he undressed her and pushed her head into the toilet.

This is the second time Strydom has allegedly attacked the woman, according to her statement, Strydom raped her for the first time in April.

Superintendent Conrad Engelbrecht testified: “The victim was in the company of other people, but the inspector requested to see her in private.

“He took the victim to his office and then told her he did not want to retake the fingerprints but wanted to be alone with her. He demanded sex, but she refused.

“The woman was scared and did not lay a charge immediately. She went straight home and she and her friends contacted the station commissioner,” Engelbrecht said.

The case will continue on July 16.

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