End secret detention, rights groups tell US

By Alex Spillius in Washington
The Telegraph 

Dozens of prisoners who have disappeared after being detained by the CIA as part of the “war on terror” were named yesterday for the first time by leading human rights organisations.

Six groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said it was not clear how many remained in detention.

They challenged the assertion made last September by George W Bush that all secret CIA prisons had been emptied as 14 high-profile terror suspects were sent to Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

The controversial detentions began after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks, and included people said to have been captured in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Some were made in foreign countries in a process known as “extraordinary rendition”, with the co-operation of local secret services. The report says the relatives of suspects, including children as young as seven, had been held in secret detention on occasions.

“Since the end of Latin America’s dirty wars, the world has rejected the use of ‘disappearances’ as a fundamental violation of international law,” Prof Meg Satterthwaite, of the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University’s School of Law, said in a statement.

Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch said it was unknown if the suspects were now in US or foreign custody, or even alive or dead.

“We have families who have not seen their loved ones for years. They’ve literally disappeared,” Miss Mariner said.

Among the cases detailed in the report is the detention in September 2002 of two children, then aged seven and nine, of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted Sept 11 mastermind, who is now held at Guantanamo Bay. “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.”

The groups are urging the US government to end secret detention, provide information on those in custody, give access by the International Committee of the Red Cross to all detainees and either bring charges or release all prisoners.

The report came ahead of the release today of the final investigation by the Council of Europe into CIA detention centres in Europe and flights across European airspace.

It is likely to confirm that Poland and Romania were sites of secret CIA prisons; a previous report described them as likely locations.

The report is also likely to detail Britain’s co-operation with the programme of secret CIA flights, which included the use of Prestwick airport, in Scotland.

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