[Peace-discuss] American gulag

[C. G. Estabrook]

[At tonight's meeting Lisa asked for this account of the US world-wide
gulag. It's from a non-US paper, altho' the CIA's jails have been
mentioned recently in the NYT. What seems clear is that we're responsible
-- now -- for a system comparable to those run by Germany and Russia in
the last century --CGE]

Secret world of US jails

Jason Burke charts the worldwide hidden network of prisons where more than
3,000 al-Qaeda suspects have been held without trial - and many subjected
to torture - since 9/11

Jason Burke

Sunday June 13, 2004

The Observer

The United States government, in conjunction with key allies, is running
an 'invisible' network of prisons and detention centres into which
thousands of suspects have disappeared without trace since the 'war on
terror' began.

In the past three years, thousands of alleged militants have been
transferred around the world by American, Arab and Far Eastern security
services, often in secret operations that by-pass extradition laws. The
astonishing traffic has seen many, including British citizens, sent from
the West to countries where they can be tortured to extract information.
Anything learnt is passed on to the US and, in some cases, reaches British
intelligence.

The disclosure of the shadowy system will increase pressure on the Bush
administration over its 'cavalier' approach to human rights and will
embarrass Tony Blair, a staunch ally of President George Bush.

The practice of 'renditions' - when suspects are handed directly into the
custody of another state without due process - has sparked particular
anger. At least 70 such transfers have occurred, according to CIA sources.
Many involve men who have been freed by the courts and are thus legally
innocent. Renditions are often used when American interrogators believe
that harsh treatment - banned in their own country - would produce
results.

The Observer has obtained details of two incidents in which men have been
detained by the US despite being found innocent by courts in their own
country. In one, a British businessman called Wahab al-Rami, an Iraqi
living in the UK and a Palestinian seeking asylum were arrested by US and
local officers in Gambia in November 2002 as they stepped off a flight
from London.

Their seizure, which followed a tip-off from the UK security services -
came just days after they had been arrested by British police on suspicion
of terrorism and then freed by a British court.

Two were transported from Gambia to Guantanamo Bay - where they remain
today - without any legal process. In the other incident, two Turks, a
Saudi, a Kenyan and a Sudanese man were arrested in Malawi in June 2003 on
suspicion of funding terrorist networks. Though freed by local courts, the
men were handed over to the CIA and held for several months. Campaigners
say these incidents are 'the tip of an iceberg'.

Few escape the ghost network of detention facilities, which range from
massive prison camps such as that at Guantanamo Bay to naval vessels in
the Indian Ocean, so accounts of life inside the new gulag are rare.

One of the most harrowing stories concerns a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher
Arar, who was arrested by US authorities in late 2002 during a stopover in
New York, on suspicion of terrorist activities.

After several days of questioning, the 34-year-old IT specialist was flown
to Jordan, where the CIA passed him on to local security officials. He was
repeatedly assaulted in Jordan before being driven to Syria, where he was
kept in solitary confinement in a 6ft by 3ft cell for several months and
repeatedly beaten with cables. All charges were dropped on his release.
Arar said last week that he was 'trying to rebuild [his] life'. 'I never
did anything to make me a suspect. I could not believe they would send me
back to Syria, but they did,' he said. 'They sent me back to be tortured.'

The ghost prison network stretches around the globe. The biggest
American-run facilities are at the Bagram airbase, north of Kabul in
Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, where around 400 men are held, and in Iraq,
where tens of thousands of detainees are held. Saddam Hussein and dozens
of top Baath party officials are held in a prison at Baghdad airport.

However, Washington is relying heavily on allies. In Morocco, scores of
detainees once held by the Americans are believed to be held at the
al-Tamara interrogation centre sited in a forest five miles outside the
capital, Rabat. Many of the detainees were originally captured by the
Pakistani authorities, who passed them on to the Americans.

One is Abdallah Tabarak, a militant who is alleged to have been Osama bin
Laden's bodyguard and was seized in late 2001 by the Pakistanis. Tabarak
was handed over to US agents, sent to Bagram and then to Guantanamo,
before being flown to Morocco. Last November, Amnesty International
criticised the 'sharp rise' in torture during 2003 in Moroccan prisons.

In Syria, detainees sent by Washington are held at 'the Palestine wing' of
the main intelligence headquarters and a series of jails in Damascus and
other cities. Egypt has also received a steady flow of militants from
American installations. Many other militants have been sent to Egypt by
other countries through transfers assisted by the Americans, often using
planes run by the CIA.

In Cairo, prisoners are kept in the interrogation centre in the general
intelligence directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison,
according to Montasser al-Zayat, an Islamist lawyer in Cairo and former
spokesman for outlawed militant groups.

Terrorists have also been sent to facilities in Baku, Azerbaijan, and to
unidentified locations in Thailand. Scores more are thought to be at a US
airbase in the Gulf state of Qatar, and a large number are believed to
have been sent to Saudi Arabia, where CIA agents are allowed to sit in on
some of the interrogations. Elsewhere, security officials merely provide
the Americans with summaries.

The fate of high-value prisoners - such as those directly connected to the
11 September attacks or other al-Qaeda strikes, or senior aides of bin
Laden - is unknown. Abu Zubaydah, the Palestinian-born al-Qaeda logistics
expert, was arrested after a shoot-out in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad
in March 2002 by a joint team of American and Pakistani special forces.

After a brief interrogation, Abu Zubayda was handed over to the Americans,
who took him to Bagram and then, it is believed, flew him on to Jordan,
where he has been held, along with several other high-value prisoners, in
prisons in the capital, Amman, and in desert locations in the east of the
country. Jordanian investigators are seen as 'professional' by Western
intelligence services, although the nation has been repeatedly criticised
for its human rights record.

Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who both helped plan the 11
September attacks, were also transferred to American custody soon after
their capture by Pakistani security forces in September 2002 and March
2003 respectively. They are believed to have been interrogated in
Thailand.

The whereabouts of Riduan Isamuddin, the Indonesian activist dubbed 'the
bin Laden of the Far East', who was passed to the Americans following
arrest by Thai security forces in August last year, are unknown. Jabarah
Mohamed Mansur, allegedly involved in an attempt to bomb the US and
Israeli embassies in Singapore, is reported to have been interrogated in
Oman.

What is clear is that the Americans are prepared to go to extraordinary
lengths to capture suspects and to ensure that they are taken to an
environment where information can be extracted as speedily as possible.

In March 2003, FBI agents kidnapped a Yemeni al-Qaeda suspect from a
hospital in Mogadishu, where he was being treated for gunshot wounds. Two
months earlier, a sophisticated operation involving a fake charity lured a
54-year-old Yemeni to Germany, where he was detained and later extradited
to the US. To seize Mohammed Iqbal Madni, a suspected al-Qaeda operative,
in Indonesia, US investigators worked three states' legal systems to
provide an excuse to pick up the 24-year-old Pakistani. They then flew him
to Cairo on a private US-run jet.

The exact number of prisoners held by the Americans or their allies is
unknown, but US officials claim that more than 3,000 al-Qaeda militants
have been arrested since 11 September. Only around 350 are held in
Guantanamo Bay. Very few have been released.

The incarceration of prisoners captured by the Americans in jails in the
Middle East has enraged militants. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the
Jordanian-born terrorist leader who is active in Iraq, said in April that
prisons in his native land had become 'the Arab Guantanamo'.

'Whoever the Americans find hard to investigate in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, they move to Jordan, where they are tortured in every way,'
he said.

American officials are unrepentant. 'You have to break eggs to make
omelettes,' said one last week. 'The world is a bad place.'

And Cofer Black, then head of the CIA counter-terrorist centre, said last
year that 'there was a before 9/11 and an after 9/11. After 9/11, the
gloves came off.'

But former intelligence officers criticised the new tactics last week.
Milton Bearden, who ended a 30-year career with the CIA in 1994, said that
coercion did not work.

'You just get all kinds of confessions that turn out to be completely
untrue,' he said. 'And rendition to someone who will torture a suspect is
as bad as doing it yourself.'

Wahab al-Rawi, whose brother is still being held in Guantanamo Bay, said
that he was angry at both the British government and the US government.

'I just want to know how my own government can just give me up to the
Americans. Who do these people answer to?

'I just ask God to punish them, because there is no power on earth that
they seem to be afraid of.'

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004