A human rights group is asking US President George W. Bush to disclose the fates of all terror suspects held since 2001, including at least 16 it believes have been locked up in secret CIA facilities.
Human Rights Watch said it compiled a report about the 16, whose whereabouts are unknown, along with 22 others possibly held by the CIA, based on interviews with former detainees, press reports and other sources.
The report -- Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention -- includes an accounting from Marwan Jabour, a Palestinian who says he was held incommunicado for more than two years by the US and Pakistan.
Human Rights Watch interviewed Jabour in December and is telling his story as part of a push for more information from the Bush administration. Jabour says he was beaten, burned with an iron, held naked and chained to the wall of his cell so tightly that he could not stand up.
His imprisonment ended last summer when the US flew him to Jordan from a secret detention facility that he believed to be in Afghanistan. By September, the Jordanians turned him over to the Israelis. Six weeks later, he was let go in the Gaza Strip, where the 30-year-old had family.
US counterterrorism officials would not confirm Jabour's account, but they said they view him as one of al-Qaeda's most dangerous members.
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the information's sensitivity, said Jabour was in direct contact with al-Qaeda's operational leaders, had ties to al-Qaeda's chemical and biological programs and had plotted to attack US troops in Afghanistan.
In a letter to Bush on Monday, Joanne Mariner, director of Human Rights Watch's terrorism and counterterrorism program, said her organization recognizes some terror suspects may have committed crimes that merit incarceration. Yet "the decision to imprison such persons must be taken in accordance with legal processes," she said. Rather than vanishing, they should be charged with crimes, she said.
In a statement, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency's interrogation program has been conducted lawfully -- "with great care and close review, producing vital information that has helped disrupt plots and save lives."
Gimigliano said that is also true of renditions, when terror suspects are taken from one country to another for questioning. He called it "another key, lawful tool in the fight against terror."
"The United States does not conduct or condone torture, nor does it transfer anyone to other countries for the purpose of torture," Gimigliano said.
There was no immediate comment on Jabour's claims from any of the other countries said to have been involved in his incarceration. A senior counterterrorism official at Pakistan's Ministry of Interior said he would not comment for publication until he had seen the Human Rights Watch report.
In his interviews with Human Rights Watch, Jabour acknowledged only some ties to Arab militants. He said he trained in a militant camp in Afghanistan in 1998, went to Afghanistan in 2001 for a couple of weeks after the US-led invasion and helped Arab militants who fled Afghanistan in 2003.
Jabour said he was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, in May 2004. He said he suffered the worst physical abuses during more than a month in Pakistani custody: beatings, being burnt and having string tied tightly to his penis to prevent him from urinating.
Later, in US custody, he said he was held naked for about six weeks and only gradually earned clothing.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS