Two Yemeni men say they were held in solitary confinement in secret, underground US detention facilities in an unknown country and interrogated by masked men for more than 18 months without being charged or allowed any contact with the outside world, Amnesty International said.
Amnesty and human rights lawyers argued that the report added to long-standing claims that the US has held "secret detainees" in its war on terror.
"We fear that what we have heard from these two men is just one small part of the much broader picture of US secret detentions around the world," Sharon Critoph, a researcher at Amnesty International who interviewed the men in Yemen, said on Wednesday.
In its report, Amnesty urged the US to provide details about these and other prisoners.
"The US authorities must disclose the identities of all people who are being held in secret, where they're being held, and open these places up to international scrutiny," Critoph said.
US officials have previously denied allegations of secret detention facilities, saying they hold terror suspects only at the US Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In June, US officials denied a suggestion from the UN's special expert on torture, Manfred Nowak, that some undeclared holding areas could include US ships cruising international waters. Others have suggested "high-value" detainees could be held secretly in Diego Garcia, a British-held island in the Indian Ocean that the US rents as a strategic military base.
Navy Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico said it was difficult to respond to a report that had not been published but that "we have said many times that the Department of Defense does not engage in the practice of `renditions.'"
Plexico, a spokesman for the department, said it was important to note that training manuals of al-Qaeda terrorist network "emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations."
Lawyers who represent detainees at Guantanamo have long believed that the CIA or other US government agencies have used secret jails for terror suspects.
"The fact that there are underground CIA facilities somewhere where people are being tortured has been known for a while," said Michael Ratner of the US Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City.
Amnesty interviewed Salah Nasser Salim Ali and Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah in a jail in Yemen.
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