SPOKESMAN BOOKS
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Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
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Catalogue
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Haditha Ethics - From Iraq to Iran?
The Spokesman, 91
Where are the secret
prisons?
The
story of Muhammad Bashmilah, Salah Qaru and Muhammad al-Assad
Amnesty
International
In
an earlier number (Spokesman 89), we
recorded several individual stories of extraordinary rendition. Now, new
information about ‘black site’ detention has been provided to Amnesty
Secret
detention is the corollary of a secret rendition programme. Without
renditions, the US run ‘black sites’ could not exist. The United States
has acknowledged that it is holding a number of ‘high value’ detainees –
those who are thought to be leading terrorist suspects or to have intelligence
information too sensitive to be entrusted to client states. Rendition provides
the means to transport them to the CIA-run system of covert prisons that has
reportedly operated at various times in at least eight countries.
According to reports, these facilities tend to be used in rotation,
with detainees transferred from site to site together, rather than being
scattered in different locations. Although the existence of secret CIA
detention facilities has been acknowledged since early 2002, the term ‘black
sites’ was first reported by the Washington
Post
in November 2005.
The
only public testimony from those who have been held in ‘black sites’ comes
from three Yemeni men who ‘disappeared’ in US custody and were then held
in secret detention for more than 18 months, before being returned to Yemen in
May 2005. Muhammad Faraj Bashmilah and Salah Nasir Salim ’Ali Qaru had been
arrested in Jordan before being transferred to US custody in October 2003. The
third man, Muhammad Abdullah Salah al-Assad, was arrested in Tanzania, also in
2003, and turned over to US custody a few hours later. Amnesty International
first reported on their cases in 2005, and returned to Yemen to follow up in
February and March 2006; Muhammad al-Assad was released on 14 March. Muhammad
Bashmilah and Salah Qaru were conditionally released from the political
security prison in Aden at around midnight on 27/28 March.
During
their ‘disappearance’, the three men were kept in at least four different
secret facilities, likely to have been in at least three different countries,
judging by the length of their transfer flights and other information they
have been able to provide. Although not conclusive, the evidence suggests that
they were held at various times in Djibouti, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe.
Muhammad
Bashmilah and Salah Qaru were apparently taken from Jordan to Afghanistan in
October 2003; other prisoners there managed to get word to them that they were
in Afghanistan. The two men have separately described a transfer flight of
about four hours from Jordan, which is consistent with a flight to
Afghanistan.
It
is not clear where in Afghanistan they were held, but it does not appear to be
the same Afghan-run prison in Kabul in which Khaled el-Masri was detained at
roughly the same time (see Spokesman
89).
Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, had been arrested in Macedonia in December
2003 and rendered to Afghanistan, where he spent some four months in a prison
he said was run by Afghans but controlled by US officials. In May 2004,
apparently realising that they had the wrong man, the United States flew him
to Albania and dropped him off on a mountain road to make his own way back to
Germany. Khaled el-Masri has drawn a detailed floor map of his Afghan prison;
the map was immediately recognizable to Walid al-Qadasi, a Yemeni national who
had been detained in Kabul in 2002. Muhammad
Bashmilah and Salah Qaru, however, did not recognise the drawing and insisted
that there were no Afghan guards or staff at their prison. Both men believe
that all of their guards and interrogators were from the United States,
although the translators included native Arabic speakers with Lebanese and
Moroccan accents.
The
men told Amnesty International that they were held with a group of
‘important, high ranking’ prisoners, who were watched over very closely.
One such detainee managed to tell them that he had not been held permanently
in any one location, but had been transported with the group from place to
place. The security measures practised in the facility were far stricter and
more methodical than those described by other detainees who have been held in
If
a guard needed to enter their room to take them to shower or for
interrogation, for instance, they followed a set routine. When the guard
opened the door, the inmate had to face the wall with his back to the door and
his hands on the wall. The guard would hood them and handcuff them behind
their backs before removing the shackles. The hood had a kind of noose that
could be tightened around the neck if the detainee did not move fast enough or
in the right direction. The
guards were always covered, and wore masks and gloves, but the men said that
none of them were Arabs or Afghans. When asked how they knew this, they
replied that the guards ‘had a different kind of physique’.
They
were allowed outside for 20 minutes once a week, when they were brought into a
courtyard with very high walls and made to sit in a chair facing the wall.
Once seated, their hood was removed. They were not allowed to look to the left
or the right, and a guard stood behind them to ‘enforce the rules’.
Muhammad
al-Assad was arrested in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on 26 December 2003 and
flown out some time before dawn the next day. Sources in Tanzania have said
that he was flown to Djibouti on a small US plane. According to press reports,
about 800 US personnel, part of a counter-terrorism task force, had been
located in Djibouti in late 2002, and the site was known to be a base for the
CIA’s unmanned predator planes. Speaking before the US Senate Armed Services
Committee in March 2005, General John Abizaid noted: ‘Djibouti has given
extraordinary support for US military basing, training, and counterterrorism
operations’.
Muhammad
al-Assad says that he was questioned there by US officials, one man and one
woman, who told him they were from the United States’ Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI); a picture of the President of Djibouti hung on the wall
of the interrogation room. Muhammad al-Assad spent about two weeks there
before being processed for another transfer. This time he thinks he was in a
larger plane as he entered it without having his head pushed down or bending.
He believes he was strapped down to a bench and that the plane had a row of
benches along the side. He knows the flight was long and that it touched down
once before flying on to a place that was ‘cold and muddy’. At this
location, he was held in two different detention centres, about 20-40 minutes
apart by car, over unpaved roads. The first room was large and dirty, with a
rug and a high narrow window; the second was smaller and darker, and the walls
were covered in graffiti. The bread he was given there, he said, was from
Pakistan or Afghanistan. Muhammad al-Assad is diabetic and says that he was
not given proper medication during this period, so was often dizzy or ill. It
is not certain that he was held with Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah Qaru,
although all three men were transferred to the same final secret destination
at about the same time.
At
the end of April 2004, probably around the 24th, the men were brought, one at
a time, to be prepared for transfer. They were stripped naked before being
given absorbent plastic underpants, a pair of knee length cotton trousers to
wear over them, a cotton shirt, and a pair of blue overalls. They were
handcuffed and their hands were strapped to a belt around the waist, their
legs were shackled together and to the belt. Foam earplugs were inserted in
their ears. They were blindfolded and had their mouths covered with a surgical
facemask, presumably to prevent them from talking. They were then hooded, and
tape or a bandage was wrapped around the hood to prevent movement. Finally, a
pair of heavy, sound-deadening headphones were placed over the hood. A similar
process was described by
’You
lose most of your senses’, said Muhammad Bashmilah, ‘but you can still
feel a bit, and on this flight I felt the presence of a number of other bodies
swaying back and forth.’ The preparations are done very quickly and
professionally, he added, by a team of black masked ‘ninjas’ who carried
out the whole operation in about 20 minutes. After he was prepared, he was
taken to a waiting room for a couple of hours, so he believes there must have
been a number of others undergoing the same treatment.
Muhammad
Bashmilah and Salah Qaru said that this flight lasted three to four hours,
Muhammad al-Assad thought the flight was longer. Whether or not they were on
the same plane for the first leg of their journey, all three describe landing
and waiting for an hour or so before being thrown roughly into a helicopter
with a number of other prisoners. All three noted separately that they felt
that there were a number of prisoners being transported at the same time,
perhaps a dozen or more. All three agree that the helicopter flew for about
two and a half or three hours, and that once it had landed they were taken to
the new detention centre by car. The
size and location of the final secret facility, where they spent 13 months,
remains unconfirmed. Two of the men told Amnesty International in October 2005
that they believed this detention centre was in Europe. Other information they
have since provided, some of it confirmed or augmented by media reports,
indicates a strong possibility that the men were indeed held in an Eastern
European ‘black site’.
As
Amnesty International has reported, the facility was new or refurbished, and
carefully designed and operated to ensure maximum security and secrecy, as
well as disorientation, dependence and stress for the detainees. Well-staffed
and resourced, and highly organised, the system in operation there could not
have been maintained solely for the purpose of interrogating low-level
suspects like Muhammad Bashmilah, Salah Qaru and Muhammad al-Assad. One of the
men calculated that at least 20 people were being taken to the shower room in
his section each week, although he does not know whether the facility
contained more than one section.
The
men were initially examined by a doctor or medic, who had access to the
medical records that had been kept on the men throughout their detention. At
each transfer, the men said, they were stripped and photographed, front and
back, and any wounds or marks on their bodies were noted on a medical record,
which followed them from place to place. Salah Qaru explained that the doctor
used a template drawing, and that he has two scars that the doctors always
recorded. The scales used at their checkups, he noted, measured weight only in
pounds, the unit used in the United States.
According
to one of the men, ‘all of the guards and officials were Americans. One
doctor we saw was an American and one spoke English with a European accent. Of
the translators, some were native Arabic speakers, and some spoke Arabic with
an American accent.’ The director of the prison was one of the few people
they ever saw unmasked. When he arrived in late 2004, he told Muhammad al-Assad
that he had been sent from Washington DC in order to decide who they should
keep and who they should send home. ‘You are at the top of the list to be
returned,’ he told Muhammad al-Assad.
Although
the men were never allowed outside, or even to look through a window, they
were given prayer schedules throughout the year. The schedules were not made
up by the prison officials, but were downloaded from an Internet site (islamicfinder.org)
which the men could see at the bottom of the printouts. On these schedules,
they said that the time of sundown prayer over the course of the year changed
by over three hours, from about 4.30pm to about 8.45pm (including an
additional hour for daylight saving time). Such a degree of variation
indicates a location north of the 41st parallel, well above the Middle East,
and very likely to be within one of the member states of the Council of
Europe. Countries that would fit the time range include Turkey, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia. They were also in a
location that observed daylight saving time, which is observed in all Council
of Europe member states, but not, for instance, in Afghanistan, Jordan or
Pakistan.
Moreover,
the men said that there was significant variation in the temperature. In
particular, they noted the extreme cold during the winter. By December 2004,
they said, it was so cold that they had to pray wearing their blankets. Even
though they were issued new sets of extra warm blankets, they say the
temperatures were colder than any they had ever known.
The
detention centre had an on-site inventory of some 600 books, again suggesting
that many more than three detainees were held there. Most of the books listed
were in Arabic, but there were also titles in English, Farsi, Pashto, Russian
and Indonesian. The men said that the Arabic books usually had a white and
gold sticker, with Arabic and English writing, naming a bookshop in Washington
DC and another in Chicago. The detainees were given the book list one morning
a week, and ticked off their choices; the book or books were delivered with
their evening meal.
The
men said that much of the food they were served seemed ‘European’, once
including pizza which they had never eaten before. Their description of the
meals also echoes the account provided in an ABC
news
report on a ‘black site’ facility allegedly located in Poland. For
breakfast, they were served two slices of bread with two triangles of cheese
with the wrappers already removed, and yoghurt in a cup. Lunch was usually
rice with tinned salty meat, sometimes fish or chicken, and olives or
tomatoes. Dinner was more of the same, sometimes with some salad.
For a short time in late 2004, they said, there was a dish of
‘normal’ food, a spicy hot chicken with onions, but that stopped after
Ramadan.
On
Fridays they got two fingers of a ‘Kit Kat’ chocolate bar, again with the
wrappers removed (although the name was on the bar itself); ABC
news
reported that Kit Kats were a favourite of Abu Zubaydah, a ‘high value’
detainee allegedly held in Poland in 2005. Labels were usually removed from
their clothes and their bottles of water. They had some blankets and t-shirts
made in Mexico, while their water cups, although made in China, had the name
and telephone number of a US company embossed on the bottom.
The
detention facility was about 10-15 minutes by car via a bumpy, possibly
unpaved, road from the airstrip. When they got out of the car, they said, they
walked up a flight of steps to get into the building, then once inside the
building they walked down a ramp or slope of some kind. Their cells were new
or refurbished – the walls were freshly painted and bare of any graffiti or
identifying marks. The toilet facilities were modern – the men noted that
the toilets were Western-style and faced in the direction of Mecca (which they
had been given for prayers), which they thought meant they were unlikely to be
in a Muslim country.
Although
they were brought by helicopter, the facility was located within a 10- minute
drive of an airbase or airstrip that is probably not a commercial airport, as
it only receives light traffic. From their cells, Muhammad al-Assad said, they
could hear planes taking off and landing. ‘Sometimes there were two or three
a day,’ added Muhammad Bashmilah, ‘but some days there were none. A week
wouldn’t go by without planes and the most movement was on Wednesdays.’
The
information that the men provided about the duration of their flights provides
general indications of where they might have been. However, without knowing
the size, speed and route of the aircraft, as well as the exact duration of
the flights, the locations cannot be pinpointed.
The
flight that returned the men to Yemen in May 2005 was separately described by
all three as a non-stop journey of approximately seven hours. The plane seems
to have been a small jet. The men agree that there were about six steps from
the ground to the door of the plane, and they think there were probably two
seats on the aisle, at least on one side. They believe that they left in the
early afternoon and arrived at about 10pm. An airport official said they might
have arrived in Yemen in a military plane, although the Yemeni government has
thus far refused to comment. Given that cruise speeds for likely aircraft vary
from about
The
triangulation between this flight and the shorter journeys the men had
apparently made from Afghanistan to their final secret destination rule out
locations in Western Europe and the Middle East. If the flight times given by
the men are accurate, the initial flight from Afghanistan could have reached
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey or Georgia or coastal Bulgaria or Romania; an
additional helicopter flight of 150-180 minutes from such locations would have
been unlikely to have gone more than 500 nautical miles (around 925km).
Aviation experts note that it is not common for helicopter flights to cross
international borders, although technically possible. Assuming that the flight
from Afghanistan had reached Turkey, eastern Bulgaria or Romania, possible
sites for the final detention centre could have included Turkey, Bulgaria,
Romania, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Slovak Republic.
Senior
Yemeni officials told Amnesty International that they had first heard of the
men on 4 May 2005, when the US Embassy in Yemen informed them that the three
would be flown to Sana’a and transferred to Yemeni custody the following
day. The United States provided no further information about what the men
might have done, or any evidence or charges against the men, but Yemeni
officials say they were instructed by the US Embassy to keep the men in
custody until their case files were transferred from Washington DC. No files
or evidence were ever received.
On
13 February 2006, after more than nine months in arbitrary detention in Yemen,
and some two and a half years since they were first arrested, the three men
were brought to trial in Sana’a. On the basis of statements they made during
their interview with the prosecutor of the Special Penal Court each was
charged with forgery in connection with obtaining a false travel document for
personal use. None of the alleged forgeries was presented in evidence. None of
the men was charged with any terrorism-related offence; the Chief of Special
Prosecutions told Amnesty International that they were not suspected of any
such offences. The men all pleaded guilty and the judge had it written into
the trial record that they had been detained in an unknown place by US agents.
On 27 February the judge sentenced the men each to two years in prison, adding
the instructions: ‘to count the period that the accused spent in prisons
outside the country as part of the sentence’. He calculated that, in
addition to their nine months in prison in Yemen, their time in secret US
detention had been at least 18 months, and ordered their release.
Muhammad
al-Assad was released from custody in Sana’a on 14 March. Muhammad Bashmilah
and Salah Qaru were transferred to Aden, where they were released at around
midnight on 27/28 March. They were given instructions to report to political
security every month and not to leave Aden without permission.
The
human cost of rendition and secret detention is too often ignored. Muhammad
al-Assad told Amnesty International on his release that ‘for me now, it has
to be a new life, because I will never recover the old one’. His business is
in ruins, he is in debt, and he does not yet know if he will even be allowed
to return to Tanzania, where he had lived since 1985, to try and rebuild the
life he had made there.
The
prospects are also bleak for Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah Qaru. The men do not
know if they will be reunited with their wives in Indonesia, who have been
thrown into destitution by their absence. Even if they manage to raise the
money, they may not get permission to travel to Indonesia. Nor will it be easy
for them to support themselves in Yemen. Even though they were never charged
with a terrorist offence, they believe that they will remain stigmatised
because they were detained by the United States. Under suspicion by any
potential employers, and harassed by the security and intelligence service,
they fear they will never be able to lead normal lives or take care of their
families. All three men have suffered emotional and physical trauma – Salah
Qaru and Muhammad Bashmilah have described severe torture during their
detention in Jordan and are in urgent need of medical attention for problems
caused or exacerbated by the long months in isolation and secret detention.
