Vincent Warren / Center for Constitutional Rights et al. – 2007-06-07 22:56:31
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/ccr/content.jsp?content_KEY=2771
(June 8, 2007) — Today CCR, with other five other leading human rights organizations, released a groundbreaking report on CIA secret detention programs and filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court demanding the disclosure of information concerning disappeared detainees, including ghost detainees and unregistered prisoners.
President Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of CIA-operated secret prisons in September 2006 at the same time as the U.S. transferred 14 detainees from these facilities to Guantánamo, including CCR client Majid Khan.
Today’s lawsuit, filed after the government refused to comply with several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, seeks documents that provide information about government authorization of secret detention and extraordinary rendition policies and practices, the involvement of private contractors and non-governmental actors, the location of the prisons and identity of the prisoners, the types of interrogation methods used at the sites, and injuries suffered by detainees.
The report – “Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror'” – compiles the most comprehensive list of people known or believed to be held in secret custody by the U.S. in prisons around the world and names four people not previously identified as having been held by the U.S. government in secret detention.
“Off the Record” also highlights aspects of the CIA detention program that the U.S. government has actively tried to conceal, such as the locations where prisoners may have been held, the mistreatment they endured, the countries to which they may have been transferred for proxy detention, and the detention and abuse of spouses and children to gain information.
• To read the entire report, go here.
The report is issued jointly by CCR, Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve. The suit was filed jointly by CCR, AIUSA and NYU’s CHRGJ.
Please take the time to read this report and pass along this important information to your friends and colleagues. Help us shed light on the U.S.’s shameful secret detention program.
Vincent Warren is Executive Director of CCR.
CCR AND OTHER LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS NAME 39 CIA “DISAPPEARED” DETAINEES
Opinions and Documents: Off the Record
Synopsis
On June 7, 2007 CCR and five other leading human rights organizations published the names and details of 39 people who are believed to have been held in secret U.S. custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. The briefing paper, the comprehensive accounting to date, also names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.
The 21-page briefing paper, Off the Record: U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the “War on Terror,” includes detailed information about four people named as “disappeared” prisoners for the first time.
The full list of people includes nationals from countries including Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan, and Spain. They are believed to have been arrested in countries including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan, and transferred to secret U.S. detention centers.
The list-drafted by Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve-draws together information from government and media sources, as well as from interviews with former prisoners and other witnesses.
Off the Record highlights aspects of the CIA detention program that the U.S. government has actively tried to conceal, such as the locations where prisoners may have been held, the mistreatment they endured, and the countries to which they may have been transferred.
It reveals how suspects’ relatives, including wives and children as young as seven, have been held in secret detention. In September 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s two young sons, aged seven and nine, were arrested. According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention center for at least four months while U.S. agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts.
Similarly, when Tanzanian national Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was seized in Gujarat, Pakistan, in July 2004, his Uzbek wife was detained with him.
The human rights groups are calling on the U.S. government to put a permanent end to the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, and to disclose the identities, fate, and whereabouts of all detainees currently or previously held at secret facilities operated or overseen by the U.S. government as part of the “War on Terror.”
