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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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April 8th,
2008 - CIA Rendered 14 Prisoners to Jordan: Report |
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CIA Rendered 14 Prisoners to
Jordan: Report By Agence France Presse April 8, 2008 New York - The CIA secretly
transported at least 14 war on terror detainees to Jordan between 2001 and
2004, making it the top "rendition" destination at that time, Human
Rights Watch said Tuesday. "While a handful of
countries received persons rendered by the United States during this period,
no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan," the rights
group said in a statement. The prisoners were
interrogated and tortured by Jordan's General Intelligence Department,
according to a new Human Rights Watch report that documents eight previously
unknown cases of rendition. GID officials who met with
Human Rights Watch in Amman in 2007 denied receiving CIA prisoners and denied
using torture. The group said the denials were unconvincing "given the
weight of credible evidence showing otherwise." The report is "based
largely on firsthand information from Jordanian former prisoners who were
detained with the non-Jordanian terrorism suspects," it said. "We've documented more
than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture,"
said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights
Watch. Prisoners rendered to Jordan
included at least five Yemenis, three Algerians, two Saudis, a Mauritanian, a
Syrian, a Tunisian, and one or more Chechens from Russia, the group said. They may also have included
a Libyan, an Iraqi Kurd, a Kuwaiti, one or more Egyptians, and a national of
the United Arab Emirates. The report includes an
excerpt of a note handwritten by a rendered prisoner while in Jordanian
custody in late 2002. The prisoner is now at the US war on terror prison camp
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi
wrote that GID interrogators beat him "in a way that does not know any
limits." "They threatened me
with electricity, with snakes and dogs .... [They said] we'll make you see
death .... They threatened to rape me," the note said. A common torture method was
falaqa, by which prisoners are given extended beatings on the bottoms of
their feet. "Just about everyone at
GID was beaten with sticks," a Jordanian former prisoner told Human
Rights Watch. "People were beaten on their feet. They did it in the
basement." "Outsourcing torture is
not only wrong, it's illegal," Mariner said. "And the US can't say
it doesn't torture if it sends people to countries that do." Copyright © 2008 AFP. All
rights reserved. External link: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gl99G8I6rMuOZNG85Yq_3TwiwQtg |