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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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June 2nd,
2008 - US Accused of Holding Terror Suspects on Prison Ships |
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US Accused of
Holding Terror Suspects on Prison Ships By Duncan Campbell & Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian June 2, 2008 The United States is
operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on
terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an
attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. Details of ships where
detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across
the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial
intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday
urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained. Information about the
operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including
statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related
parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners. The analysis, due to be
published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims
there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when
President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped. It is the use of ships to
detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for
inquiries in Britain and the US. According to research
carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as
"floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard
the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is
claimed. Ships that are understood to
have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15
ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego
Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK
and the Americans. Reprieve will raise
particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it
spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an
effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists. At this time many people were
abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation
involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the
FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were
"disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia,
Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay. Reprieve believes prisoners
may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships
in the Gulf of Aden during this time. The Reprieve study includes
the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a
fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One
of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with
about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to
me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were
all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that
it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten
even more severely than in Guantánamo." Clive Stafford Smith,
Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their
misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers.
We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights. "By its own admission,
the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial
in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through
the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights
and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they
are, and what has been done to them." Andrew Tyrie, the
Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary
rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the
holding of detainees. "Little by little, the
truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time.
Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater
transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's
departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11
is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim
communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism." The Liberal Democrat's
foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: "If the Bush
administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state
abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British
government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support
such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly." A US navy spokesman,
Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: "There are no detention
facilities on US navy ships." However, he added that it was a matter of
public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few
days" during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined
to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia
had been used as "prison ships". The Foreign Office referred
to David Miliband's statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite
previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on
Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all
flights on which rendition had been alleged. CIA "black sites"
are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and
Romania. In addition, numerous
prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are
alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria,
Jordan, Morocco and Egypt. External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/usa.humanrights |