Fate of Many "Ghost Prisoners" Still Unknown

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0301-03.htm

Fate of Many "Ghost Prisoners" Still Unknown
by Eli Clifton


WASHINGTON - The U.S. government should account for all "ghost prisoners" detained by the Central Intelligence Agency in secret prisons around the world, urges a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention," contains detailed descriptions from a Palestinian detainee of his experience in a secret CIA prison before his release last year.

On Sep. 6, 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush said that all CIA prisoners have either been released or sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but HRW claims that many other prisoners were simply "disappeared" by the CIA.

"The question is: what happened to these people and where are they now?" said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at HRW, in a statement.

Marwan Jabour, the former CIA detainee, says that a number of these "disappeared" individuals are still in CIA prisons and that he personally saw one of these men, Algerian terrorism suspect Yassir al-Jazeeri, in July 2006 in CIA custody.

The location of the missing detainees is unknown but one possibility is that they have been moved from CIA "black sites", U.S. prisons rumoured to be present in Thailand, Afghanistan, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, and Bulgaria, to foreign prisons where they remain under CIA control, and may face torture at the hands of U.S. or local interrogators.

more...