HRW Says CIA Detainee's Missing

   Here is an interesting report from the Human Rights Watch group which is reporting that 14 detainees held in the CIA's secret prison system are missing. That would be another shocker now wouldn't it?

HRW

February 2007

Estimates of the number of detainees held by the CIA over the course of the program vary.  The Washington Post described a two-tier system of detention, with some 30 “major terrorism suspects” being held at high-security prisons operated exclusively by CIA personnel, and an additional 70 less important suspects being transferred to prisons run by other countries’ intelligence services. The major suspects, also known as “High Value Targets,” were alleged top al-Qaeda leaders, not “foot soldiers.”

The picture emerging from detainee accounts, however, suggests that these numbers are understated, and that the true picture is more complex. For example, at the prison in Afghanistan where Khaled el-Masri was held, the guards were Afghan, but the interrogators, the main director, and the people in charge of prisoner transport appeared to be CIA. So while the prisoners had daily contact with Afghan personnel, all of the important decisions regarding detention, treatment, and release were made by Americans.

And at the so-called Dark Prison in Afghanistan, which appears to have been operated solely by CIA personnel, there were a substantial number of detainees who were not top terrorism suspects.  Human Rights Watch knows of some 20 prisoners previously held at that facility who are currently held at Guantanamo, as well as a former detainee who was released from Guantanamo in 2004. The majority of these prisoners (and obviously the one who was released) would not be considered major suspects.

Similarly, prisoners such as Marwan Jabour and the three Yemeni former detainees interviewed in 2005 by Amnesty International were far from top suspects—they were eventually released without charge.  Yet they too were held in prisons that seemed to have only American staff, as well as the extreme high-security arrangements characteristic of the CIA.

human rights watch, cia, guantanamo, dark prison, detainees