"What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven," begins an official European investigative report released on Friday. Terrorism suspects were "abducted from various locations around the world," subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" by CIA interrogators, and "held in secret prisons."
The report, issued by the Council of Europe, a regional human rights body, states that "secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania." It concludes, moreover, that the interrogation methods used in these secret prisons were "tantamount to torture."
The report's findings confirm what human rights groups have been saying for some time. In November 2005, Human Rights Watch pointed to Poland and Romania as among the sites used by the CIA for secret detention. And in a series of publications, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reprieve, and other human rights groups have documented the abusive methods used against detainees held in secret CIA prisons.
Consistent with their larger global effort to eradicate these practices, these groups are trying to put a stop to the CIA's reliance on "disappearance," secret detention, and torture. Not only are they concerned about current detentions, such as the Iraqi man who in April was transferred from CIA custody to U.S. military custody, they are also trying to draw attention to the problem of missing detainees: people who were previously held in CIA custody and who remain "disappeared."
Last week, six human groups published a joint briefing paper on the missing detainees. (Besides the groups mentioned above, they included Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and NYU's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.) The paper names 39 people whose fate is unknown and whose whereabouts are uncertain, including people who have been missing for more than five years.
The oldest case described in the paper is perhaps the most notorious one. Ali Abdul-Hamid al-Fakhiri, a Libyan citizen better known as Ibn al-Shayk al-Libi, was arrested in Pakistan in November 2001. The Pakistani authorities transferred him to US custody, and by January 2002 he was reportedly under the control of the CIA, which transferred him to Egypt.
Statements reportedly made by al-Libi under torture, in which he claimed that the Iraqi government had provided chemical and biological weapons training to al Qaeda operatives, featured in then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the UN in February 2003. Justifying the imminent invasion of Iraq, Powell insisted that "these are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
The claims of an al Qaeda-Iraq link, as we all know, turned out to be utterly false. Al-Libi later recanted his statements, saying that he fabricated them to satisfy his interrogators. Dan Coleman, a retired FBI agent, characterized the case bluntly: "The reason they got bad information is that they beat it out of him. You never get good information from someone that way."
Al-Libi was among the first CIA detainees, and in the years after his stint in Egypt he seems to have made a veritable tour of secret detention facilities. It is known that he was held in Afghanistan, and ABC News has reported that he was also held in Poland. Although the US has released no information regarding his fate or whereabouts, some informed sources have reported that he was transferred to detention in Libya, either directly after his probable transfer out of Poland in late 2005, or after spending a few months at another secret location.
Even these uncertain indications as to the detainee's present whereabouts are absent in many other cases. It is known, for example, that Moroccan detainee Yassir al-Jazeeri was in CIA custody in Afghanistan as late as June 2006; another detainee spoke to him several times there. What happened to him after that, however, is unknown. He may have been returned to Morocco, where he could be held in that country's feared Temara detention facility; he may have been moved somewhere else.
There are 37 more cases like this, all of them shrouded in secrecy. In some cases, only a first name or an alias is known; in others, as with al-Libi, a whole biography is available.
Where are all these people now, and what has happened to them since they "disappeared"? The US government likely knows the answer to these questions in many or all of the 39 cases. Its refusal to reveal the fate and whereabouts of people that it has "disappeared" is easy to explain -- no government likes to admit to shameful deeds -- but impossible to justify.