Posted on 06/06/2007 8:42:11 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LONDON - A coalition of human rights groups is demanding the United States account for 39 terror suspects it believes have been secretly imprisoned and published their names in a report being released Thursday.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and four other groups have drawn up a list of 39 so-called "ghost detainees" — people they claim are held by U.S. authorities and are still missing.
"What we're asking is where are these 39 people now, and what's happened to them since they 'disappeared'?" Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said "there's a lot of myth outside government when it comes to the CIA and the fight against terror."
"The plain truth is that we act in strict accord with American law, and that our counterterror initiatives — which are subject to careful review and oversight — have been very effective in disrupting plots and saving lives," Gimigliano said. "The United States does not conduct or condone torture."
Information about the detainees was gleaned from interviews with former prisoners — such as Marwan Jabour, an Islamic militant who claims to have spent two years in CIA custody — and officials in the U.S., Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, she said.
Information on the purported missing detainees was, in some cases, incomplete, the report acknowledged. Some detainees had been added to the list because Jabour remembered being shown photos of them during interrogations, it said.
Others were identified only by their first or last names, like "al-Rubaia," who was added to the list after a fellow inmate reported seeing the name scribbled onto the wall of his cell. But information for at least 21 of the detainees had been confirmed by two or more independent sources, Fitzgerald said.
President Bush acknowledged the existence of secret detention centers in September 2006, but said that the prisons were then empty.
Bush said 14 terrorism suspects that the CIA had been holding, including a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, had been transferred to military custody at Guantanamo Bay for trials.
One of the reports' authors said she wasn't convinced that the sites were ever emptied, and claimed a program of secret detentions was ongoing.
"We wanted (the detainees') names in the public eye because of the impression that this is over, this is finished, and they're not doing this anymore," said Anne Fitzgerald, a senior adviser for Amnesty International. "That's clearly not the case."
Detainees on the list include Hassan Ghul and Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi, who were both named in the 9-11 Commission report as al-Qaida operatives.
Another is Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a jihadist ideologue named as one of the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorists." U.S. officials have confirmed that Nasar was seized in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta in November 2005, and the activists' report said that he was taken into U.S. custody after his arrest, citing unnamed Pakistani officials. His current location is unknown.
Also missing is Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman, the son of the Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "Blind Sheik" behind the first plot against the World Trade Center in New York, the report said.
Most of the 35 other detainees mentioned in the report have been previously identified, with the exception of four Libyans, alleged members of the al-Qaida-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
The report says they were handed to U.S. authorities and have not been heard from since.
The four other groups involved in drafting the report were the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University's School of Law, and Reprieve and Cageprisoners — both London-based rights groups.
=perhap=s they are dead, I certainly hope so. And if not, I hop=e we’re holding them somewhere. These whiners and complainers can pound sand.
-ccm
We fed them to the pigs on Yazgur’s farm, thank you very much.
“What happens in Gitmo should stay at Gitmo”
Dennis Miller
Being held with the crew of the saucer that crashed at Area 51??
ps: I seen Bigfoot, once...bit m’ sister.
I’d like to know where some missing US and Israeli servicemen are, who’s holding them, and how they are being treated.
OOPS! I guess only one side has to come in for criticism from Amnesty International...
Oh yeah. Wasn't saddam supposed to return about 600 Kuwaiti POWs after he signed the ceasefire? Which mass grave are they in and which one are their heads in ?
I’d be happier if there were 39,000 al-qaida prisoners being held in limbo, not just 39!! We are pussyfooting around with people that would kill us on sight!! Either fight this war ruthlessly like we did World War II or bring our troops home now!
Sounds like a deadwood fan?
No no, we need to fight a compassionate and political war.
Meanwhile they cut our boys heads off and drag their bodies through the dirt streets of their crapholes they call home.
Set off a few well placed nukes in Iran, Syria and maybe even Saudi Arabia and all this b.s. would be done with real quick.
Yeah, I know I will sleep safely knowing they are not roaming about planning to kill innocents. 39 is a nice start.
What “secretly”????
Did we forget to sent their names to ABC?
This is war!!!!
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