According to the BBC, in 2006, a Swiss investigation into CIA black sites named Bosnia as one of the many countries which had partnered with the CIA to secretly detain suspected terrorists, along with Italy, Sweden, and Macedonia. Often, these waits can last weeks or months, according to new reporting from The New York Times. [58], Some reported sites in Egypt, Libya and Morocco,[59][60] as well as Djibouti. Instead of realizing how entirely ineffective, barbaric, deadly, and insane the war on drugs has proven to be, the US government shows no signs of slowing despite public opinion on the matter rapidly shifting. "I find it unfathomable that the committee tasked with oversight of the C.I.A. Satellite and other planetary prisons may soon become convenient places to rocket invisibles off to as this planet becomes ever more crowded. One judge refused to dismiss a detainees indictment due to outrageous government conduct, though said he was troubled by accounts of inadequate nutrition, weight loss, lack of privacy for toilet use and lack of sufficient protection from the elements., This is not to say that such treatment of detainees is condoned by this court, said the judge. You know, we stick to U.S. law and our international obligations." US Slammed for Secret 'Floating Prisons' Jun 2, 2008 5:07 AM CDT. He said that he had heard from three U.S. intelligence sources that Diego Garcia was used as "a transit site where people were temporarily housed, let us say, and interrogated from time to time" and that "What I heard was more along the lines of using it as a transit location when perhaps other places were full or other places were deemed too dangerous or insecure, or unavailable at the moment". In 2014, the US government declassified a US Senate Report on the CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program. Both men stated that they were violently abducted by Bosnian soldiers, who then accused them of being terrorists. Nevertheless, there are many indications from various sources which must be considered reliable, justifying the continuation of the analytical and investigative work. [74] On April 22, 2015, Ion Iliescu, former President of Romania, confirmed that he had granted a CIA request for a site in Romania, but was not aware of the nature of the site, describing it as a small gesture of goodwill to an ally in advance of Romania's eventual accession to NATO. Wessler explained thatJhonny Arcentales, a fisherman who was paid to drive a boat South America and Central American, was caught up in one of these busts. [9] The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported details of black site practices to the US government in early 2007,[10] and the contents of that report became public in March 2009. With the passage of the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act of 1986, drug smuggling in international waters became a crime and interdictions expanded farther and farther out to sea. Whatever. On November 25, 2005, the lead investigator for the Council of Europe, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty announced that he had obtained latitude and longitude coordinates for suspected black sites, and he was planning to use satellite imagery over the last several years as part of his investigation. :confused: How could a wall prevent maritime insertion? In 2008, a British newspaper published a huge story stating that the CIA and other US secret services have been holding up to 25,000 people captive in secret sites across the world. [45] Some Guantanamo Bay detainees report being tortured in a prison they called "the dark prison", also near Kabul. Author: Traci Tong (PRI) Many of the Coast Guard officials that I talked to were really uncomfortable about the detention conditions and the amount of time that people were being held during their detention. A Coast Guard official told me people have been held for 90 days. : http://amzn.to/2p8Y4G2What mic do we use for our voice overs? who pays the tax on non qualified 529 distributions . The reality is that when the Coast Guard has had to move people more quickly, they do. It is. Your email address will not be published. The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program. Describing what sounded to me like real terror for them on the high seas. The UK may also face liabilities over apparent violations of international treaties. Other Democrats in Congress also made public statements of outrage about the destruction of the tapes, suggesting that a violation of law had occurred. (below)[96]. [9][10] A claim that the black sites existed was made by The Washington Post in November 2005 and before this by human rights NGOs. How can the Coast Guard get away with keeping people under those conditions when the men haven't even been charged? Amnesty Internationals report stated that Moroccan interrogators had repeatedly beaten, humiliated, electrocuted, burned, and waterboarded inmates at Temara. [100][101], The reporting of the secret prisons was heavily criticized by members and former members of the Bush Administration. The vagaries of international maritime law allow the Coast Guard to engage in what could fairly be described as a pattern of kidnapping and human rights abuses. Learn how your comment data is processed. The men were required to clean out the buckets themselves. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the report "added absolutely nothing new whatever to the information we have". The Guardian article is based on a forthcoming report from an NGO called Reprieve. More Videos. views, 5,4 . 11/28/17: 5 . In an effort to staunch the flow of cocaine and other hard drugs from South America to Central America and points north, Coast Guard cutters have been deployed farther and farther from the shore in the Pacific Ocean. But the Coast Guard has no clear rules about how long they can hold people. In 2012, The Daily Beast described the Salt Pit as the CIAs Sadistic Dungeon in an article that examined a high-profile death which occurred at the site. Floating prisons admin 2021-03-18T16:06:59+00:00. Documents on Interrogation", "Debate Erupts on Techniques used by C.I.A. Top Searches. Investigative journalist and TED Fellow Will Potter explains. In 2007, Elite LLC sold the property to the Lithuanian government and then disappeared. Buy, Sell, and Trade your Firearms and Gear. Arcentales, who was sentenced to a decade in federal prison, told the Times that the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Coast Guard will haunt him forever. Metal containers at Bagram Air Base were reported to be black sites. In May 2018, the BBC reported that the Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base was the location of the black site used to interrogate Abu Zubaydah, a 31-year-old Saudi-born Palestinian, believed to be one of Osama Bin Laden's top lieutenants. 2. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Reprieve uses international and domestic law as a tool to save lives, deliver justice and make the case for world-wide reform. The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. [2] Black sites in China are also known as black jails. Zubaydah was reportedly waterboarded so severely that bubbles would rise out of his open mouth. . So the Coast Guard is arresting these people in these boats and it's not clear whether the drugs on these boats are going to the U.S.? Pawn Stars is a very interesting show when you think about it. [23] The Washington Post posited that McCarthy "had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan", and became convinced that "CIA people had lied" in a meeting with US Senate staff in June 2005. I have evidence of people being held for upwards of 70 days. On May 19, 2006, the United Nations Committee Against Torture (the U.N. body that monitors compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture) recommended that the United States cease holding detainees in secret prisons and stop the practice of rendering prisoners to countries where they are likely to be tortured. Two contract psychologists devised the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program. . Haunted . In 2009, unnamed former intelligence agents told ABC News that the site at Antaviliai was operational for over a year and that during that time, it held at least eight suspected terrorists within its walls. According to the separate European Parliament report of February 2007, the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. He also announced that the CIA was no longer allowing outside "contractors" to carry out interrogations and that the CIA no longer employed controversial "harsh interrogation techniques". This page was last edited on 15 February 2023, at 19:30. The court ordered the Polish government to pay each of the men 100,000 euros in damages. And John Kelly has really been a proponent of the idea. He had written an article, rejected by the magazine, about flights passing through Lajes Field in the Azores, a Portuguese airbase used by the U.S. Air Force. [79], In November 2009, reports alleged a black site referred to in The Washington Post's 2005 article had been located in Lithuania. According to the report, the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. F2 Bulletin Board Service. FACIAL. Next up in 5. On November 28, 2005, EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini asserted that any EU country which had operated a secret prison would have its voting rights suspended. With this publicly announced act, the United States government de facto acknowledged the existence of secret prisons abroad in which these prisoners had been held. According to the same document, similar interrogation centers exist in Bulgaria, Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia, and Ukraine. These torturous waits can last for weeks or months, according to the Times. On two occasions he has had a role in these operations. Katalyst said: "In an effort to staunch the flow of cocaine and other hard drugs from South America to Central America and points north, Coast Guard cutters have been deployed farther and farther from the shore in the Pacific Ocean" Wait, you mean the wall won't stop this? ). [3] On March 14, 2004, The Guardian reported that three British citizens were held captive in a secret section (Camp Echo) of the Guantnamo Bay complex. [11] According to Danner, the report was marked "confidential" and was not previously made public before being made available to him. 7. A number of the alleged detainees listed above were transferred to the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in the fall of 2006. The UN considered evidence presented by the Moroccan government as well as by Amnesty International. For these fishermen, the ocean is the geography of their life. [100] "The Post has not identified the East European countries involved in the secret program at the request of senior U.S. officials who argued that the disclosure could disrupt counter-terrorism efforts".[102]. The Assembly declared that it was established with a high degree of probability that secret detention centres had been operated by the CIA under the High Value Detainee (HVD) program for some years in Poland and Romania. Secret prisons are operating in the United States today. Very often, detainees are brought to port in one of these cutters, then placed in a hidden room in a helicopter hangar or in a room below deck and hidden there for the day while the Coast Guard cutter refuels or the Coast Guard crew get a bit of a break and then are brought back out to sea. The Times report indicates that detainees are held in this inhumane legal limbo for weeks or months while the ships continue their patrols. Its content was created separately to USA TODAY. On November 8, 2005, rights group Amnesty International provided the first comprehensive testimony from former inmates of the CIA black sites. However, they aren't shackled to the deck of a ship for a few hours or even a few days. [82] However, in a file submitted in September 2015 to the European Court of Human Rights, a lawyer for a Saudi-born Guantanamo detainee said the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture released in December 2014 leaves "no plausible room for doubt" that Lithuania was somehow involved in the Central Intelligence Agency programme. : http://amzn.to/2pbWBzr What camera do we use to film? Prisons, European Antiterror Chief Says", "European Parliament resolution on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners", Executive Order -- Ensuring Lawful Interrogations, "CIA Prisons to Be Evaluated in One-Year Review by Senate Panel", "CIA says shuttering detention 'black sites', "Message from the Director: Interrogation Policy and Contracts", "U.S. to Prosecute a Somali Suspect in Civilian Court", "Congress Clashes Over Release of CIA Torture Report", "Top senator rejects CIA torture report redactions ahead of public release", "Here's What Dianne Feinstein Said About the Torture Report", "7 Key Points From the C.I.A. 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. This was apparently due to a misunderstanding that arose concerning the similarity of the spelling of El-Masri's name with the spelling of suspected terrorist Khalid al-Masri. Anything. [77] In September 2008, two anonymous Polish intelligence officers made the claims about facilities being located in Poland in the Polish daily newspaper Dziennik. The questioning of these and other suspected terrorists provided information that helped us protect the American people. In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. Do private prisons still exist in the US? It enforces drug laws on the oceans and, what few people know, is that the U.S. Coast Guard has actually been deployed in recent years deep into the Pacific Ocean to interdict drug smugglers moving between South America Colombia, Ecuador and Central America, where the drugs often cocaine are dropped off and then often moved up through Mexico. Gizmodo reports that the largest floating prison in the entire world is currently docked off the Bronx in Long Island Sound. Data published by the newspaper confirmed that the CIA hid the most dangerous al-Qaeda terrorists in what are called Black Sites (Dark Places) located in . He's now in a federal prison in New Jersey. At 3 a.m. on February 5, 2021, Aliou Cand, a sturdy, shy twenty-eight-year-old migrant from Guinea-Bissau, arrived at the prison. The Coast Guard was conscripted as the agency empowered to seek out suspected smugglers and bring them to American courts, the Times reports. Djibouti is a highly strategic location for the US military, primarily due to its close proximity to terrorist hot zones such as Somalia and Yemen as well as the pirate-filled Gulf of Aden. Give us the quick thumbnail sketch of this one guy, in particular, Jhonny Arcentales, and how he ended up there? Instead, five months after his death, the lead CIA officer who ordered Rahman be chained up was given a $2,500 bonus for consistently superior work.. The reason cited for the destruction of the tapes was that the tapes posed a security risk for the interrogators shown on the tapes. He didn't tell anyone and disappeared. [78] On January 23, 2009, The Guardian reported that the CIA had run black sites at Szymany Airport in Poland, Camp Eagle in Bosnia and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. MAINSTREAM MEDIA REPORTING: USA TODAY: U.S. Coast Guard Operating Secret Floating Prisons in Pacific Ocean. The report also claimed that Site Green was somewhat of an experiment, where the CIA honed their waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques, which would later be used at the larger European sites which the agency would go on to construct. Eight airports outside Europe are also cited. [1] [citation needed], The interior minister of Romania, Vasile Blaga, has assured the EU that the Mihail Koglniceanu Airport was used only as a supply point for equipment, and never for detention, though there have been reports to the contrary. For full details, see the section below on the media and investigative history. snapchat chat bitmoji peeking. Whatever happened to Johnny Arcentales? "Tales from Torture's Dark World" by Mark Danner, United States of America / Yemen: Secret Detention in CIA "Black Sites", AI Index: AMR 51/177/2005, Details about "CIA" flights requested to Portuguese government by MEP. secret floating prisonswaterrower footboard upgrade. I certainly hope you dont believe all of the idiotic crap shoveled by the US mainstream media. He was the head of Southern Command between 2012 and 2016 then retired. The defense for Aafia Siddiqui, who was tried in New York City, alleged that she was held and tortured in a secret US facility at Bagram for several years. 2.7m members in the teenagers community. detention and torture or about hosting prisons. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombings, was also supposedly held at Site Green. The men watched the guards discard their unfinished meals into trash bags hanging nearby and devised a plan. The CIA abducted Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (also known as Abu Omar) in Milan and transferred him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured and abused. Reports state that he, too, was waterboarded, in addition to being threatened with sodomy. the dramatic story of a small island nation on the other side of the world . 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