RESEARCHING AN ORGANISATION:

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has its
headquarters in the historic Palais Wilson building in Geneva, Switzerland
The Council was created by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 March
2006 by resolution 60/251.
The General Assembly established the UNHRC by adopting a resolution
(A/RES/60/251) on 15 March 2006, in order to replace the previous CHR, which
had been heavily criticised for allowing countries with poor human rights records
to be members
NGO
Human rights
BLACK SITES
It was only six days after the September 11th attacks when George W. Bush
issued a directive that allowed the CIA to detain and interrogate prisoners at
secret locations around the world. Locations where they are kept away from their
families, friends and any justice or due process that would have been their right
under any countrys legal system.

U.S. Armed Forces During Torture Process Abu Ghraib Source: Wikipedia
Eight of these sites were revealed together, along with some descriptions of the
cruel and degrading treatment of detainees, in the so-called torture report
a heavily redacted executive summary of the Senate committees study of the
CIAs interrogation program.

A Map of CIA black sites where detainees were held and interrogated (Photo
Curtesy of The Huffington Post)
This report uses color codes to identify the location of these Black Sites while
redacting country names, although prior reports by NGOs, the media and
European agencies can be used to cross-reference and identify them.
Some of the known sites are located in Afghanistan (Salt Pit, AKA Cobalt, Code
Black), Lithuania (Antaviliai, Code Violet), Romania (Bright Light, Code Black),
Poland (Quartz, Code Blue), Thailand (Cats Eye, Code Green) and a secret site on
the Guantanamo Naval Base, known as Strawberry Fields (Forever).
Below is a summary of the known abuses, locations and facts regarding these
sites. Following this summary is a further examination of the torture report,
highlighting the best(or worst) of the findings.
Salt Pit, Afghanistan

Reportedly a formerly abandoned brick factory built on a 10-acre area. It consists

of a single three-story building and several smaller ones. Serving as an
interrogation center as early as October 2001 soon after the US invasion, it also
serves as a detention facility and was at one point apparently also used as a
training facility for Afghan guards. Before Salt Pit, interrogations were conducted
in secured metal shipping containers at Bagram air base. Despite being a hostnation facility it was financed and controlled entirely by the CIA.
As of the March 2005 Washington Post article CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee
Treatment by Dana Priest, the brick factory had been long torn down following
the November 2002 death of an Afghan detainee. The man had been striped
naked and froze to death, buried and kept off the books. The CIA case officer
in charge of the facility has since been promoted, reportedly. At the time of
Priests article, the CIA was conducting an investigation into the matter.
A Senate aide who was not identified had said that the site was run by a junior
officer with no prior relevant experience. He had issues in his background that
should have flagged and disqualified him from even entering CIA service. The
Senate committee have also found that some employees at the site
had histories of violence and mistreatment of others while also lacking the
requisite training. One starts to wonder if these men were not chosen on purpose
for their brutality.
The torture report further reveals that in at least one other case was a man
held partially nude, chained to the floor and allowed to die from hypothermia.
Called The Dark Prison by former detainees, the Senate aide had said that the
site was as dark as a dungeon and that they had never seen a prison in America
where prisoners were kept in such horrible conditions. Some areas of the facility
were so dark that guards had to wear head lamps, while others were flooded with
bright lights and white noise.
At this decrepit facility, inmates were made to stand on broken feet or legs in
stress-inducing positions. This was despite earlier promising that they would not

subject wounded prisoners to any treatment that would worsen their injuries.
Lesson here kids? Dont listen if the CIA promises not to cruelly torture you. Or
promises anything really.

Antaviliai, Lithuania

Residents at the quiet Lithuanian village of Antaviliai were surprised by the

appearance of silent American construction workers, who had arrived at a
unused former riding club and cafe where they constructed a large two-story
building with (at first)no windows, surrounded by a metal fence and security
cameras. As of 2009, the Lithuanian government would appear to be in the dark
on this site, having set a parliamentary committee to investigate whether
America had been using it as a site for terrorism suspects from 2004-2005.
However, the report revealed that the state had allowed the CIA to build the
prison after a visit by George W. Bush who had told them that he would support
its bid to join NATO.
The new members of NATO were so grateful for the U.S. role in getting them
into that organization that they would do anything the U.S. asked for during that
period, said former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. They
were eager to please and eager to be cooperative on security and on intelligence
matters.
The activities in that prison were illegal, said human rights researcher John
Sifton. They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation,
forced standing, painful stress positions.

Bright Light, Romania

Closed in 2006, this site was located in a residential street and housed in a
building used as the National Registry for Classified Information or ORNISS,

where classified information from the EU and NATO is stored. It is the only facility
of the lot found in a high-traffic area. During the first month, detainees had to
endure sleep deprivation and stress positions, being doused with water and
slapped with the cells of inmates mounted on springs in order to keep them
perpetually off-balance. It seems Romanian intelligence lie as well, considering
the fact that ORNISS official Adrian Camarasan was quoted as saying that
buildings basement was extremely secure, but that America had never run a
prison there No, no. Impossible, impossible, he said in an ARD, a German
public television network, interview.
Quartz, Poland

Located in a remote forest near Stare Kiejkuty village, the two-story villa was
small and could hold only a few prisoners. If they were really good, they got to
ride on a stationary bike or run on a treadmill in one of the villas rooms And
thats all thats known about it. slapping, sleep deprivation and waterboarding
were common torture techniques used in this site.
This site was where Khalid Sheik Mohammed had been waterboarded 183
times confessed to masterminding the sept 11th attacks among other crimes,
including planning to assassinate Pope John Paul II, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter,
planing to blow up the Empire State Building, Heathrow Airport, Big Ben, Canary
Wharf and the Panama Canal.
Former Polish President Aleksander Kwaniewski acknowledged that he knew the
site existed but claimed that he did not know torture tactics were being used on
its prisoners. Polish officials have issued denials regarding the site for years, I
suppose theyve suddenly turned over a new leaf now that evidence implicating
Poland has appeared.

Asked if he knew what was happening inside, he said: About what the CIA was
doing? No. Inside the site, no.
Standing alongside Leszek Miller, who was Polish prime minister at the time the
secret site was operating, Kwasniewski said Poland had asked the U.S.
government to sign a document asserting the people at the facility would be
treated in accordance with Polish law and humanitarian norms.
The memorandum was not signed by the American side, said Kwasniewski. He
said the CIAs secrecy about what it was doing at the site caused concern among
Polish officials, prompting him to ask the U.S. government to close it down by the
end of 2003.
According to the Senate report, the CIA paid a large sum of money for the site,
which brought a more. flexible approach from initially skeptical host country
officials. Kwasniewski had claimed that if cash was received from the CIA, it was
not related to the site.
Adam Bodnar, vice-president of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for
Human Rights who helped bring the case against Poland to the European Court
of Human Rights, said ignorance about what the CIA was doing was not a
defense.
I think President Kwasniewski was wise enough at the time to know that the
Americans would probably use some additional techniques on the detainees,
Bodnar told Reuters.
It does not really matter whether they knew or didnt know about what the CIA
were doing there. In Poland, you cannot deprive anyone of their liberty without
the authorization of a court. Its as simple as that.
Cats Eye, Thailand
Not much is known about this site, other than the fact that officials would
eventually change the code name fearing that it would come across as racially
insensitive.
Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane, Guantanamo Bay Cuba
Named after a Beatles song, at one point CIA officials had joked that detainees
would be, as often repeated in the lyrics, held there forever.
Counterpart to the above facility was another also named after a Beatles song
was Penny Lane. A collection of cottages with their own patios, it was used to
train double agents; detainees were given better accommodation and rewards
compared to other Guantanamo detainees. Ironically only the most likely terror
suspects were chosen for the program, due to their close ties with Al Qaeda.
Most of these simply disappeared once they were released. Obama was aware of
this program after taking office, and after ordering an investigation on the results
soon started ordering drone strikes.

The Very Worst of The Torture Report

The following is a summary of the best, or worst, findings of the torture

report. Further, it should be noted that although these black sites were known to
some degree a long time ago, which probably led to the eventual closure of
some and the rotation of prisoners to new sites that even today may be
unknown, the torture report has finally brought to light the true severity and
heinousness of the men who authorised the level of abuse that has occurred
within, notwithstanding their claims of being unaware of the acts or the
increased level of danger to operatives and countries that had aided in their
deceit.
Waterboarding was commonplace
Despite CIA claims that only three detainees were ever waterboarded: Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd Al Rahim al-Nashiri, the torture
report reveals that many more than just the three were tortured. A photograph
of a well worn waterboard was described, surrounded by buckets of water at a
detention facility that the CIA had claimed had never subjected a single prisoner
to the torture technique. The CIA was unable to explain the presence of the
waterboard; apparently it must have been part of their War on Laundry.

Waterboarding IS very dangerous

Despite the VERY reputable claims of the CIA that waterboarding was a far
safer variant of surfboarding, the Senate report says that the waterboarding was
physically harmful, leading to convulsions and vomiting. During one session,
detainee Abu Zubaydah became completely unresponsive with bubbles rising
through his open full mouth. As mentioned previously, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed was waterboarded at least 183 times, which the Senate report
describes as escalating into a series of near drownings. Most people would
admit that they were the first men to live on Mars by the 25th near-drowning
episode. By the 50th they would be convinced that they WERE Martians.

Torture from beginning to End

Beginning with Abu Zubaydah, followed by many others, the CIA began using
their worst torture techniques without first trying to elicit information in an
open, non-threatening manner, the committee found. The torture continued
nearly non-stop, for days or weeks at a time.

Zubaydah had been shot several times during his capture: In the chest, groin and
leg. He still hadfragments in these wounds. The FBI were the first to interrogate
him, and had used traditional techniques (they had nursed his wounds in order to
gain his confidence) which had caused Zubaydah to reveal information
implicating two men. By the way, this runs counter to Bushs claim that torture
was necessary in order to obtain this information.
Two weeks after the FBI had arrived, the CIA took over with their brutal torture
techniques. Ali Soufan, one of the two FBI agents sent there, was shocked by
their techniques.

At one point, Soufan discovered a dark wooden confinement box that the
CIA had built for Abu Zubaydah. It looked, Soufan recalls, like a coffin. The
agent called Pasquale DAmuro, then the FBI assistant director for
counterterrorism. I swear to God, he shouted, Im going to arrest these guys!
DAmuro and other officials were alarmed at what they heard from Soufan.
According to a later Justice Department inspector generals report, DAmuro
warned FBI Director Bob Mueller that such activities would eventually be
investigated. Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt
tables having to testify about all of this, DAmuro said.
Throughout his torture, the CIA had instructed personnel at the site that his
interrogation should take precedence over his medical care. This led to an
infection of one of his wounds. These instructions ran counter with what they had
told the Justice Department regarding how they would treat prisoners. His left
eye had also mysteriously disappeared while he was in their custody, though no
prior injury would seem to justify its removal.

Eating without your mouth, among other horrible abuses

Rectal feeding and rectal hydration were other common techniques of torture,
with one officer noting that While IV infusion is safe and effective, rectal
hydration could be used as a form of behavior control.
Prisoners were made to stand for up to 180 hours at a time, sometimes with
hands shackled above their heads, depriving them of sleep for more than seven
days at a time.
Detainees were forced to walk around naked, or permanently shackled with
hands above their heads. Others were hooded and dragged around, beaten up in
the process.
At least one facility had prisoners stored in perpetual darkness, shacked in their
cells with constant loud noise and music and a single bucket for the disposal of
waste.
Ghost Prisoners
Although the CIA claimed publicly that they only held around 100 prisoners (what
have we learnt regarding the trustworthiness of CIA words?); the committee had
found at least 119 prisoners in their custody.
The fact is they lost track and they didnt really know who they were holding,
the Senate aide said, noting that investigators had found emails in which CIA
personnel were surprised to find some people in their custody. The CIA had
also independently determined that at least 26 of its detainees were wrongfully
held. Due to the agencys poor record-keeping (purposefully poor), it may never
be known precisely how many detainees were held, and how they were treated
in custody, the committee found. At this point I worry that most of those who are
not on the books are dead or languishing in even more decrepit locales. Forever
indeed.

No useful intelligence
As alluded to in Abu Zubaydahs case, the report concludes that the CIAs
interrogation did not yield information that could have been derived from more
conventional means of interrogation.
When you put detainees through these [torture sessions] they will say whatever
they can say to get the interrogations to stop, the Senate aide said.
The torture report reveals that of the 20 examples cited by the CIA of intelligence
successes no relationship was found between the techniques used and the
success.

Information that had been found via torture could at best only be found to have
corrorated information that had been already available to the intelligence
community from other sources such as reports, communication intercepts,
information from law-enforcement agencies and information obtained via normal
interrogation. The CIA had told policymakers and the Department of Justice that
the information from torture was unique or otherwise unavailable. Such
information comes from the kind of good national-security tradecraft that we
rely on to stop terrorist plots at all times, the Senate aide said.

In developing the enhanced interrogation techniques, the report said, the CIA
failed to review the historical use of coercive interrogations. The resulting
techniques were described as discredited coercive interrogation techniques
such as those used by torturous regimes during the Cold War to elicit false
confessions. The CIA admitted that it never properly reviewed the effectiveness
of these techniques (despite the fact that it doesnt take a historian to tell you
that torture doesnt work), despite the urging of the CIA inspector general,
congressional leadership, and Condoleezza Rice.

Can anyone say corruption?

The CIA had only relied on two psychologists with experience at the Air Forces
Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school to help develop, run, and assess
the interrogation program. Neither of the two had interrogation experience, nor
had they been privy to specialized knowledge of Al Qaeda, counter-terrorism or
any languages used by suspects. In 2005 the two of them had simply formed a
company, after which the CIA had outsourced all aspects of the torture program
to them, whereupon the two were paid more than 80 million dollars for their
services.
Can anyone say plausible deniability?
The Panetta Review, an internal CIA report, found that there were inaccuracies in
the manner that they had chosen to convey the effectiveness of interrogation
techniques- they claim to have even misled the president about this. The CIAs
own records also contradict the evidence they had provided to prove that they
had thwarted some terrorist attacks or captured suspects via the use of torture.
There were cases in which White House questions were not even answered

truthfully or completely. If the CIA were really lying to the president(s), I would
expect more than a few heads to roll. If not, this was a case of simply not
wanting to know.
Redacted
The CIA had briefed the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee of their
plans early on. Senate investigators have found a draft summary of that
meeting, written by CIA lawyers, noting that the House Intelligence Committee
had questioned the legality of these techniques. The lawyers promptly deleted
that line from the final version of the summary. Short and sweet, a former top
spy Jose Rodriguez had written, approving the new summary that conveniently
failed to mention that lawmakers had expressed concerns about the legality of
the program.
Threatening to harm children, rape mothers
CIA agents had threatened to harm the children of detainees, and even sexually
abuse their mothers and cut [a detainees] mothers throat.. Several prisoners
were even made to believe that they would die in custody, with one being told
that he would leave in a coffin-shaped box.
Sexual Assault
Officers in the CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program
even included individuals who among other things, had engaged in
inappropriate detainee interrogations, had workplace anger management issues,
and had reportedly admitted to sexual assault.

BLACK SITES IN SA and SOMALIA

South Africa has previously been named as one of the countries complicit in
Americas war on terror. But has the CIAs torture report shed further light on our
involvement? News24 finds out.
The eagerly awaited US Senates report on the CIAs detention and interrogation
programme under former US president George W Bush has put US embassies
around the world on high alert.
The report revealed that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the CIA offered lump
sum payments to foreign countries to encourage their willingness to house
secret detention centres.
It also said that US Ambassadors were aware of the centres - known as black
sites - and would have been kept informed on developing legal, media or policy
issues by the local CIA station chiefs.
Enthusiastic
The landmark report, which listed some of the brutal torture tactics used in the
CIAs war on terror, said many foreign governments were enthusiastic about
assisting the CIA in its counter-terrorism mission.

The US Senate report said: It is certainly true that the CIA, as did the US
government as a whole, called on allies and friends after 9/11 to assist in a
variety of ways in the fight against international terrorism.
It added: Most of those [countries] approached were willing to host detention
facilities on the understanding that CIA would keep their co-operation secret.
However, it admits that various leaks in the press of black sites did put local
diplomatic relations under pressure.
The report said it was true that leaks resulted in varying amounts of domestic
fallout in these countries. However, the assessment...do not support the
conclusion that the leaks strained relations between the US and its partners.
Black sites in South Africa
The 600-page summary of the 6 000-page report, published on Tuesday by the
Senate intelligence committee, has redacted - or blanked out - the names of the
countries involved.
A spokesperson for the US Embassy in Pretoria told News24: We will not confirm
which countries were or were not involved, nor will we comment on any specific
findings or conclusion in the committees report, the minority report, of the CIA
response.
South Africa however has previously been listed by the Open Society Foundations
as one of the 54 countries that has participated in CIA operations.
Whats more, UK newspaper The Guardian claimed in 2009 that the CIA had
black sites in South Africa.
Brian Dube, spokesperson for South Africas State Security department, told
News24: We work with our partners and counterparts to share information. It is
important - we cant work in isolation. But it is difficult to say - with our line of
work - exactly what we do.
For these reasons Dube would not comment on the existence of black sites in
South Africa, or any further assistance our government may offer the CIA.
The US Embassy spokesperson added: The United States greatly values our
close co-operation with our allies on a range of shared initiatives. This will not
change.
Stain on our values
The US Senate meanwhile said there was nothing improper about paying
foreign governments to host detention centres.
To encourage governments to clandestinely host detention sites, the CIA
provided cash payments to foreign government officials...Through legislation
however...CIA has independent authority to make subsidy payments, the report
said.
Yet the report revealed that the CIA lied repeatedly about the tactics they used to
extract information at these sites - which included sleep deprivation, mock
executions and simulated drowning or "water boarding".

Senate intelligence committee chairperson Dianne Feinstein, in a statement

summarising the findings, said that the CIAs programme was a stain on our
values and on our history.
The US Embassy spokesperson told News24 that though post-9/11 decisions are
part of US history, they are not representative of the way we deal with the
threat from terrorism we still face today.
He pointed out that President Barack Obama has made it clear that some of
the CIAs tactics are contrary to US values, and one of his first acts in office was
to prohibit harsh interrogation techniques.
Carte blanche
According to a study by the Open Society Foundations, South Africa is known
to have participated in the CIA secret detention of Saud Memon, a Pakistani
suspected in the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
The study claimed that in 2003 South Africa appeared to give US intelligence
agencies carte blanche to pursue Memon, abduct him and transfer him to
Pakistan.
It has also been alleged by the lawyer for Pakistani national Khalid Rashid that
the South African government was involved in Rashids rendition in October
2005 from South Africa to Pakistan, and that Rashid may have been handed over
to US agents.
At the time, the South African minister of home affairs claimed that Rashid was
arrested and deported because he resided in the country illegally. Four years
later, the Supreme Court of Appeal found that his deportation was unlawful.
Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishus Aden Adde International Airport is a
sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the
coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with
more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard
towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large
metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which
airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months
ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the
facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence
agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of
snatch operations and targeted combat operations against members of Al
Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.

As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a
secret prison buried in the basement of Somalias National Security Agency
(NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of
having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off
the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground
prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the
salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The
existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during

an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu. Among the sources who

provided information for this story are senior Somali intelligence officials; senior
members of Somalias Transitional Federal Government (TFG); former prisoners
held at the underground prison; and several well-connected Somali analysts and
militia leaders, some of whom have worked with US agents, including those from
the CIA. A US official, who confirmed the existence of both sites, told The Nation,
It makes complete sense to have a strong counterterrorism partnership with
the Somali government.
__

The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washingtons intensifying

counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special
Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US
agents are here full time, a senior Somali intelligence official told me. At times,
he said, there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu, but he stressed that
those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they
advise and train Somali agents. In this environment, its very tricky. They want
to help us, but the situation is not allowing them to do [it] however they want.
They are not in control of the politics, they are not in control of the security, he
adds. They are not controlling the environment like Afghanistan and Iraq. In
Somalia, the situation is fluid, the situation is changing, personalities changing.
According to well-connected Somali sources, the CIA is reluctant to deal directly
with Somali political leaders, who are regarded by US officials as corrupt and
untrustworthy. Instead, the United States has Somali intelligence agents on its
payroll. Somali sources with knowledge of the program described the agents as
lining up to receive $200 monthly cash payments from Americans. They support
us in a big way financially, says the senior Somali intelligence official. They are
the largest [funder] by far.
According to former detainees, the underground prison, which is staffed by
Somali guards, consists of a long corridor lined with filthy small cells infested
with bedbugs and mosquitoes. One said that when he arrived in February, he
saw two white men wearing military boots, combat trousers, gray tucked-in shirts
and black sunglasses. The former prisoners described the cells as windowless
and the air thick, moist and disgusting. Prisoners, they said, are not allowed
outside. Many have developed rashes and scratch themselves incessantly. Some
have been detained for a year or more. According to one former prisoner,
inmates who had been there for long periods would pace around constantly,
while others leaned against walls rocking.
A Somali who was arrested in Mogadishu and taken to the prison told The
Nation that he was held in a windowless underground cell. Among the prisoners
he met during his time there was a man who held a Western passport (he
declined to identify the mans nationality). Some of the prisoners told him they
were picked up in Nairobi and rendered on small aircraft to Mogadishu, where
they were handed over to Somali intelligence agents. Once in custody, according
to the senior Somali intelligence official and former prisoners, some detainees
are freely interrogated by US and French agents. Our goal is to please our
partners, so we get more [out] of them, like any relationship, said the Somali

intelligence official in describing the policy of allowing foreign agents, including

from the CIA, to interrogate prisoners. The Americans, according to the Somali
official, operate unilaterally in the country, while the French agents are
embedded within the African Union force known as AMISOM.
Among the men believed to be held in the secret underground prison is Ahmed
Abdullahi Hassan, a 25- or 26-year-old Kenyan citizen who disappeared from the
congested Somali slum of Eastleigh in Nairobi around July 2009. After he went
missing, Hassans family retained Mbugua Mureithi, a well-known Kenyan human
rights lawyer, who filed a habeas petition on his behalf. The Kenyan government
responded that Hassan was not being held in Kenya and said it had no
knowledge of his whereabouts. His fate remained a mystery until this spring,
when another man who had been held in the Mogadishu prison contacted Clara
Gutteridge, a veteran human rights investigator with the British legal
organization Reprieve, and told her he had met Hassan in the prison. Hassan, he
said, had told him how Kenyan police had knocked down his door, snatched him
and taken him to a secret location in Nairobi. The next night, Hassan had said, he
was rendered to Mogadishu.
According to the former fellow prisoner, Hassan told him that his captors took
him to Wilson Airport: They put a bag on my head, Guantnamo style. They
tied my hands behind my back and put me on a plane. In the early hours we
landed in Mogadishu. The way I realized I was in Mogadishu was because of the
smell of the seathe runway is just next to the seashore. The plane lands and
touches the sea. They took me to this prison, where I have been up to now. I
have been here for one year, seven months. I have been interrogated so many
times. Interrogated by Somali men and white men. Every day. New faces show
up. They have nothing on me. I have never seen a lawyer, never seen an
outsider. Only other prisoners, interrogators, guards. Here there is no court or
tribunal.
After meeting the man who had spoken with Hassan in the underground prison,
Gutteridge began working with Hassans Kenyan lawyers to determine his
whereabouts. She says he has never been charged or brought before a court.
Hassans abduction from Nairobi and rendition to a secret prison in Somalia
bears all the hallmarks of a classic US rendition operation, she says. The US
official interviewed for this article denied the CIA had rendered Hassan but said,
The United States provided information which helped get Hassana dangerous
terroristoff the street. Human Rights Watch and Reprieve have documented
that Kenyan security and intelligence forces have facilitated scores of renditions
for the US and other governments, including eighty-five people rendered to
Somalia in 2007 alone. Gutteridge says the director of the Mogadishu prison told
one of her sources that Hassan had been targeted in Nairobi because of
intelligence suggesting he was the right-hand man of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan,
at the time a leader of Al Qaeda in East Africa. Nabhan, a Kenyan citizen of
Yemeni descent, was among the top suspects sought for questioning by US
authorities over his alleged role in the coordinated 2002 attacks on a tourist
hotel and an Israeli aircraft in Mombasa, Kenya, and possible links to the 1998 US
Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
An intelligence report leaked by the Kenyan Anti-Terrorist Police Unit in October
2010 alleged that Hassan, a former personal assistant to Nabhanwas injured

while fighting near the presidential palace in Mogadishu in 2009. The

authenticity of the report cannot be independently confirmed, though Hassan did
have a leg amputated below the knee, according to his former fellow prisoner in
Mogadishu.
Two months after Hassan was allegedly rendered to the secret Mogadishu prison,
Nabhan, the man believed to be his Al Qaeda boss, was killed in the first known
targeted killing operation in Somalia authorized by President Obama. On
September 14, 2009, a team from the elite US counterterrorism force, the Joint
Special Operations Command (JSOC), took off by helicopters from a US Navy ship
off Somalias coast and penetrated Somali airspace. In broad daylight, in an
operation code-named Celestial Balance, they gunned down Nabhans convoy
from the air. JSOC troops then landed and collected at least two of the bodies,
including Nabhans.
Hassans lawyers are preparing to file a habeas petition on his behalf in US
courts. Hassans case suggests that the US may be involved in a decentralized,
out-sourced Guantnamo Bay in central Mogadishu, his legal team asserted in a
statement to The Nation. Mr. Hassan must be given the opportunity to challenge
both his rendition and continued detention as a matter of urgency. The US must
urgently confirm exactly what has been done to Mr. Hassan, why he is being
held, and when he will be given a fair hearing.
Gutteridge, who has worked extensively tracking the disappearances of terror
suspects in Kenya, was deported from Kenya on May 11.
The underground prison where Hassan is allegedly being held is housed in the
same building once occupied by Somalias infamous National Security Service
(NSS) during the military regime of Siad Barre, who ruled from 1969 to 1991. The
former prisoner who met Hassan there said he saw an old NSS sign outside.
During Barres regime, the notorious basement prison and interrogation center,
which sits behind the presidential palace in Mogadishu, was a staple of the
states apparatus of repression. It was referred to as Godka, The Hole.
The bunker is there, and thats where the intelligence agency does interrogate
people, says Abdirahman Aynte Ali, a Somali analyst who has researched the
Shabab and Somali security forces. When CIA and other intelligence agencies
who actually are in Mogadishuwant to interrogate those people, they usually
just do that. Somali officials start the interrogation, but then foreign
intelligence agencies eventually do their own interrogation as well, the
Americans and the French. The US official said that US agents debriefing
prisoners in the facility has been done on only rare occasions and always
jointly with Somali agents.
Some prisoners, like Hassan, were allegedly rendered from Nairobi, while in other
cases, according to Aynte, the US and other intelligence agencies have notified
the Somali intelligence agency that some people, some suspects, people who
have been in contact with the leadership of Al Shabab, are on their way to
Mogadishu on a [commercial] plane, and to essentially be at the airport for those
people. Catch them, interrogate them.
***

In the eighteen years since the infamous Black Hawk Down incident in
Mogadishu, US policy on Somalia has been marked by neglect, miscalculation
and failed attempts to use warlords to build indigenous counterterrorism
capacity, many of which have backfired dramatically. At times, largely because of
abuses committed by Somali militias the CIA has supported, US policy has
strengthened the hand of the very groups it purports to oppose and
inadvertently aided the rise of militant groups, including the Shabab. Many
Somalis viewed the Islamic movement known as the Islamic Courts Union, which
defeated the CIAs warlords in Mogadishu in 2006, as a stabilizing, albeit
ruthless, force. The ICU was dismantled in a US-backed Ethiopian invasion in
2007. Over the years, a series of weak Somali administrations have been
recognized by the United States and other powers as Somalias legitimate
government. Ironically, its current president is a former leader of the ICU.
Today, Somali government forces control roughly thirty square miles of territory
in Mogadishu thanks in large part to the US-funded and -armed 9,000-member
AMISOM force. Much of the rest of the city is under the control of the Shabab or
warlords. Outgunned, the Shabab has increasingly relied on the linchpins of
asymmetric warfaresuicide bombings, roadside bombs and targeted
assassinations. The militant group has repeatedly shown that it can strike deep
in the heart of its enemies territory. On June 9, in one of its most spectacular
suicide attacks to date, the Shabab assassinated the Somali governments
minister of interior affairs and national security, Abdishakur Sheikh Hassan Farah,
who was attacked in his residence by his niece. The girl, whom the minister was
putting through university, blew herself up and fatally wounded her uncle. He
died hours later in the hospital. Farah was the fifth Somali minister killed by the
Shabab in the past two years and the seventeenth official assassinated since
2006. Among the suicide bombers the Shabab has deployed were at least three
US citizens of Somali descent; at least seven other Americans have died fighting
alongside the Shabab, a fact that has not gone unnoticed in Washington or
Mogadishu.
During his confirmation hearings in June to become the head of the US Special
Operations Command, Vice Admiral William McRaven said, From my standpoint
as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at
Somalia. McRaven said that in order to expand successful kinetic strikes there,
the United States will have to increase its use of drones as well as on-the-ground
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations. Any expansion of
manpower is going to have to come with a commensurate expansion of the
enablers, McRaven declared. The expanding US counterterrorism program in
Mogadishu appears to be part of that effort.
In an interview with The Nation in Mogadishu, Abdulkadir Moallin Noor, the
minister of state for the presidency, confirmed that US agents are working with
our intelligence and giving them training. Regarding the US counterterrorism
effort, Noor said bluntly, We need more; otherwise, the terrorists will take over
the country.
It is unclear how much control, if any, Somalias internationally recognized
president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has over this counterterrorism force or if
he is even fully briefed on its operations. The CIA personnel and other US
intelligence agents do not bother to be in touch with the political leadership of

the country. And that says a lot about the intentions, says Aynte. Essentially,
the CIA seems to be operating, doing the foreign policy of the United States. You
should have had State Department people doing foreign policy, but the CIA
seems to be doing it across the country.
While the Somali officials interviewed for this story said the CIA is the lead US
agency on the Mogadishu counterterrorism program, they also indicated that US
military intelligence agents are at times involved. When asked if they are from
JSOC or the Defense Intelligence Agency, the senior Somali intelligence official
responded, We dont know. They dont tell us.
In April Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali man the United States alleged had
links to the Shabab, was captured by JSOC forces in the Gulf of Aden. He was
held incommunicado on a US Navy vessel for more than two months; in July he
was transferred to New York and indicted on terrorism charges. Warsames case
ignited a legal debate over the Obama administrations policies on capturing and
detaining terror suspects, particularly in light of the widening counterterrorism
campaigns in Somalia and Yemen.
On June 23 the United States reportedly carried out a drone strike against
alleged Shabab members near Kismayo, 300 miles from the Somali capital. As
with the Nabhan operation, a JSOC team swooped in on helicopters and
reportedly snatched the bodies of those killed and wounded. The men were
taken to an undisclosed location. On July 6 three more US strikes reportedly
targeted Shabab training camps in the same area. Somali analysts warned that if
the US bombings cause civilian deaths, as they have in the past, they could
increase support for the Shabab. Asked in an interview with The Nation in
Mogadishu if US drone strikes strengthen or weaken his government, President
Sharif replied, Both at the same time. For our sovereignty, its not good to
attack a sovereign country. Thats the negative part. The positive part is youre
targeting individuals who are criminals.
A week after the June 23 strike, President Obamas chief counterterrorism
adviser, John Brennan, described an emerging US strategy that would focus not
on deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to
the groups that threaten us. Brennan singled out the Shabab, saying, From the
territory it controls in Somalia, Al Shabab continues to call for strikes against the
United States, adding, We cannot and we will not let down our guard. We will
continue to pummel Al Qaeda and its ilk.
While the United States appears to be ratcheting up both its rhetoric and its
drone strikes against the Shabab, it has thus far been able to strike only in rural
areas outside Mogadishu. These operations have been isolated and infrequent,
and Somali analysts say they have failed to disrupt the Shababs core leadership,
particularly in Mogadishu.
In a series of interviews in Mogadishu, several of the countrys recognized
leaders, including President Sharif, called on the US government to quickly and
dramatically increase its assistance to the Somali military in the form of training,
equipment and weapons. Moreover, they argue that without viable civilian
institutions, Somalia will remain ripe for terrorist groups that can further
destabilize not only Somalia but the region. I believe that the US should help the

Somalis to establish a government that protects civilians and its people, Sharif
said.
In the battle against the Shabab, the United States does not, in fact, appear to
have cast its lot with the Somali government. The emerging US strategy on
Somaliaborne out in stated policy, expanded covert presence and funding
plansis two-pronged: On the one hand, the CIA is training, paying and at times
directing Somali intelligence agents who are not firmly under the control of the
Somali government, while JSOC conducts unilateral strikes without the prior
knowledge of the government; on the other, the Pentagon is increasing its
support for and arming of the counterterrorism operations of non-Somali African
military forces.
A draft of a defense spending bill approved in late June by the Senate Armed
Services Committee would authorize more than $75 million in US
counterterrorism assistance aimed at fighting the Shabab and Al Qaeda in
Somalia. The bill, however, did not authorize additional funding for Somalias
military, as the countrys leaders have repeatedly asked. Instead, the aid
package would dramatically increase US arming and financing of AMISOMs
forces, particularly from Uganda and Burundi, as well as the militaries of Djibouti,
Kenya and Ethiopia. The Somali military, the committee asserted, is unable to
exercise control of its territory.
That makes it all the more ironic that perhaps the greatest tactical victory won in
recent years in Somalia was delivered not by AMISOM, the CIA or JSOC but by
members of a Somali militia fighting as part of the governments chaotic local
military. And it was a pure accident.
Late in the evening on June 7, a man whose South African passport identified him
as Daniel Robinson was in the passenger seat of a Toyota SUV driving on the
outskirts of Mogadishu when his driver, a Kenyan national, missed a turn and
headed straight toward a checkpoint manned by Somali forces. A firefight broke
out, and the two men inside the car were killed. The Somali forces promptly
looted the laptops, cellphones, documents, weapons and $40,000 in cash they
found in the car, according to the senior Somali intelligence official.
Upon discovering that the men were foreigners, the Somali NSA launched an
investigation and recovered the items that had been looted. There was a lot of
English and Arabic stuff, papers, recalls the Somali intelligence official,
containing very tactical stuff that appeared to be linked to Al Qaeda, including
two senior people communicating. The Somali agents realized it was an
important man and informed the CIA in Mogadishu. The mens bodies were
taken to the NSA. The Americans took DNA samples and fingerprints and flew
them to Nairobi for processing.
Within hours, the United States confirmed that Robinson was in fact Fazul
Abdullah Mohammed, a top leader of Al Qaeda in East Africa and its chief liaison
with the Shabab. Fazul, a twenty-year veteran of Al Qaeda, had been indicted by
the United States for his alleged role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings and was
on the FBIs Most Wanted Terrorists list. A JSOC attempt to kill him in a January
2007 airstrike resulted in the deaths of at least seventy nomads in rural Somalia,
and he had been underground ever since. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
called Fazuls death a significant blow to Al Qaeda, its extremist allies and its

operations in East Africa. It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much
death and pain to so many innocents.
At its facilities in Mogadishu, the CIA and its Somali NSA agents continue to pore
over the materials recovered from Fazuls car, which served as a mobile
headquarters. Some deleted and encrypted files were recovered and decoded by
US agents. The senior Somali intelligence official said that the intelligence may
prove more valuable on a tactical level than the cache found in Osama bin
Ladens house in Pakistan, especially in light of the increasing US focus on East
Africa. The Americans, he said, were unbelievably grateful; he hopes it means
they will take Somalias forces more seriously and provide more support.
But the United States continues to wage its campaign against the Shabab
primarily by funding the AMISOM forces, which are not conducting their mission
with anything resembling surgical precision. Instead, over the past several
months the AMISOM forces in Mogadishu have waged a merciless campaign of
indiscriminate shelling of Shabab areas, some of which are heavily populated by
civilians. While AMISOM regularly puts out press releases boasting of gains
against the Shabab and the retaking of territory, the reality paints a far more
complicated picture.
Throughout the areas AMISOM has retaken is a honeycomb of underground
tunnels once used by Shabab fighters to move from building to building. By some
accounts, the tunnels stretch continuously for miles. Leftover food, blankets and
ammo cartridges lay scattered near pop-up positions once used by Shabab
snipers and guarded by sandbagsall that remain of guerrilla warfare positions.
Not only have the Shabab fighters been cleared from the aboveground areas; the
civilians that once resided there have been cleared too. On several occasions in
late June, AMISOM forces fired artillery from their airport base at the Bakaara
market, where whole neighborhoods are totally abandoned. Houses lie in ruins
and animals wander aimlessly, chewing trash. In some areas, bodies have been
hastily buried in trenches with dirt barely masking the remains. On the side of
the road in one former Shabab neighborhood, a decapitated corpse lay just
meters from a new government checkpoint.
In late June the Pentagon approved plans to send $45 million worth of military
equipment to Uganda and Burundi, the two major forces in the AMISOM
operation. Among the new items are four small Raven surveillance drones, nightvision and communications equipment and other surveillance gear, all of which
augur a more targeted campaign. Combined with the attempt to build an
indigenous counterterrorism force at the Somali NSA, a new US counterterrorism
strategy is emerging.
But according to the senior Somali intelligence official, who works directly with
the US agents, the CIA-led program in Mogadishu has brought few tangible gains.
So far what we have not seen is the results in terms of the capacity of the
[Somali] agency, says the official. He conceded that neither US nor Somali
forces have been able to conduct a single successful targeted mission in the
Shababs areas in the capital. In late 2010, according to the official, US-trained
Somali agents conducted an operation in a Shabab area that failed terribly and
resulted in several of them being killed. There was an attempt, but it was a

haphazard one, he recalls. They have not tried another targeted operation in
Shabab-controlled territory since.

Guantnamo Bay detention camp, also called Gitmo, U.S. detention facility
on the Guantnamo Bay Naval Base, located on the coast ofGuantnamo Bay in
southeastern Cuba. Constructed in stages starting in 2002, the Guantnamo Bay
detention camp (often called Gitmo, which is also a name for the naval base) was
used to house Muslim militants and suspected terrorists captured by U.S. forces
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere (see also Iraq War). The facility became the
focus of worldwide controversy over alleged violations of the legal rights of
detainees under theGeneva Conventions and accusations of torture or abusive
treatment of detainees by U.S. authorities.

zoo
m_in
The entrance to an internment facility at Camp Delta, Guantnamo Bay, Cuba.
Kathleen T. Rhem/U.S. Department of Defense

In early 2002 the camp began receiving suspected members of al-Qaeda, the
terrorist organization responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks, and
fighters for the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist faction that had
ruledAfghanistan (19962001) and harboured al-Qaeda leader Osama bin
Ladenand his followers. Eventually hundreds of prisoners from several countries
were held at the camp without charge and without the legal means to challenge
their detentions. The administration of Republican Pres. George W.
Bush maintained that it was neither obliged to grant basic constitutional
protections to the prisoners, since the base was outside U.S. territory, nor
required to observe the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of
prisoners of war and civilians during wartime, as the conventions did not apply to
unlawful enemy combatants. In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Courtdeclared that the

system of military commissions that was to be used to try selected prisoners

held at Guantnamo was in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform
Code of Military Justice. The legality of the commissions was restored in 2006 by
the Military Commission Act, which also denied the federal courts jurisdiction to
hear habeas corpus petitions on behalf of foreign detainees. In 2008, however,
the court overturned the latter provision of the law by ruling
(in Boumediene v. Bush) that foreign detainees did have the right to challenge
their detentions in the federal courts. Despite the courts decision, several
prisoners who had been cleared for release in other countries or for transfer to
their home countries continued to be detained, either because no country would
accept them or because their home countries were deemed too volatile to
guarantee their secure imprisonment.
The camp was repeatedly condemned by international human rights and
humanitarian organizationsincluding Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, and the International Committee of the Red Crossas well as by
theEuropean Union and the Organization of American States (OAS), for
allegedhuman rights violations, including the use of various forms
of torture during interrogations. In response to such criticism, the Bush
administration generally insisted that detainees were well cared for and that
none of the enhanced interrogation techniques employed on some prisoners
were torturous. (In 2009, however, the U.S. official in charge of military
commissions at Guantnamo declared that the detainee suspected as a would-be
hijacker in the September 11 attacks could not be prosecuted because he had
been tortured.) Additionally, according to U.S. officials, the use of such
techniques had in many casese.g., in the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh
Muhammad, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 plotyielded valuable
intelligence on the leadership, methods, and plans of al-Qaeda and other
terrorist organizations
On January 22, 2009, Democratic Pres. Barack Obama fulfilled a campaign
pledge by ordering the closure of the facility at Guantnamo within one year and
a review of ways to transfer detainees to the United States for imprisonment or
trial. He also required interrogators to use only the techniques contained in the
U.S. Armys field manual on interrogation, none of which was considered
torturous. The closure of the Guantnamo camp was subsequently delayed by
opposition from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, who argued that
housing the detainees in prisons on U.S. soil would imperil national security. In
2013 more than half of the camps 166 detainees, some of whom had been
cleared for release or transfer, engaged in a hunger strike to draw attention to
their situation.