The drugs are moving from South America to Central America as far as they're concerned. [98], A story by reporter Dana Priest published in The Washington Post of November 2, 2005, reported: "The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important alleged al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. Describing what sounded to me like real terror for them on the high seas. [45] Some Guantanamo Bay detainees report being tortured in a prison they called "the dark prison", also near Kabul. Locals described seeing US contractors digging around the property, creating what they assumed was an underground complex beneath the main building. For full details, see the section below on the media and investigative history. It has been said that you can judge a society by how it treats people accused of violating its laws. This is what we've got.". The USS Bataan used as an illegal prison/jail/torture holding tank? Some have speculated that the information allegedly leaked may have included information about the camps. Simple Product Both men stated that they were violently abducted by Bosnian soldiers, who then accused them of being terrorists. The installation is currently home to roughly 4,000 military personnel and independent contractors. But now it's like a prison in the open ocean. Lets see. Men. The Coast Guard makes the argument that these people are not formally under arrest until they get to the United States. Despite protests in major Russian cities against the situation in Chechnya, Vladimir Putin, wanting to maintain good relations with Kadyrov, has denied that any abuses of homosexuals in Chechnya have occurred. [42] Thailand has denied the existence of the site while the US government has neither confirmed or denied its existence. Just when I cant imagine my country becoming even MORE repulsive, another proverbial jack-boot of a war crime drops. 12/07/22: 3: U.S. Coast Guard operating secret floating prisons in Pacific Ocean: 05/31/18: 4: Conspiracy my ass!!! In fact, his son-in-law decided not long after that earthquake to take one of these jobs and left home. [70] Slovak ministry spokesman Richard Fides said the country had no black sites, but its intelligence service spokesman Vladimir Simko said he would not disclose any information about possible Slovak black sites to the media. How can the Coast Guard get away with keeping people under those conditions when the men haven't even been charged? The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program damaged the United States' standing in the world, and resulted in other significant monetary and non-monetary costs. [49][50][51][52][53][54] A Geneva-based human rights group, SAM for Rights and Liberties called on the Emirati forces to close all its secret prisons being operated in Yemen. Well, John Kelly was in charge of Southern Command, the Department of Defense area of operation in Latin America that's in charge of managing the drug war in Latin America. [12], In December 2002, The Washington Post reported that "the capture of al Qaeda leaders Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Pakistan, Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen were all partly the result of information gained during interrogations." According to human rights lawyers, the US has also attempted to conceal the number and whereabouts of detainees. How many private prisons exist in the US? "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. At some point prior to 2005, the prison was again relocated, this time to an unknown site. November 28, 2017 . The list of those thought to be held by the CIA includes suspected al-Qaeda members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Abu Zubaydah. This is a practice of detention that until now hasn't really been known. Wessler spoke with The World's Carol Hills about his reporting and these "floating Guantnamos" on the Pacific Ocean. The locale is claimed by the United Kingdom as part of their British Indian Ocean Territory. 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. Presenter Paula Harriott is Head of Prisoner Engagement for the Prison Reform Trust, having spent time behind bars. They are, verbatim from the unclassified summary report:[149], According to the report, at least 26 of the 119 prisoners (22%) held by the CIA were subsequently found by the CIA to have been improperly detained,[149] many having also experienced torture. Yes, the Coast Guard is actively hiding its prisoners so it can essentially keep them at sea indefinitely. ebay spotify premium lifetime; cold war mil program crossword; average height for a 12 year old korean girl; characteristics of peter paul rubens artwork; secret floating prisons. Furthermore, the CIA apparently financially assists and directs the jails in these countries. The article went on to state that a Boeing 737 (registration number N313P, later reregistered N4476S) "was routed through Shannon and Dublin on fourteen occasions from January 1, 2003 to the end of 2004. 's detention and interrogation program would be provided more information by The New York Times than by the Department of Justice", Rockefeller's letter read in part. The airport manager said that airport officials were told to keep away from the aircraft, which parked at the far end of the runway and frequently kept their engines running. Defense lawyers have challenged the practice in federal courts with no success. Are there any floating prisons? A further 100 ghost detainees kidnapped in Europe and "rendered" to other countries must be counted, according to Swiss senator Dick Marty's report of January 2006. In December 2014 the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) published an executive summary of a secret 6,000-page report on CIA techniques. 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. And the idea that we need to push our borders outward farther and farther away from our actual borders in order to defend the homeland, that's led to this effort to interdict drugs far, far away from the United States in places where drug smugglers actually really have very little idea where their drugs are headed. The CIAs most secret prison revealed. The Salt Pit, also known as Cobalt, is a former brick factory located north of Kabul in Afghanistan. He didn't know that he was going to be brought to the United States, wasn't being allowed to call his family wondering, "does my family think I died?" Vans from a nearby intelligence base (Stare Kiejkuty) met the aircraft, stayed for a short while and then drove off. [11] According to Danner, the report was marked "confidential" and was not previously made public before being made available to him. Arcentales says that he learned to eat slowly, to fool his mind into thinking the plate contained more than it did. On November 8, 2005, rights group Amnesty International provided the first comprehensive testimony from former inmates of the CIA black sites. [62], On January 23, 2009, The Guardian reported that the CIA ran a secret detention center in Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, a former French Foreign Legion base. [1] A 2021 Associated Press news story defined black sites as "clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with a crime and have no legal recourse, with no bail or court order." Senator Ron Wyden (DOregon) said he was sending a letter to Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, asking him to instruct Hayden to drop the inquiry. So there are these delays that people in the Coast Guard Coast Guard officials I interviewed thought really are actually unreasonable, considering that theyre near an airport. What a thin, fragile veneer our Bill of Rights, rule of law and self-adulation turns out to be once we suffer a blow and lose ourselves in fright and rage. According to an article by Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian, the US has a series of floating prisons in which people are held and questioned in a law-free regime. 's secret interrogation program", "Senate Intelligence Panel Seeks CIA Nominee's Withdrawal", "Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations", "Congress Seeks Justice Dept. 1. CIA black sites refer to the black sites that are controlled by the CIA and used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain enemy combatants. [69], Several European countries (particularly the former Soviet satellites and republics) have been accused of and have denied hosting black sites: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. The European Parliament's report, adopted by a large majority (382 MEPs voting in favor, 256 against and 74 abstaining) passed on February 14, 2007, concludes that many European countries tolerated illegal actions of the CIA including secret flights over their territories. In August 2018, the Royal Thai Army announced that another suspected Udon Thani black site, the former Ramasun Station, would be turned into a tourist attraction. 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 andhidden 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.". [15][16] Poland and Romania received the most direct accusals, as the report claims the evidence for these sites is "strong". "I find it unfathomable that the committee tasked with oversight of the C.I.A. In 2015, The Intercept revealed aerial shots of Camp Lemonnier showing how the base, which is a crucial takeoff point for Reaper and Predator drones, has been steadily expanding. In today's insane new prison vide. Time began to warp for them. [85], The Washington Post on December 26, 2002, reported about a secret CIA prison in one corner of Bagram Air Force Base (Afghanistan) consisting of metal shipping containers. He really didn't know all that much about what he was doing. 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.? It had been used "in connection with the abduction in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, on 31 December 2003, and his transport to a US detention centre in Afghanistan on 23 January 2004". : http://amzn.to/2pbWBzr What camera do we use to film? Since then, there have been more and more people leaving. 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. 1.3M views, 5.4K likes, 174 loves, 691 comments, 1.8K shares, Facebook Watch Videos from The Infographics Show: We all know prisoners are kept locked inside prison cells and monitored 24/7, but have. The US military holds detainees on secret "floating prisons", before transporting them to undisclosed detention centers, according to human rights organization Reprieve. In 2011, the Obama administration admitted that it had been holding a Somali prisoner for two months aboard a U.S. naval ship at sea for interrogation. However, Swiss senator Dick Marty's memorandum on "alleged detention in Council of Europe states" stated that about 100 persons have been kidnapped by the CIA on European territory and subsequently rendered to countries where they may have been tortured. She was known to the male detainees as "Prisoner 650." 99% of cocaine in us was cia in the eighties. Those are stories that hadn't been told before. [7][8], CIA controlled black sites are used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain enemy combatants. Coast Guard officials say they can do this because the drug smugglers aren't under arrest until they reach U.S. shores, but some of the worst cases are drawing criticism even from Coast Guard officials. He was ultimately brought to shore in Central America and told "you're going to be handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration now" and brought to the United States to face prosecution after more than two months held aboard these ships. According to Giovanni Fava (Socialist Party), who drafted the document, there was a "strong possibility" that the intelligence obtained under the extraordinary rendition illegal program had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained. An estimated 50 prisons have been used to hold detainees in 28 countries, in addition to at least 25 more prisons in Afghanistan and 20 in Iraq. [70], In June 2008, a New York Times article claimed, citing unnamed CIA officers, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was held in a secret facility in Poland near Szymany Airport, about 160km (100mi) north of Warsaw and it was there where he was interrogated and the waterboarding was applied. And yet it goes on. The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness. If 80,000 have been through the system and 26,000 are currently being held and we are just hearing rumours about this does that mean that 54,000 are 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea. For other uses, see, United Kingdom and British overseas territories, United Nations Convention Against Torture, "Detainee says China has secret jail in Dubai, holds Uyghurs", "For Complainers, A Stint In China's 'Black Jails', "Gay Men in Chechnya Tell of Black Sites Where They're Tortured, Some to Death", "Chechen police 'kidnap and torture gay men' - LGBT activists", "Persecution of LGBTI people in the Chechen Republic (Russian Federation)", "Russia: New Anti-Gay Crackdown in Chechnya", "Bush: Top terror suspects to face tribunals", "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons", "Poland feels sting of betrayal over CIA 'black site', "Poland ex-spy boss 'charged over alleged CIA secret prison', "Polish Ex-Official Charged With Aiding the C.I.A. Seth Freed Wessler reported this story for The Times. Many families, in fact, believe that their loved ones husbands, fathers, sons had disappeared. Hassan Nasr was released by an Egyptian courtwho considered his detention "unfounded"in February 2007 and has not been indicted for any crime in Italy. Aafia's case gained notoriety due to Yvonne Ridley's allegations in her book, The Grey Lady of Bagram, a ghostly female detainee, who kept prisoners awake "with her haunting sobs and piercing screams". All of this horrific torture and inhumane treatment is done under the guise of protecting Americans. 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. [31][32][33] Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years in prison on September 23, 2010, following a hearing in which she testified.[34]. In the 1970s, the area was used by Polish intelligence officers, despite maps naming the site as a holiday resort. These Coast Guard ships are deployed deep into the Pacific sometimes thousands of miles from the nearest U.S. port, where they're detaining suspected smugglers and holding them aboard these Coast Guard cutters. The war on drugs has produced the vilest police state one can imagine. The report alleges that at least eight Thai senior officials knew of the secret site. The former riding stable outside of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius consists of long corridors leading to windowless and soundproof rooms where one could do whatever one wanted, said current Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas, who led a parliamentary investigation into the facility in 2010. Pawn Stars is a very interesting show when you think about it. Many Americans I speak with don't believe this could . When they capture these boats, the people on the boatswho are often indentured servants to drug lords trying to feed their familiesare brought aboard these floating prisons and shackled to the deck outside, in the elements. Two of the Italians were also convicted in person. As weve made this decision to prosecute more and more people, these delays have grown longer and longer.. 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.. So this guy, Arcentales, and another guy they're on a ship. In 2014, the US government declassified a US Senate Report on the CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program. [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. The Ashland houses 500 US Marines onboard. This is according to the flight log of the aircraft obtained from Washington, D.C., by Village. These locations, according to the reports, are secret prisons used to house ghost prisoners. Those sent to these places are held captive without being charged with any crime and are not allowed any form of legal defense. [66][67], While the revelation was expected to cause considerable embarrassment for both governments, UK officials were expected to face considerable exposure since they had previously quelled public outcry over U.S. detainee abuse by falsely reassuring the public no U.S. detainment camps were housed on any UK bases or territories. The UK may also face liabilities over apparent violations of international treaties. Do private prisons still exist in the US? [110], Patrick Leahy and John Conyers, chairmen of the respective Senate and House Judiciary committees, requested that the Justice Department turn over documents related to the secret February 2005 legal opinion to their committees for review. These secret prisons, floating in international waters, to avoid the US justice system, exist because, under the guise of protecting youfrom yourself, the US government spends billions on enforcing the failed drug warall at the expense of freedom. [24], In a September 29, 2006, speech, Bush stated: "Once captured, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were taken into custody of the Central Intelligence Agency. Siemitkowski is charged with facilitating the alleged CIA detention operation in Poland, where foreign suspects may have been tortured in the context of the War on Terror. UK might have been a transit state but there is no proof about this either. To quote the report, "At this stage of the investigations, there is no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret CIA detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other country. 5. a most exceptional investigation of a core element in the deeply troubled story of Ireland Richard O'Brien, Ambassador of Ireland to Australia 1995 to 2002. your password ). The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making. :confused: How could a wall prevent maritime insertion? But a thing like this, it never leaves you.. They also said that they were threatened and told not to speak publicly about what had happened to them. This process is called "extraordinary rendition". It is estimated that the U.S. has also used 17 ships as floating prisons since 2001, bringing the total estimated number of prisons operated by the U.S. and/or its allies to house alleged terrorist suspects since 2001 to more than 100. Ironic if one of the prison/torture ships was the Bataan; given that it was so-named as a result of our outrage over mistreatment of our POWs by the Japanese. 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. [115], In an October 30, 2007, address to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Hayden defended the agency's interrogation methods, saying, "Our programs are as lawful as they are valuable." [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. US President George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on September 6, 2006. 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. He describes the experience of feeling like he really might disappear. The Coast Guard was conscripted as the agency empowered to seek out suspected smugglers and bring them to American courts, the Times reports. He had left home a year and a half . [79], In November 2009, reports alleged a black site referred to in The Washington Post's 2005 article had been located in Lithuania. secret floating prisons. They would pass a piece of leftover chicken down the line, each detainee taking a bite and handing it to the next, until the bone was picked clean.