Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism

Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century

Of these prisoners being held by the U.S., some were suspected of being from the senior ranks of

Former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, had described the men detained in Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as "the worst of the worst.", despite concerns about the mental capacity of several of the detainees. But, before September 2006, many of those detainees suspected of having the highest intelligence value were not detained at Guantanamo, but were held at CIA's black sites in Eastern Europe and other countries, including Afghanistan.

In August 2010, it was reported that four high-value detainees: Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, had first been transferred to Guantanamo on September 24, 2003. They were held at "Strawberry Fields", a secret camp in the facility constructed for their detention.^[3] Worried that a pending Supreme Court decision on habeas corpus rights might go against the Bush administration and compel releasing the men's names and other details, the CIA took back custody of the four men and moved them out of Guantanamo on March 27, 2004.^[3][4]

The

These four men and other high-value CIA detainees were not transferred again to military custody at Guantanamo until September 2006. At that time, the Bush administration was assured of passage by Congress of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which included provisions preventing detainees from using habeas corpus petitions outside the newly authorized system of military tribunals.

Ghost detainees

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Summary of the High Value Terrorist Detainee Program

High-value detainees

On September 6, 2006,

Critics, and elements of the FBI, had long speculated that the captives held in the secret facilities had been subjected to actual torture. They said that evidence derived from such interrogation techniques was not admissible in court and could not be used to prosecute the men.^{[citation needed]}

Other captives in custody

American intelligence officials have made public the names of some of the suspects the CIA has reported to have been held. The capture of other detainees is not acknowledged.^{[citation needed]} According to the US military, this is in order to spread disorder among their opponents, and fear among those who might be considering supporting them.^{[citation needed]}

Legal status of detainees

Shortly after the

The Bush administration expanded the criteria for classifying captives as illegal combatants. Individuals captured around the world are now classified as such if US intelligence officials believe they have sufficient evidence to tie the individual to Islamic terrorism.

In

overseas.

Use of interrogation techniques

The US intelligence community has debated what techniques should be used on the detainees.^[14] The debate was triggered over the interrogation of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, described as the first senior al Qaeda captive.^{[citation needed]} It was reported that initially his interrogation was being conducted by the FBI because they had the most experience interrogating criminal suspects.^{[citation needed]} Their interrogation approach was based on building rapport with suspects and they did not use coercive techniques.^{[citation needed]} They argued that coercive techniques produced unreliable false confessions, and that using coercive techniques would mean that the evidence they gathered could not be used by the prosecution in a trial in the US judicial system.^[14]

Main article: Torture Memos

Fear and desire for actionable intelligence led the administration to legal opinions (the

Bybee memo) by the Office of Legal Counsel, United States Department of Justice, issued to the CIA in August 2002 authorizing the use of 12 enhanced interrogation techniques

(since 2009, these have been legally defined as torture and prohibited from use) with detained suspects.

Similarly, on March 14, 2003, five days before the US started its

Bybee memo, the administration advised agencies to suspend actions based on those memos. CIA suspended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.^[18]

Legal justification for the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques"

Secretary Rumsfeld assured the world that the detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were going to be treated in a manner consistent with the treatment of Geneva Convention POWs. In 2004, confidential memos surfaced that discussed the limits to how much pain, discomfort and fear could be used in the interrogation of detainees in the global war on terror. The memos showed that debate within the Bush administration had been resolved in favor of what was later legally determined to be torture.

Legislative challenges to interrogation policy

In 2005,

US Army's field manual on interrogation

. Ninety of the one hundred Senators supported this amendment.

On Thursday, October 20, 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney proposed a change to McCain. Cheney tried to get McCain to limit the proscription to just military personnel, thus allowing CIA personnel the freedom to use harsher techniques. McCain declined to accept Cheney's suggestion.^[19]

U.S. Government denial of allegations of mistreatment

Main article: Periodic Report of the United States of America to the United Nations Committee Against Torture

The

CIA. Recently, the Director of the CIA, Michael Hayden

has acknowledged that some detainees had been subject to waterboarding, in accordance with several OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) memos. General Hayden states that in February 2008, waterboarding was not part of the authorized interrogation techniques for U.S. agents.

The

erroneous renditions." There were said to be 3,000 individuals who were held in CIA custody.^[20]

Geneva Conventions compliance

On July 20, 2007, President Bush issued an executive order officially banning torture of POWs by intelligence officials.

Bybee memo, at the time, the only known one of the Torture Memos. While the US is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, it has failed to ratify that portion of the Geneva Convention, Protocol I, which would grant such persons POW status as the detainees at Guantanamo.^{[21][clarification needed}

] The US is one of only six countries that have not.

Individuals identified as being tortured by the CIA without authorization

The Senate Intelligence Committee identified these men as being the victims of unauthorized torture^[22]

ISN	Name	Current location	Allegations	Notes
10024	Khalid Sheikh Mohammed	Guantanamo	Various	various[22]
892	Rafiq Bashir al-Hami	Transferred to Slovakia in 2010	Suspicious acquaintances	subjected to the salt pit[22]
893	Tawfiq Nasir Awad al-Bihandi	Guantanamo	Unknown	subjected to the salt pit[22]
	Hikmat Nafi Shaukat	Unknown	Suspicious acquainces	subjected to the salt pit[22]
1209	Lufti al-Arabi al-Gharisi	Unknown	Unknown	subjected to the salt pit[22]
1461	Muhammad Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani	Transferred to Pakistan in 2023	Alleged KSM lieutenant	stress positions, beatings, hypothermia[22]
	Gul Rahman		Murdered in custody	short shackling, water dousing, beatings, sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, hypothermia[22]
10015	Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri	Guantanamo	USS Cole bombing	waterboarding, death threats, threats to rape and kill his family in front of him, faked execution, rectal feeding[22]
10013	Ramzi Bin al-Shibh	Guantanamo	Alleged KSM lieutenant
	Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman	Extradited to Egypt and released in 2010	Unknown	water dousing, forced nudity, solitary confinement[22]
10011	Mustafa al-Hawsawi	Guantanamo	Suspected "finacier"	rectal feeding[22]
	Abu Khalid	Unknown	Unknown	sleep deprivation[22]
	Abu Hudhaifa	unknown	Mistaken identity	ice water baths, forced standing, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, dietary manipulation[22]
	Al-Shara'iya	Unknown	Unknown	crippled by torture[22]
	Abu Hazim	Unknown	Unknown	water dousing[22]
	Sayyid Ibrahim	Unknown	Unknown	sleep deprivation[22]
	Suleiman Abdullah	Unknown	Unknown	subjected to "water-dousing" without authorization[22]

Location of the suspects held by US civilian intelligence agencies

Location	Details
USS Bataan	John Walker Lindh, a United States citizen, was held for two months in a secure facility aboard the USS Bataan.
The Salt Pit	a clandestine, remote, CIA detention facility in Afghanistan German national Macedonia and transferred by their police to the CIA, who took him to this location. Agents detained and interrogated him for five months in the winter of 2004.[23] The agency found it was mistaken and released him in Albania in late 2004. In 2012 El-Masri's account was held valid "beyond a reasonable doubt," and he was awarded compensation for his torture and suffering by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights , which held Macedonia responsible for knowingly transferring him to the CIA and possible torture.

See also

• Arbitrary arrest and detention
• Command responsibility
• Detainees in Iraq
• Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen wrongly detained by the CIA
• Maher Arar

References

External links

• "Outsourcing torture", Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, February 14, 2005
• "A Tortured Debate", Newsweek, June 21, 2005
• "We Don't Want a Hanoi Hilton", The Washington Post, October 27, 2005
• "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons", The Washington Post, November 2, 2005
• "European Commission to Investigate Reports of Secret CIA Jails", The Washington Post, November 3, 2005
• "Sources Tell ABC News Top Al Qaeda Figures Held in Secret CIA Prisons", ABC News December 5, 2005
• "A list of 12 high-value targets housed by the CIA", ABC News, December 5, 2005
• "CIA 'closes terror prisons'", news.com.au, December 6, 2005
• "Victims Could Sue for Human Rights in European Court of Justice", Der Spiegel December 6, 2005
• Center for Constitutional Rights website, representing detainees and working against other injustices
• "Tortured Justice: Using Coerced Evidence to Prosecute Terrorist Suspects" (2008), Human Rights First
• "In Pursuit of Justice; Prosecuting Terrorism Cases in the Federal Courts" (2009), Human Rights First
• "Undue Process: An Examination of Detention and Trials of Bagram Detainees in Afghanistan in April 2009" (2009), Human Rights First