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Today's Must Read
The Washington Post interviewed a former detainee in one of the CIA's "black sites," to give the most detailed description yet of what the facilities are like.
Marwan Jabour was picked up in Pakistan in May, 2004, "beaten, abused and burned' at a jailhouse in Lahore where "two female American interrogators also questioned him and told him he would be rich if he cooperated and would vanish for life if he refused." From there, it was off to a "villa in a wealthy residential neighborhood" nearby, which is actually a detention facility run by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence. There, he "was chained to a wall and prevented from sleeping more than a few hours at a time" and was "beaten nightly by Pakistani guards after hours of questions from U.S. interrogators."
After five weeks there, he was off to the black site, a facility somewhere in Afghanistan:
Jabour said he was often naked during his first three months at the Afghan site, which he spent in a concrete cell furnished with two blankets and a bucket. The lights were kept on 24 hours a day, as were two cameras and a microphone inside the cell. Sometimes loud music blasted through speakers in the cells. The rest of the time, the low buzz of white noise whizzed in the background, possibly to muffle any communication by prisoners through cell walls.Daily interrogations were conducted by a variety of Americans. Over two years, Jabour said he encountered about 45 interrogators, plus medical staff and psychologists. He was threatened with physical abuse but was never beaten.
Conditions "slowly improved" for Jabour, who eventually received privileges like pants, air conditioning, a library, movies, and Kit-Kat bars.
The details go on, but perhaps the most striking thing about Jabour's account is that he was eventually let go. A U.S. counterterrorism official the Post interviewed said that Jabour was "in direct touch with top al-Qaeda operations figures," was a money man for jihadists, and is "an all-around bad guy." Nevertheless, they let him go on June 30, 2006, "just after the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's assertion that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to prisoners like him," the Post notes. Jabour lives with his parents in the Gaza strip.
The Post also adds more details on the number of people who were held in such "black sites":
Human Rights Watch has identified 38 people who may have been held by the CIA and remain unaccounted for. Intelligence officials told The Post that the number of detainees held in such facilities over nearly five years remains classified but is higher than 60. Their whereabouts have not been publicly disclosed.
Only 14 detainees were moved from CIA custody to the Guantanamo Bay last summer. "[S]cores more have not been publicly identified by the U.S. government, and their whereabouts remain secret," the Post reports.
Note: There's more on Jabour at Human Rights Watch.
Comments (18)
Jake wrote on February 28, 2007 10:03 AM:Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I honestly don't understand why an agency that has no problem with abducting and torturing people would ever let them free. If I were operating a super-secret system of torture mills, I would think I'd be able to just make these people disappear forever instead of letting them walk free and talk to the press. Unless, of course, them talking to the press is exactly what I wanted.
Henk wrote on February 28, 2007 10:19 AM:You're being paranoid. The options would be indefinate detention or death. We can't afford to keep these guys forever, and believe it or not, there are people in the intelegence and Millitary communities who know that if they just started killing these guys it would be morally wrong and that it would eventually get out. They know that they could untimately be held accountable.
Ken O. wrote on February 28, 2007 10:45 AM:If this person was as central to Al-Qaeda funding as the intelligence source quoted by the Post said, then he should have been prosecuted and brought to justice in our nation's courts.
The fact that he did not either means that their evidence is crap, or that the abusive/illegal nature of his detention and treatment rendered prosecution in civil courts impossible.
In either case, it shows the utter lack of sense behind the current policies.
ohiomeister wrote on February 28, 2007 10:54 AM:Tell every American.
Joe Eboh wrote on February 28, 2007 11:00 AM:This is probably why Pakistan doesn't have to cooperate with us. If we try to play hardball with them, they can just threaten to leak to the press and blow the whistle on all sorts of American misdeeds.
Way to go, Dick Cheney.
wiltmellow wrote on February 28, 2007 11:03 AM:Paranoid?
In December of 2000, a partisan Supreme Court ruled that an accurate count of the votes wasn't necessary to know who won the election. Indeed, one Justice declared that an accurate count might actually harm the winner.
We did nothing.
Everything subsequent has followed the same pattern. We accept nonsensical explanations, outright lies, and absurd assertions as defensible and, even, understandable.
When does it stop? Argument, litigation, scandal, repudiation of the Constitution, revelations of secret behavior -- all have failed to slow the drive towards the benignly termed Unitary Executive.
In short, what difference does it make whether the a tortured man was eventually released? The US government kidnapped and tortured a man without any authority but that of the Unitary Executive. The circumstances of his release make no difference; you should be paranoid because what happened to him can happen to you.
Fritz wrote on February 28, 2007 11:15 AM:Now this guy will be killed by AQ.
Henk wrote on February 28, 2007 11:46 AM:Wilt, if you are responding to my post, it was written in responce to the first poster and his thought that this guy was released so he WOULD talk to the press. I don't think that's the case.
Michel Haitch wrote on February 28, 2007 11:50 AM:I well aware of the issues you raise, but they really aren't relivant to what I was trying to convey.
Personally, from the very beginning of this administration, I have never accepted any of the "nonsensical explanations, outright lies, and absurd assertions as defensible." I suspect that you don't either. Our press on the other hand...
Wiltmellow, a fine post. What has happened to America under Cheney/Bush is just so sad and depressing.
On the other hand, though we have witnessed a lot few seem to care. Americans are just too busy working, paying their mortgages (and the monthly bills on their SUVs), and self medicating all weekend to know or care what happens to a handful of A-rabs in some far distant corner of the earth. We're like the frog in the pot of water with the burner on—-in a stupor and unable to make a move to escape.
The supreme court appointment of Cheney/Bush will go down in history as perhaps the most supreme blunder ever made by an American judiciary. It is hard to overstate how different the country (and the world) would have been had Gore been allowed to become president, as elected.
SecurityMom wrote on February 28, 2007 11:52 AM:Of course they want news of the torture to get out. Torture is a political tool, inspiring fear and awe, expressing pure power. The state demonstrates its ultimate power over the body of the person who is tortured and the mind of the person who is ordered to torture. A sizeable group of people side with the torturing state because they are afraid, and a seemingly all-powerful state would have the power to protect them, right? The rest hesitate before raising any dissent because a)what's the point of opposing an all-powerful state and b)who wants to get hurt themselves or have their loved ones hurt? Torture is a cornerstone of dictatorship.
jc chasezbian wrote on February 28, 2007 12:42 PM:Ooh! i like Jakes way of thinking.
we have a broken system, but none of you cared before a republican was elected.
so maybe GWB presidency was a good thing, nevermore will any president get away with such stuff, right?
libertarians woke up in the 90's, progressives woke up in this decade; conservatives are next.
EH wrote on February 28, 2007 2:09 PM:jc: with any luck, bush will be the last president with any power and the US will move to a parliamentary system.
Wingnut wrote on February 28, 2007 2:54 PM:".. received privileges like pants, air conditioning, a library, movies, and Kit-Kat bars"
Did he get the lemon chicken too? I heard it was to die for.
tontocal wrote on March 1, 2007 3:25 PM:Thank god the days are past when the right wingers would have been able and fairly successful in dismissing this guy as a 'Bush-Basher' and 'America-Hater' whilst the too long timid press agreed to back off the story.
With the Congress under Democratic control, 'whistleblower' is no longer a dirty word.
Wingnuts-Hate_America wrote on March 1, 2007 4:37 PM:The reputation of the USA has not been tarnished by Abu G. and black sites in the world.
There is an extreme right wing political ideology for preemptive wars and torture - National Socialism. All I need to hear now from Bushco are terms like "total war" and "Freedom through labor" and I know we are at the abyss.
I never thought I would live to see my beloved country sink this low.
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