Ghost Detainee - Secret CIA Prisons (aka Black Sites)

Secret CIA Prisons (aka Black Sites)

According to then-CIA chief Michael Hayden, the CIA has detained up to 100 people at secret facilities abroad since the capture of suspected Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in 2002.

One example is the case of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen abducted by the CIA in Macedonia in January 2004 and taken to a secret CIA site in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit for severe treatment and interrogation before being determined innocent in March and eventually released in May 2004 after some additional delays. His abduction was apparently a case of mistaken identity. Germany initially claimed that it did not know of el-Masri's abduction until his return to the country in May 2004. However, the BND (German intelligence agency) declared on June 1, 2006 that it had known of El-Masri's seizure 16 months before Germany was officially informed of his arrest.

In a 2007 report, Human Rights Watch related the claims of alleged ghost detainee Marwan Jabour, a Palestinian who was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, in May 2004. Jabour claimed he was held for more than a month in a secret detention facility operated by both Pakistanis and Americans in Islamabad, and then flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, where he was held in secret, incommunicado detention for more than two years. During his ordeal, he was tortured, beaten, forced to stay awake for days, and kept naked and chained to a wall for more than a month.

At least 39 detainees who were once held by the CIA in secret detention remain disappeared, according to a report jointly published June 7, 2007 by six leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and Human Rights Watch. :

It reveals the extent to which the United States has illegally used “proxy detention” to empty its secret sites and demonstrates that far from targeting the “worst of the worst,” the system sweeps up low-level detainees and even involves the detention of the wives and children of the “disappeared,” in violation of their human rights. Off the Record also documents allegations concerning the treatment of detainees while in secret detention, including torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.