White House Secrets Kept About Atrocities

Suit has been filed against the war criminals in the White House by several human rights organization with the purpose of finding out who they are detaining and where to find them in addition to what has been done to them.

The disgrace that this cabal has been is brought into starkly hideous bare truths in the suits for information, and for the prisoners' rights. They are operating illegal prisons for illegal purposes with illegal methods, and trying to keep the knowledge 'safe' from the divilized world.

In the most comprehensive accounting to date, six leading human rights organizations today published the names and details of 39 people who are believed to have been held in secret US custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. The briefing paper also names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.

What we’re asking is where are these 39 people now, and what’s happened to them since they ‘disappeared’? It is already a serious abuse to hold them in secret CIA prisons. Now we fear they may have been transferred to countries where they face further secret detention and abuse.

In a related action, three of the groups filed a lawsuit in US federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking the disclosure of information concerning “disappeared” detainees.

The 21-page briefing paper, “Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror,’” includes detailed information about four people named as “disappeared” prisoners for the first time. The full list of people includes nationals from countries including Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan and Spain. They are believed to have been arrested in countries including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan, and transferred to secret US detention centers.

The list – drafted by Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve – draws together information from government and media sources, as well as from interviews with former prisoners and other witnesses.

“Off the Record” highlights aspects of the CIA detention program that the US government has actively tried to conceal, such as the locations where prisoners may have been held, the mistreatment they endured, and the countries to which they may have been transferred.

It reveals how suspects’ relatives, including wives and children as young as seven years old, have been held in secret detention. In September 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s two young sons, aged seven and nine, were arrested. According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention center for at least four months while US agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts.

Similarly, when Tanzanian national Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was seized in Gujarat, Pakistan, in July 2004, his Uzbek wife was detained with him.

The human rights groups are calling on the US government to put a permanent end to the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, and to disclose the identities, fate, and whereabouts of all detainees currently or previously held at secret facilities operated or overseen by the US government as part of the “war on terror.”

In a related action, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), CCR and the International Human Rights Clinic of NYU School of Law today filed a lawsuit in US federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking disclosure of information concerning “disappeared” detainees, including “ghost” and unregistered prisoners.
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The documents that the groups are seeking are known to exist. President Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of CIA-operated secret prisons in September 2006; 14 detainees from these facilities were transferred to Guantanamo, and the US Department of Justice has issued an analysis concluding that the secret detention program is legal.

Yet information about the location of the prisons, the identity of the prisoners, and the types of interrogation methods used, has never been publicly revealed. This prevents scrutiny by the public or the courts, and leaves detainees vulnerable to abuses that include torture and other ill-treatment.

The only interests served by this secrecy is that of the war criminals. They have to be brought to justice, and this is a beginning. We all need to be on the trail of the illegal practices of these people who hate justice, and torment their opponents. It is illegal to conduct proceedings in the manner this White House prefers, and our system of justice is seriously threatened by them.