54 countries helped CIA to kidnap, detain and torture – report

An IKONOS satellite image of a facility near Kabul, Afghanistan taken on July 17, 2003. A Washington Post on November 2, 2005 refers to this facility as the largest CIA covert prison in Afghanistan, code-named the Salt Pit (Reuters / Space Imaging Middle East)

At least 54 countries including Syria, Iran, Sweden, Iceland, and UK offered CIA “covert support” to detain, transport, interrogate and torture suspects in the years following the 9/11 attacks, according to a new report.

­The 213-page report released by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based human rights organization, documents wide-ranging international involvement in the American campaign against Al-Qaeda.

The report, titled Globalizing Torture, provides a detailed account of other countries covertly helping the US to run secret prisons, also known as ‘black sites’ on their territory and allowing the CIA to use national airports for refueling while transporting prisoners.

Countries listed in the report include many from the Middle East and Europe.

The OSJI identifies Syria and Iran as two participants of the CIA’s rendition program.


“Syria detained, interrogated, and tortured extraordinarily-rendered individuals. It was one of the ‘most common destinations for rendered suspects’,” states the report. “The CIA rendered at least nine individuals to Syria between December 2001 and October 2002.”

Canadian Maher Arar holds up a shirt that he says he wore during his detention in Syria as he addresses a European Parliament hearing on allegations that the CIA used European countries for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners, in Brussels, March 23, 2006. Arar was sent to Syria for interrogation after being arrested at a New York airport in 2002 (Reuters / Francois Lenoir)

 

Syria also had detention facilities that were used by the CIA, where “detainees report incidents of torture involving a chair frame used to stretch the spine (the ‘German chair’) and beatings.”
Iran has helped CIA by handing over 15 individuals to Kabul, after the US invasion of Afghanistan, knowing that they would be placed under the US control.

In Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, Jordan, Afghanistan, Malawi and Morocco the existence of secret prisons and the use of torture are documented.

The report describes Egypt as “the country to which the greatest numbers of rendered suspects have been sent [by the US].” Many suspects held in Egypt described having been tortured.

Pakistan is said to have detained 672 alleged Al-Qaeda members and transferred 369 to Afghanistan and/or to Guantanamo Bay.

There are grave reports of torture documented in Morocco. Detainees described torture over several months. One individual, Binyam Mohamed, was transferred by the CIA to Morocco in July 2002, “where his interrogators broke his bones while beating him, sliced his genitals, poured hot liquid onto his penis while cutting it, and threatened him with rape, electrocution and death.”

The list also includes states such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Greece and Cyprus. All of the above secretly helped the CIA by granting the use of their airspace and airports for aircraft involved in rendition flights.

Canada is identified as going beyond that and providing the CIA with information about one of its nationals that led to his capture, detention and rendition to Syria.

European countries such as the UK, Sweden and Italy even helped to apprehend individuals, interrogate and transfer them.

Countries such as France, the Netherlands, Hungary and Russia are not listed at all.

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