World Wide Web of Dark Secret Prisons Called "Black Sites".

The salt pit in Afghanistan

Washington Post article: Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11

By Dana Pries

(Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report) Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, November 2, 2005; Page A01

Questions by Jeseppi Trade Wildfeather:

1. Were the Nazi concentration camps classified and secret?

2. Was anybody ever released from Nazi concentration camps?

3. Did the Nazi concentration camps ever permit inmates to be visited?

4. Did perverted tortures and wicked experiments take place in Nazi concentration camps.

5. Was there any justice in Nazi concentration camps?

6. Were Nazi concentration camps evidence of the constitutional republican of a free people or of a dictatorship of a nation in bondage?

7. Is it true that people who are taken there are only suspects and have committed no crimes?

8. Is it true that only the President and his staff know about these "black sites" are listed in "classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents, and are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country."?

9. Is it true that if classified, nobody will ever be permitted to leave to tell about them, or what truly goes on there, except CIA stooges in order to decoy the public from the truth?

10. Is it true that by detaining suspects in known, legitimate facilities, and permitting visiting rights by family and friends, any agency that was truly interested in obtaining information would, in fact, enormously amplify its capability to draw out more people associated with these suspects for further investigation simply by permitting them to visit them.

11. Is it true that terms like secret, classified connote covert, dark, deceptive, and evil?

12. Is the burden the CIA says it is carrying now because of these dark places, much heavier than the light, or is it because the burden of the truth is now becoming much greater? Is it true that too many people are becoming implicated in a level of darkness equal to that of the Nazis and are becoming squeemish?

13. Is it true that one day this will be exposed and the names of all those involved will be revealed to the public and they will be held as international war criminals and brought into strict accountability for their crimes?

14. Is it true that all free people loathe these kinds of activities and legislate against them?

15. Is it true that the United States Government is still a Constitutional Republic?


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Black site

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Black site is a military term that has been used by United States intelligence agencies to refer to any classified facility that is officially denied by the US government. Recently the term has gained notoriety in describing allegedly secret prisons, generally outside of the mainland U.S. territory and legal jurisdiction, and with little or no political or public oversight. It can refer to the facilities that are allegedly controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used by the U.S. in its "War on Terror" to detain suspected enemy combatants. The claimed purpose is to detain terrorists outside of the Intelligence Oversight Act which authorises Congressional supervision. A claim those black sites existed was made by the Washington Post in October 2005.

A presidential directive allows the agency to capture and hold specific classes of suspects without accounting for them to the public, or revealing the conditions they face in the prisons. Opponents of this practice charge that US officials have ordered (or deliberately overlook) prisoner abuse. The prisons are assumed to be serviced by the N44982, N4476S and N221SG prisoner transport planes, although there is no proof of the allegation. Apart from the hundred CIA detainees, Swiss politician Dick Marty's January 2006 report concluded that another hundred had been kidnapped on European territory and rendered to other countries, some of which use torture.

An investigation on the origins of the leaks has also been opened by the U.S. Justice Department to investigate what may have been illegal release of classified information. On April 21, 2006, Mary O. McCarthy, a longtime CIA analyst, was reportedly fired for leaking classified information to a Washington Post reporter. Some have speculated that the information allegedly leaked may have included information about the camps.^[1] McCarthy's lawyer, however, claims that McCarthy "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking."[1]

Contents [hide] 1 Detainees 2 Suspected black sites 3 Issue development 3.1 European Union 3.1.1 The Village 's March 2005 revelations 3.1.2 Human Rights Watch's allegations 3.1.3 Investigations in Spain concerning CIA flights 3.1.4 Investigations in France concerning CIA flights 3.1.5 The European investigation 3.1.6 The Onyx-intercepted fax 4 Controversy 5 U.S. administration response 6 United Nations response 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

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Detainees

Main article: Detainees in CIA custody

The list of those thought to be held by the CIA include suspected al-Qaeda members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah. The total number of ghost detainees was presumed to be at least a hundred, although the precise number cannot be determined because less than 10% of them have been charged or convicted. However, Swiss senator Dick Marty's memorandum on "alleged detention in Council of Europe states" stated that about a hundred persons had been kidnapped by the CIA on European territory and subsequently rendered to countries where they may have been tortured. This number of a hundred persons does not overlap, but adds itself to the U.S. detained 100 ghost detainees.^[2]

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Suspected black sites

Americas

In Cuba, the CIA detains alleged "enemy combatants" in Guantánamo Bay, which includes Camp X-Ray (now closed), Camp Delta, Camp Echo and Camp Iguana. A CIA prison was built within the larger Camp Echo at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, and has reportedly held prisoners from Pakistan, West Africa and Yemen.

Asia

In Thailand, the Voice of America relay station in Udon Thani was reported to be a black site. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has denied these reports.^[3]

Middle East

In Afghanistan, the prison at Bagram Air Base was initially housed in an abandoned brickmaking factory outside Kabul known as the "Salt Pit" ^[4], but later moved to the base some time after a young Afghani died of hypothermia after being stripped naked and left chained to a floor. During this period, there were several incidents of torture and prisoner abuse, though they were related to non-secret prisoners, and not the CIA-operated portion of the prison. At some point prior to 2005, the prison was again relocated, this time to an unknown site. Metal containers at Bagram Air Base were reported to be black sites.^[5] Some Guantanamo detainees report being tortured in a prison they called "the dark prison", also near Kabul.^[6] In Iraq, Abu Ghraib was disclosed as also working as a black site, and was the center of an extensive prisoner abuse scandal.^[7] Additionally, Camp Bucca (near Umm Qasr) and Camp Cropper (near the Baghdad International Airport) were reported.

An Israeli newspaper reported Al Jafr prison in Jordan as a black site.^[8] Black sites have also been reported in Alizai, Kohat, and Peshāwar, Pakistan.

Africa

Djibouti ^[9]

Egypt, Libya, Morocco ^[10][11]

Indian Ocean

The U.S. Naval Base in Diego Garcia was reported to be a black site, but UK officials have denied these reports.^[12]

Europe

Several European countries have denied hosting black sites: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Romania, Georgia, Latvia, and Bulgaria. Slovakian ministry spokesman Richard Fides said the country had no black sites, but its intelligence service spokesman Vladimir Simko said he would not disclose any information about possible Slovakian black sites to the media. EU Justice commissioner Franco Frattini makes an unprecedented call for the suspension of voting rights for any member state found to have hosted a CIA black site.

Bulgaria ^[8]

Ukraine^[13] denied hosting any such sites ^[14].

Macedonia ^[8]

Romania

Although interior minister Vasile Blaga has assured the EU that the Mihail Kogălniceanu Airport was used only as a supply point for equipment, and never for detention, there have been reports to the contrary. A fax intercepted by the Onyx Swiss interception system, from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to its London embassy stated that 23 prisoners were clandestinely interrogated by the U.S. at the base.^[15][16][17]

Mobile sites

• U.S. warship USS Bataan^[18][19][20]- By definition as a U.S. military vessel, this is not technically a "black site" as defined above. However, it has been used by the United States military as a temporary initial interrogation site (after which, prisoners are then transferred to other facilities, possibly including black sites).

• N221SG a Learjet 35
• N44982 a Gulfstream V^[21][22] (also known as N379P)
• N8068V a Gulfstream V
• N4476S a Boeing Business Jet^[23][24]

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Issue development

The Washington Post on December 26, 2002 reported about a secret CIA prison in one corner of Bagram Air Force Base consisting of metal shipping containers.^[3] On March 14, 2004, The Guardian reported that three British citizens were held captive in a secret section (Camp Echo) of the Guantánamo Bay complex.^[25] Several other articles reported the retention of ghost detainees by the CIA, alongside to the other official "enemy combatants". However, it was the revelations of the Washington Post, in a November 2, 2005 article, that would start the scandal. The newspaper revealed that the U.S. government was detaining more than 100 terrorism suspects in eight secret facilities.^[26] According to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats, there is a network of foreign prisons that includes or has ... More