secret floating prisons secret floating prisons

12/07/22: 3: U.S. Coast Guard operating secret floating prisons in Pacific Ocean: 05/31/18: 4: Conspiracy my ass!!! In 2008, The Guardian reported that human rights organization Reprieve, which claimed that the US has admitted to holding at least 26,000 people in secret prisons, had discovered that the US was operating a fleet of "floating prisons" that span the globe. Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. In fact, they could not prove if they had ever existed at all. However, some have alleged that a number of these flights were used to traffic ghost prisoners to and from a secret prison on the airports premises. Above all else, we respect everyone's opinions and ALL This story first appeared on the website of PRI. June 27, 2014. Your email address will not be published. The Coast Guard adds that it shackles detainees and conceals them while in port for their own safety and the safety of the crew. And the Coast Guard says "our ships aren't equipped as detention centers. In 2015, The Intercept revealed aerial shots of Camp Lemonnier showing how the base, which is a crucial takeoff point for Reaper and Predator drones, has been steadily expanding. And John Kelly has really been a proponent of the idea. Other Democrats in Congress also made public statements of outrage about the destruction of the tapes, suggesting that a violation of law had occurred. In fact, his son-in-law decided not long after that earthquake to take one of these jobs and left home. These secret prisons, dotted all over the world, might just be the most terrifying places on Earth. It probably referred to a statement by controversial Senator and Great Romania party leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor.[137]. According to Giovanni Fava (Socialist Party), who drafted the document, there was a "strong possibility" that the intelligence obtained under the extraordinary rendition illegal program had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained. Diebold is still out there. Days later, was picked up by the Coast Guard. Documents on Interrogation", "Debate Erupts on Techniques used by C.I.A. The Egyptian security service also operated black sites involved with the CIAs counter-terror black site program. Named airport bases include Glasgow Prestwick Airport (Scotland), Shannon & Baldonnel (Ireland), Ramstein and Frankfurt (Germany), Aviano Air Base (Italy), Palma de Mallorca Airport (Spain), Tuzla Air Base (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Skopje (North Macedonia), Athens (Greece), Larnaca (Cyprus), Prague (Czech Republic), Stockholm (Sweden), as well as Rabat (Morocco) and Algiers (Algeria). He said that he had heard from three U.S. intelligence sources that Diego Garcia was used as "a transit site where people were temporarily housed, let us say, and interrogated from time to time" and that "What I heard was more along the lines of using it as a transit location when perhaps other places were full or other places were deemed too dangerous or insecure, or unavailable at the moment". Black sites are embroiled in controversy over the legal status of the detainees held there, the legal authority for the operation of the sites (including the collaboration between governments involved), and full (or even minimal) disclosure by the governments involved. Floating prisons admin 2021-03-18T16:06:59+00:00. [79], In November 2009, reports alleged a black site referred to in The Washington Post's 2005 article had been located in Lithuania. It is only at that point that the detainees are formally arrested. It's not unheard of for fishermen to disappear in the sea. Mwatana has also verified the torture of detainees at these Emirati-run secret detention centers where some have gone as far as committing suicide to protest against their unfair detention, as cited by one of the victim's brothers. [22] McCarthy's lawyer, however, claimed that McCarthy "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking". At some point prior to 2005, the prison was again relocated, this time to an unknown site. Thailand denies the existence of any black sites in its territory, despite multiple reports describing the mysterious Detention Site Green and hinting that it may be located just outside of Bangkok or somewhere in the northern province of Udon Thani. This is a Coast Guard ship and they're basically exposed to the elements and basically shackled and not getting much food. Two of the Italians were also convicted in person. While the US and host countries have signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture, CIA officers are allowed to use what the agency calls "enhanced interrogation techniques". On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. This instruction was opened following a complaint deposed in December 2005 by the Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH) NGO ("Human Rights League") and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) NGO on charges of "arbitrary detention", "crime of torture" and "non-respect of the rights of war prisoners". In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. Senator Ron Wyden (DOregon) said he was sending a letter to Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, asking him to instruct Hayden to drop the inquiry. :confused: How could a wall prevent maritime insertion? [70], The Egyptian Foreign Ministry later explained that the intercepted fax was merely a review of the Romanian press done by the Egyptian Embassy in Bucharest. Black site. On November 28, 2005, EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini asserted that any EU country which had operated a secret prison would have its voting rights suspended. The scandal of secret CIA prisons exploded in February 2005, after several revelations in the Washington Post. In 2008, a British newspaper published a huge story stating that the CIA and other US secret services have been holding up to 25,000 people captive in secret sites across the world. The vast majority of information that has been provided to the public about black sites has been the result of investigative reporting. Inquiry", "C.I.A. The group claimed that these secret detention facilities intentionally held prisoners, including political opponents, civilians, opinion-makers. Lets see. [131][132], Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri are said to have been held and subjected to physical punishments at the Stare Kiejkuty intelligence base in northeastern Poland. Officially, it is home to the Combined Joint Task ForceHorn of Africa, a US combat unit that was mobilized during Operation Enduring Freedom, aka The War on Terror. From secret black site prisonsoperating in Chicagowith no due process, to midnight raids in which babies faces are blown off by police grenades, attempting to stop Americans from self-medicating has proven to be a disastrousfailure. I remember one time I asked the nurse officer if he could do me a favor, Payan wrote later in a letter, just shoot me and kill me, I would appreciate, because I cannot take this anymore. As day after mind-numbing day dragged on, hunger began to rival their families as their central preoccupation. The war on drugs has produced the vilest police state one can imagine. But they've said there's nothing we can really do about it. In the United States, when defense attorneys have tried to argue that the conditions amount to inhumane treatment, some cases judges have agreed. [120], In November 2005, El Pas reported that CIA planes had landed in the Canary Islands and in Palma de Mallorca. One judge refused to dismiss a detainees indictment due to outrageous government conduct, though said he was troubled by accounts of inadequate nutrition, weight loss, lack of privacy for toilet use and lack of sufficient protection from the elements., This is not to say that such treatment of detainees is condoned by this court, said the judge. 5. The facility is operated by a Moroccan government unit known as the Directorate for the Surveillance of the Territory (DST). We don't have facilities here. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) prepared a report based on interviews with black site detainees, conducted October 611 and December 414, 2006, after their transfer to Guantanamo Bay. Far from it.. What I found in my reporting is that detainees, men who are moving cocaine in the Pacific Ocean. It had been used "in connection with the abduction in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, on 31 December 2003, and his transport to a US detention centre in Afghanistan on 23 January 2004". Destinations included Estonia (1/11/03); Larnaca, Sal, Kabul, Palma, Skopje, Baghdad, (all January 16, 2004); Marka (May 10, 2004 and June 13, 2004). : http://amzn.to/2pbMv1AWhat computer do we edit on? [146][147][148] Valdas Adamkus, a former president of Lithuania, said he is certain that no alleged terrorists were ever detained on Lithuanian territory. The sources who spoke to the BBC stated that the Polish president likely had no idea what was really going on at the Stare Kiejkuty base. The Clive Stafford Smith quoted in the article heads Reprieve-UK, which describes itself as follows: Reprieve provides frontline investigation and legal representation to prisoners denied justice by powerful governments across the world, especially those governments that should be upholding the highest standards when it comes to fair trials. After more than two months of detention, Arcentales says, he had lost 20 pounds; Payan says he lost 50. Aafia's case gained notoriety due to Yvonne Ridley's allegations in her book, The Grey Lady of Bagram, a ghostly female detainee, who kept prisoners awake "with her haunting sobs and piercing screams". Katalyst said: "In an effort to staunch the flow of cocaine and other hard drugs from South America to Central America and points north, Coast Guard cutters have been deployed farther and farther from the shore in the Pacific Ocean" Wait, you mean the wall won't stop this? It remains the only district of Russia where homosexuality is outlawed and punishable with jail time. Planning and building a new prison is a time consuming exercise. We could no longer endure living in such conditions for that prolonged period of time, Arcentales wrote later in a letter. How can the Coast Guard get away with keeping people under those conditions when the men haven't even been charged? [81] On December 22, 2009, the parliamentary commission finished its investigation and stated they found no proof that a black site had existed in Lithuania. [61] The Temara interrogation centre, 8 kilometres (5mi) outside the Moroccan capital, Rabat, is cited as one such site. [142][143][144] Panetta informed his fellow employees that the CIA would only use interrogation techniques authorized in the US Army interrogation manual, and that any individuals taken into custody by the CIA would only be held briefly, for the time necessary to transfer them to the custody of authorities in their home countries, or the custody of another US agency. The men were required to clean out the buckets themselves. [11], On September 6, 2006, Bush publicly admitted the existence of secret prisons[9] and announced that many of the detainees held there were being transferred to Guantanamo Bay.[12]. At Camp Eagle, a former Yugoslavian air base, the pair claimed that they were beaten and harassed by soldiers before being held and questioned by Americans in civilian clothing. 2.7m members in the teenagers community. The questioning of these and other suspected terrorists provided information that helped us protect the American people. Prisons, European Antiterror Chief Says", "European Parliament resolution on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners", Executive Order -- Ensuring Lawful Interrogations, "CIA Prisons to Be Evaluated in One-Year Review by Senate Panel", "CIA says shuttering detention 'black sites', "Message from the Director: Interrogation Policy and Contracts", "U.S. to Prosecute a Somali Suspect in Civilian Court", "Congress Clashes Over Release of CIA Torture Report", "Top senator rejects CIA torture report redactions ahead of public release", "Here's What Dianne Feinstein Said About the Torture Report", "7 Key Points From the C.I.A. Although the UK has long claimed that ghost prisoners havent been held at Diego Garcia, in a 2015 interview with Vice News, Lawrence Wilkerson (US Secretary of State Colin Powells former chief of staff) revealed that terrorism suspects were abducted and brought to the ocean base for special interrogations. They were moved from ship to ship, chained to the deck by the ankle, defecated in buckets and threw the waste overboard. Kwasniewski stated that a US memorandum informed him that detainees would be treated as prisoners of war and would be afforded the internationally recognized rights that come with such a designation. In December 2014 the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) published an executive summary of a secret 6,000-page report on CIA techniques. [4], In Chechnya, gay men have allegedly been tortured at black sites by Chechen security forces. 99% of cocaine in us was cia in the eighties. Romania claims that Mihail Kogalniceanu Airport is only used as a transfer point for CIA prisoners and not for actual detainment or interrogations. According to Mayer's report, CIA officers have taken out professional liability insurance, fearing that they could be criminally prosecuted if what they have already done became public knowledge. The tapes were made in 2002 as part of a secret detention and interrogation program, and were destroyed in November 2005. Very often, detainees are brought to port in one of these cutters, then placed in a hidden room in a helicopter hangar or in a room below deck and hidden there for the day while the Coast Guard cutter refuels or the Coast Guard crew get a bit of a break and then are brought back out to sea. Find the latest tracks, albums, and images from Secret Floating Prisons. Seth Freed Wessler reported this story for The Times. Time began to warp for them. The UAE runs secret prisons in Yemen where prisoners are forcibly disappeared and tortured. [1] Top Searches. In fact, the specifics of the network of black sites remains controversial. ", "EU May Suspend Nations With Secret Prisons", "No Proof of Secret C.I.A. The property was purchased in 2004 by Elite LLC, a company registered in Washington, DC. Yet the department also stated that the tapes "had no more intelligence value and were not relevant to any inquiries". The Coast Guard has gotten away with this inhumane and horrific practice for years by claiming that logistics make it hard to get these people back. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorized press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and oversight concerns. In 2005, two Bosnian men, Nihad Karsic and Almin Harbeus, spoke to Bosnias public television broadcaster BHTV about their ordeals at Camp Eagle, near Tuzla, close to the Bosnian border with Serbia. [13], In January 2012, Poland's Prosecutor General's office initiated investigative proceedings against Zbigniew Siemitkowski, the former Polish intelligence chief. A . Reprieve believes that the ship is connected to a series of abductions carried out by Somali, Kenyan, and Ethiopian forces around 2007. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. Are they allowed to use a proper bathroom? Is Subject of C.I.A. Perhaps this is why the U.S. is all fussed about the race to reign in outer space. secret floating prisons. Competitive Shopping. Some have speculated that the information allegedly leaked may have included information about the camps. Castle on the Sea You can find the Castle on the Sea if you travel northwest from the Port Town Dock. It has been said that you can judge a society by how it treats people accused of violating its laws. a most exceptional investigation of a core element in the deeply troubled story of Ireland Richard O'Brien, Ambassador of Ireland to Australia 1995 to 2002. It's out of their control after that, but we're arresting people in international waters, often on foreign boats, thousands of miles from the United States. As weve made this decision to prosecute more and more people, these delays have grown longer and longer.. [114] Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees expressed concern about the inquiry, saying that it could undermine the inspector general's role as independent watchdog. Coast Guard officials say they can do this because the drug smugglers aren't under arrest until they reach U.S. shores, but some of the worst cases are drawing criticism even from Coast Guard officials. Since 2001, more than 80,000 people have passed through these prisons, it said. Reprieve uses international and domestic law as a tool to save lives, deliver justice and make the case for world-wide reform. Siemitkowski is charged with facilitating the alleged CIA detention operation in Poland, where foreign suspects may have been tortured in the context of the War on Terror. Yikes! : http://amzn.to/2p951quCheck out the best of Alltime10s - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLec1lxRhYOzt2qqqnFBIpUm63wr5yhLF6Where else to find All Time 10sFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/Alltime10sTwitter:https://twitter.com/alltime10s Djibouti is a highly strategic location for the US military, primarily due to its close proximity to terrorist hot zones such as Somalia and Yemen as well as the pirate-filled Gulf of Aden. Some of the suspected smugglers have spent months chained to ship decks, awaiting transfer to the mainland for prosecution in American courts. I dont like the US govt at times but some of these conspiracy theories by the left are just absurd and dont make ANY sense at all and yet people willingly accept them as truth and swallow the kool aid because theyre posted on a public conspiracy theory forum and because theres a VERY small footnote of a theory of this in the Guardian that it HAS to be true! In practice, inmates in black sites have no rights other than those given by the captors. Data published by the newspaper confirmed that the CIA hid the most dangerous al-Qaeda terrorists in what are called Black Sites (Dark Places) located in . On January 22, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring the CIA to use only the 19 interrogation methods outlined in the United States Army Field Manual "unless the Attorney General with appropriate consultation provides further guidance". We understand that we made these decisions. "By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. "[119], Nonetheless, the CIA's alleged programme prompted several official investigations in Europe into the existence of such secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states. However, as the Times report notes, "when the Coast Guard has had to move people more quickly, they do. From secret black site prisonsoperating in Chicagowith no due process, to midnight raids in which babies faces are blown off by police grenades, attempting to stop Americans from self-medicating has proven to be a disastrous failure. So the Coast Guard is arresting these people in these boats and it's not clear whether the drugs on these boats are going to the U.S.? One of the CIAs guinea pigs was Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi national captured in Pakistan in 2002. In 2014, the US government declassified a US Senate Report on the CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program. We've done stories about that. The CIA and their operatives methods allegedly include waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation, physical beatings, electric shocks, and worse. Our subreddit is primarily for The Coast Guard claims they can keep these folks in such torturous conditions because they aren't under arrest until they get back to the United States. The involvement of Leszek Miller, Poland's Prime Minister from 2001 to 2004, is also considered possible. In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. The order also provided that "The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future. Tim Bissell is a writer and researcher who works in the Canadian television industry. Some of the suspected smugglers . Eight airports outside Europe are also cited. They helped us disrupt an al Qaeda operation to develop anthrax for terrorist attacks. Once detained, the Coast Guard employs the fiction that the suspects are not under arrest, sometimes chains them to the deck exposed to the elements, feeds them near starvation rations and provides them buckets for toilets. On October 9, 2007, the United States Supreme Court declined without comment to hear an appeal of El-Masri's civil lawsuit against the United States (El-Masri v. Tenet), letting stand an earlier verdict by a federal district court judge, which was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Do private prisons still exist in the US? This number of 100 persons does not overlap, but adds itself to the U.S.-detained 100 ghost detainees.[28]. They describe that as a really terrible disgusting process. The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making. The report also stated that the site had been used as recently as 2012 by the Obama administration, despite President Obama signing an executive order in 2009 banning the use of black sites by the CIA. Firearm Discussion and Resources from AR-15, AK-47, Handguns and more! Yes, the Coast Guard is actively hiding its prisoners so it can essentially keep them at sea indefinitely. The list of those thought to be held by the CIA includes suspected al-Qaeda members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Abu Zubaydah. Amnesty Internationals report stated that Moroccan interrogators had repeatedly beaten, humiliated, electrocuted, burned, and waterboarded inmates at Temara. [8], Black sites operated by the US government and its surrogates were first officially acknowledged by President George W. Bush in the fall of 2006. The drugs are moving from South America to Central America as far as they're concerned. "I find it unfathomable that the committee tasked with oversight of the C.I.A. An important aspect of black site operation is that the legal status of black site detainees is not clearly defined. In 2008, The Guardian reported that human rights organization Reprieve, which claimed that the US has admitted to holding at least 26,000 people in secret prisons, had discovered that the US was operating a fleet of floating prisons that span the globe. Its content was created separately to USA TODAY. [85], The Washington Post on December 26, 2002, reported about a secret CIA prison in one corner of Bagram Air Force Base (Afghanistan) consisting of metal shipping containers. [20] On September 6, 2006, Bush publicly admitted the existence of the secret prisons[9] and that many of the detainees held there were being transferred to Guantanamo Bay. The installation is currently home to roughly 4,000 military personnel and independent contractors. Courts have generally bought the governments argument, he said. [100] "The Post has not identified the East European countries involved in the secret program at the request of senior U.S. officials who argued that the disclosure could disrupt counter-terrorism efforts".[102]. It's not always clear that the drugs are coming here and, in fact, the circuit court in California has said that the U.S. can't prosecute these cases unless they can prove that the drugs were headed to the United States that they actually intended to to show up there. Their findings were that, although human rights had generally improved in Morocco over recent years, there was also an increase in reported torture cases in the North African nation. In 2007, Elite LLC sold the property to the Lithuanian government and then disappeared. Naval Base in Diego Garcia was reported to be a black site, but UK and U.S. officials initially attempted to suppress these reports. Danner also provided excerpts of the ICRC report characterizing procedures used at the black sites, dubbed "an alternative set of procedures" by President Bush, and discussed whether they fit the definition of torture.[14]. However, the lawyer representing the LDH declared that he was surprised that the judicial investigation was only opened on January 20, 2006, and that no verifications had been done before. The organization went on to claim that the United States was imprisoning as many as 26,000 foreign detainees in secret prison facilities, including land-based prisons. Sooo funny! Two of the alleged smugglers profiled in the Times described their on-board meals as consisting of small portions of black beans and rice, with an occasional piece of chicken or spinach. Reports state that he, too, was waterboarded, in addition to being threatened with sodomy. Of the 27 detainees, 13 had been granted acquittal, 11 completed their full terms, and the cases of the remaining 3 were nullified by the court. His investigation has found that no evidence exists establishing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe, but added that it was "highly unlikely" that European governments were unaware of the American program of renditions. Now, however, it seems to have gotten worse as an ad-hoc US detention system has . [citation needed], The interior minister of Romania, Vasile Blaga, has assured the EU that the Mihail Koglniceanu Airport was used only as a supply point for equipment, and never for detention, though there have been reports to the contrary. After an investigation by the EU Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, the EU determined that it could not find any of these prisons. Operated Secret Dark Prison in Kabul (Human Rights Watch, 19-12-2005), "Sexual abuse rife at UAE-run jails in Yemen, prisoners claim", "Disappearances and torture in southern Yemen detention facilities must be investigated as war crimes", "Inside numerous secret prisons in Yemen, the UAE tortures and the U.S. interrogates detainees: Re", "HRW: UAE backs torture and disappearances in Yemen", "Amnesty urges probe into report of UAE torture in Yemen", "UAE runs 'horrific network of torture' in secret Yemen prisons: report", "NGO calls for closing UAE's 'secret prisons' in Yemen", "The UAE and Saudi Arabia Supervise the Arrest and Torture of Dozens of Yemenis", "The #UAE an #SaudiArabia supervise the arrest and torture of dozens of Yemenis", "Authorities in Mukalla must free those being arbitrarily detained in Al Munawara Central Prison", "Is Europe being used to hold CIA detainees? Unofficially, according to a 2014 report from Al Jazeera America, Djiboutis Camp Lemonnier is also a CIA black site that saw dozens of suspects secretly detained, interrogated, and tortured. The fourteen European countries Marty listed as collaborators in "unlawful inter-state transfers" are Great Britain, Germany, the Isle of Man, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Poland. I really felt that officials thought people need to be moved off the boats more quickly and, again, are uncomfortable about the conditions that they have to hold people in. And so when I talked to Arcentales, for example, about the sea, he said to me "the ocean used to be a place that for me represented freedom. He didn't tell anyone and disappeared. The Guardian article is based on a forthcoming report from an NGO called Reprieve. Secret prisons reflect a parallel legal system for prisoners who are denied access to communications, deprived of their due process rights, and hidden from public scrutiny.