CIA torture victim calls for declassification of Senate report

Source: Ekklesia

CIA torture victim calls for declassification of Senate report
By agency reporter
4 Apr 2014

Ahead of a vote in the US Senate over whether to declassify a major report on CIA torture, one of the Agency’s victims has called for the “open acknowledgement of past wrongs.”

Abdelhakim Belhadj, a Libyan anti-Gaddafi dissident who was ‘rendered’ and tortured – along with his pregnant wife, Fatima Boudchar – in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004, has expressed his hope that the report will be declassified.

The couple’s case came to light after correspondence between Sir Mark Allen, then a senior MI6 officer, and Colonel Gaddafi’s spy chief was found following the Libyan revolution. In it, Sir Mark refers to the US part in the operation, saying “I know I did not pay for the air cargo,” but emphasising that the "the intelligence on (Mr Belhadj) was British.”

The couple were detained in China in February 2004, and subsequently flown to Bangkok, where they were held by US agents. Ms Boudchar, despite being pregnant at the time, was chained to a wall, and later taped tightly to a stretcher, blindfolded (also using tape) and hooded – which caused her to fear for the health of her baby. Meanwhile, Mr Belhadj was held in a ‘black site,’ where he was beaten on multiple occasions, hung from the wall by chains and subjected to sleep deprivation by being blasted with loud music.


Read more: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/20369