Dozens of Prisoners Held by CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown
by Dafna Linzer, ProPublica - April 22, 2009 8:16 am EDT
Last week, we pointed out that one of the newly released Bush-era memos inadvertently confirmed that the CIA held an al-Qaeda suspect <1> named Hassan Ghul in a secret prison and subjected him to what Bush administration lawyers called "enhanced interrogation techniques." The CIA has never acknowledged holding Ghul, and his whereabouts today are secret.
But Ghul is not the only such prisoner who remains missing. At least three dozen others who were held in the CIA's secret prisons overseas appear to be missing as well. Efforts by human rights organizations to track their whereabouts have been unsuccessful, and no foreign governments have acknowledged holding them. (See the full list. <2>)
In September 2007, Michael V. Hayden, then director of the CIA, said <3> "fewer than 100 people had been detained at CIA's facilities." One memo <4> (PDF) released last week confirmed that the CIA had custody of at least 94 people as of May 2005 and "employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees in the interrogations of 28 of these ".”
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"Making the Justice Department memos on the CIA's secret prison program public was an important first step, but the Obama administration needs to reveal the fate and whereabouts of every person who was held in CIA custody," said Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch <6>. "If these men are now rotting in some Egyptian dungeon, the administration can't pretend that it's closed the door on the CIA program."
http://www.propublica.org/article/dozens-of-prisoners-held-by-cia-still-missing-fates-unknown-422More, hot links at link.