Date: Sat, 3 May 2014 23:28:02 +0200
Senate report set to reveal Djibouti as CIA ‘black site’
Antony Njuguna / Reuters / Landov
Horn of Africa nation has denied hosting secret prison facilities for US,
but classified document may undermine claim
May 3, 2014 5:00AM ET
by <http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/l/jason-leopold.html> Jason
Leopold <http://www.twitter.com/JasonLeopold> _at_JasonLeopold
The legal case of a former CIA detainee suing the government of Djibouti for
hosting the facility where he says he was detained could be helped by the
contents of a still-classified Senate report. Djibouti, a key U.S. ally, has
denied for years that its territory has been used to keep suspected Al-Qaeda
operatives in secret captivity. But the Senate investigation into the
agency’s “detention and interrogation program” concluded that several people
had been secretly detained in the tiny Horn of Africa state, two U.S.
officials who read an early draft of the report told Al Jazeera.
Official confirmation of Djibouti’s role in hosting “black sites” used in
the CIA’s rendition program would be welcomed by Mohammad al-Asad, a Yemeni
arrested at his home in Tanzania on Dec. 27, 2003, blindfolded and flown to
a location <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4880320.stm> he insists was
Djibouti. Two U.S. officials who read an early draft of the report of the
Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation — and who requested anonymity
because the report remains classified — were unaware of whether al-Asad’s
case was specifically cited in the document. But they confirmed that the
report found that several detainees had been held in Djibouti, and that at
least two of them had been wrongfully detained.
Djibouti's Ambassador to the U.S., Roble Olhaye, told Al Jazeera his country
was not a "knowing participant" in the CIA's rendition program and he
rejected claims by al-Asad that he was temporarily imprisoned there.
However, Olhaye said, "If something was done in the context of the American
base there how would we know?" But, he said, Djibouti's agreement with the
U.S. precluded the base from being used to house prisoners.
Al-Asad said that after his arrival in the country he alleges was Djibouti,
he was held in a prison cell and tortured. He said he was interrogated by an
American woman about his connections to the now-defunct Saudi charity
Al-Haramain. The group, later accused by the U.S. Treasury of supporting
terrorism, had in 1994 rented apartment space from al-Asad in a building he
owned in Tanzania.
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, al-Asad, now 54 years old, said
he was detained for about two weeks in Djibouti and then rendered to
Afghanistan, where he says he was tortured at various points over the course
of more than a year at several CIA black site prisons.
Before he was released in 2005 and sent back to Yemen, he said, he received
a visitor from Washington.
“What I remember through the interpreter was that he said, ‘I am the head of
the prison, and you will be the first one at the top of the list of the
people we are going to release because we have nothing on you,’” al-Asad
told Al Jazeera. “The interpreter said that he was the director of all the
prisons.”
Al-Asad was never charged with terrorism or related crimes, but he pleaded
guilty in Yemen to making false statements and using forged documents to
obtain his Tanzanian travel papers.
Al-Asad, who still lives in Yemen, has been trying since his release to hold
Djibouti officials accountable for his detention. In 2009, he sought redress
from the <http://www.achpr.org/> African Commission on Human and Peoples’
Rights, a quasi-judicial body that has jurisdiction over Djibouti and other
countries that approved the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In
the coming days, that commission, which is based in Gambia, is expected to
decide whether it will take up al-Asad’s case.
Olhaye called al-Asad a "liar", adding, "Everything about his case relies on
hearsay and conjecture. There were no flights that came to Djibouti on that
day he said he was brought to my country from Tanzania. That was checked by
our lawyers."
But John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, who has
spent more than a decade investigating the CIA's rendition, detention and
interrogation program testified before the commission last year and said
"the fact that the flight records of CIA aircraft that are public do not
include a flight that matches Mr. al-Asad's trajectory is not indicative of
anything in and of itself."
Sifton said the CIA could "easily circumvent data collection" and "aircraft
used by the CIA could easily be rendered untraceable while flying in and
around Djibouti."
Al-Asad has based his legal case on flight records, collected by Human
Rights Watch and the U.K.-based human rights charity Reprieve, demonstrating
<http://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/pdf/PDF%20478%20%5BRaphael%20Declarat
ion%20%28al-Asad%20v.%20Djibouti%29%20%2825%20Oct%202013%29%5D.pdf>
CIA-linked aircraft flying in and out of Djibouti (PDF).
His lawyers have also obtained documents from Tanzanian immigration
officials stating that al-Asad was sent to Djibouti on a Tanzanair aircraft
after his 2003 arrest.
“This is one of the most direct pieces of evidence we have showing that
Djibouti is where our client was held before being handed to the rendition
team on the tarmac,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, al-Asad’s attorney and a
professor at New York University’s Global Justice Clinic.
Al-Asad, who still lives in Yemen, has been trying since his release to hold
Djibouti officials accountable for his detention.
If the case proceeds, it will mark the first such investigation into the
workings of the rendition program in Africa, and could open the door to
additional legal challenges by former “war on terror” captives.
A handful of similar cases are already pending before the European Court of
Human Rights. However, U.S. courts — citing state secrecy — have rejected
attempts by detainees to hold their former captors accountable.
Al Jazeera’s sources noted that in addition to 6 million pages of CIA
records, Senate committee investigators obtained some information about the
wrongful detentions from people they characterized as “whistleblowers.” The
U.S. officials declined to elaborate.
Djibouti, a former French colony, has been one of the key U.S.
counterterrorism partners for more than a decade, hosting the Combined Joint
Task Force–Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier. The U.S. Air Force also
reportedly uses Djibouti as a base for a
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/drone-safety-concerns
-force-us-to-move-large-fleet-from-camp-lemonnier-in-djibouti/2013/09/24/955
518c4-213c-11e3-a03d-abbedc3a047c_story.html> fleet of drones to strike at
Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabab suspects in Yemen and Somalia.
According to human rights researchers, after 9/11 dozens of suspects
captured by the U.S. were
<http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/051/2006/en/b543c574-fa09-11d
d-b1b0-c961f7df9c35/amr510512006en.pdf> secretly detained, interrogated and
<http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/globalizing-tortu
re-20120205.pdf> tortured in Djibouti.
The Obama administration, as recently as August 2012, reportedly
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/renditions-continue-u
nder-obama-despite-due-process-concerns/2013/01/01/4e593aa0-5102-11e2-984e-f
1de82a7c98a_story.html> continued to render suspects to Djibouti for
short-term detention. Although President Barack Obama signed an executive
order in 2009
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/EnsuringLawfulInterrogations>
banning the CIA’s use of black-site prisons, the order states that it does
“not apply to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term,
transitory basis.”
Confirmation by the Senate Intelligence Committee of Djibouti’s role in the
rendition program would be a “critical” development, said Satterthwaite.
“The cooperation of countries all over the world — including Djibouti — was
central to the operation of the U.S. rendition, secret detention, and
torture program,” Satterthwaite said. “While the role of European partners
such as Poland and Romania has been the subject of much reporting and
investigation, the assistance of countries such as Djibouti has yet to be
scrutinized. Further, as the home of a fleet of U.S. drones, Djibouti is an
enormously important partner but has not received adequate scrutiny for its
role in facilitating U.S. abuses.”
The cooperation of countries all over the world — including Djibouti — was
central to the operation of the U.S. rendition, secret detention, and
torture program.
Margaret Satterthwaite
Al-Asad's attorney
Jonathan Horowitz, who works on national security and legal issues at the
Open Society Justice Initiative, said al-Asad’s case provides the African
human rights commission with an opportunity “to state that African
governments can’t collude with other governments to abuse human rights, and
they can’t use the fight against terrorism to justify violating people’s
rights.”
Last year, Open Society issued a report,
<http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/globalizing-tortu
re-20120205.pdf> Globalizing Torture, which found that 54 countries,
including Djibouti, were complicit in the extraordinary rendition of 136 CIA
prisoners. The nonpartisan Constitution Project also produced a
<http://detaineetaskforce.org/read/index.html#/210/> Detainee Task Force
report identifying Djibouti as a CIA rendition partner and focused heavily
on al-Asad’s case to support its conclusions.
“One of the things that is really important to recognize here is that the
CIA torture and rendition program couldn’t have gone global without the
assistance from other countries,” Horowitz said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to work on strengthening its counterterrorism
relationship with Djibouti. Next week, Djibouti’s president, Ismaïl Omar
Guelleh, will travel to the U.S. to meet with President Obama at the White
House. Ambassador Olhaye does not believe the Senate's report, if it is ever
released, will identify his country as a rendition partner.
"I don't believe the Senate report will say anything about my government,"
he said. "Maybe about the American base. Our prisons have not been
participating in that kind of thing." Olhaye said neither he nor anyone from
his country has had any discussions with U.S. officials about the Senate's
report.
Asad
Yemeni citizen Mohammad al-Asad
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)