[21], On April 21, 2006, Mary O. McCarthy, a longtime CIA analyst, was fired for allegedly leaking classified information to a Washington Post reporter, Dana Priest, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her revelations concerning the CIA's black sites. [117] In response, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) stated: "You'd have to burn every document at the CIA that has the identity of an agent on it under that theory." Documents on Interrogation", "Debate Erupts on Techniques used by C.I.A. 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. On our Doge's Palace "Prisons and Tyranny" tour, you'll discover a darker side of Venice. In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. And that's one of the reasons why federal prosecutors prefer to bring these cases to Florida, where that burden of proof is not required. [112] On October 5, 2007, President George W. Bush responded, saying "This government does not torture people. Ultimately, most of the cocaine on these smugglers' small boats is probably headed for the United States. They helped us stop a planned strike on a U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, and to prevent a planned attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, and to foil a plot to hijack passenger planes and to fly them into Heathrow Airport and London's Canary Wharf. reggie white sarcoidosis. He says a combination of U.S. agreements with Latin American countries and the U.S. Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act allows the US to take this action. The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. On March 15, 2009, Mark Danner provided a report in the New York Review of Books (with an abridged version in The New York Times) describing and commenting on the contents of the ICRC report. A June 2006 report from the Council of Europe estimated 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA on EU territory (with the cooperation of Council of Europe members), and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centres ("black sites") used by the CIA, some located in Europe. [3] On March 14, 2004, The Guardian reported that three British citizens were held captive in a secret section (Camp Echo) of the Guantnamo Bay complex. The Coast Guard usually has a reputation for being the good guys out there rescuing people, apprehending bad guys. Black site. secret floating prisonshow old was martina navratilova when she retired. [48] Additionally, Camp Bucca (near Umm Qasr) and Camp Cropper (near the Baghdad International Airport) were reported. In 2009, unnamed former intelligence agents told ABC News that the site at Antaviliai was operational for over a year and that during that time, it held at least eight suspected terrorists within its walls. This was apparently due to a misunderstanding that arose concerning the similarity of the spelling of El-Masri's name with the spelling of suspected terrorist Khalid al-Masri. This is a Coast Guard ship and they're basically exposed to the elements and basically shackled and not getting much food. The Salt Pit, also known as Cobalt, is a former brick factory located north of Kabul in Afghanistan. If we even get the chance to start rebuilding. The CIA's claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced interrogation techniques were inaccurate. It is estimated that the U.S. has also used 17 ships as floating prisons since 2001, bringing the total estimated number of prisons operated by the U.S. and/or its allies to house alleged terrorist suspects . [135], In its edition of January 8, 2006, the Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick published a document intercepted on November 10 by the Swiss Onyx interception system (similar to the UKUSA's ECHELON system). We all know prisoners are kept locked inside prison cells and monitored 24/7, but have you ever heard of a floating prison? Is this 'secret prison' number including all the Iraqi detainees in camps in Iraq, or is there some other network of major camps?). With this publicly announced act, the United States government de facto acknowledged the existence of secret prisons abroad in which these prisoners had been held. The reality is that when the Coast Guard has had to move people more quickly, they do. They helped us disrupt an al Qaeda operation to develop anthrax for terrorist attacks. Now, however, it seems to have gotten worse as an ad-hoc US detention system has recently been discovered floating in the Pacific Ocean in international waters as to exist outside the realm of the US justice system. [136], On June 27, 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted on Resolution 1562 and Recommendation 1801 backing the conclusions of the report by Dick Marty. [7][8], CIA controlled black sites are used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain enemy combatants. He is a fisherman from a coastal town in Ecuador and was having a particularly, economically, rough year and made a decision to take a job smuggling cocaine off of the coast of Ecuador. The scandal of secret CIA prisons exploded in February 2005, after several revelations in the Washington Post. The argument by the Coast Guard and by federal prosecutors that these logistical delays are legitimate, as it's hard enough to get people back. Coined "floating Guantanamos", Coast Guard US Coast Guard Operates Secret Floating Prisons in Pacific Ocean | Gold and Precious Metals | Before It's News You're using an Ad-Blocker. He also announced that the CIA was no longer allowing outside "contractors" to carry out interrogations and that the CIA no longer employed controversial "harsh interrogation techniques". This is a practice of detention that until now hasn't really been known. US Slammed for Secret 'Floating Prisons' Prisoners held far from courts and scrutiny, human rights group charges But this isn't a wait of just a few hours or days. The Assembly declared that it was established with a high degree of probability that secret detention centres had been operated by the CIA under the High Value Detainee (HVD) program for some years in Poland and Romania. Some of the suspected smugglers have spent months chained to ship decks, awaiting transfer to the mainland for prosecution in American courts. Some of the suspected smugglers . Many families, in fact, believe that their loved ones husbands, fathers, sons had disappeared. In 2012, The Daily Beast described the Salt Pit as the CIAs Sadistic Dungeon in an article that examined a high-profile death which occurred at the site. Before the mid-1980s, however, it was restricted to U.S. territorial waters. Are they allowed to use a proper bathroom? In their report, they've also stated that a huge number of those people are held on ships that are known as "floating prisons". Zubaydah was reportedly waterboarded so severely that bubbles would rise out of his open mouth. 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. Investigative journalist and TED Fellow Will Potter explains. SOTS & central texas Its my guess that Bush/Cheney chose those specific ships for precisely that reason the Bataan death march and Battle of Peleliu. 24, 2022 . Example video title will go here for this video. In their increasing effort to prove they are needed to stop the flow of drugs, the Coast Guard has continued to go further and further out into these international waters. Landing fees were paid in cash, with the invoices made out to "probably fake" American companies. According to the separate European Parliament report of February 2007, the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Of the 119 detainees identified in the US Senate Report on torture, nearly half were detained at the Salt Pit. [37] Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has denied these reports.[38][39][40][41]. You know, we stick to U.S. law and our international obligations." Find the latest tracks, albums, and images from Secret Floating Prisons. The report alleges that at least eight Thai senior officials knew of the secret site. He was the head of Southern Command between 2012 and 2016 then retired. Pawn Stars is a very interesting show when you think about it. Hassan Nasr was released by an Egyptian courtwho considered his detention "unfounded"in February 2007 and has not been indicted for any crime in Italy. Those courts had agreed with the government that the case could not go forward without exposing state secrets. As we've made this decision to prosecute more and more people, these delays have grown longer and longer. The question about the legality of the U.S. Coast Guard's detention practices has not been raised, in an international context, in criminal courts. The total number of ghost detainees is presumed to be at least one hundred, although the precise number cannot be determined because fewer than 10% have been charged or convicted. [84], After the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, the president of Poland between 1995 and 2005, Alexander Kwasniewski, admitted that he had agreed to host a secret CIA black site in Poland, but that activities were to be carried out in accordance to Polish law. [36], In Thailand, the Voice of America relay station in Ban Dung District of Udon Thani Province was reported to be a CIA black site known as "Cat's Eye" or "Detention Site Green". Posted on June 2, . 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. According to the leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, soon after Siemitkowski was charged by the prosecutors in Warsaw, the case was transferred and is now expected to be handled by a different prosecutorial team in Cracow. For other uses, see, United Kingdom and British overseas territories, United Nations Convention Against Torture, "Detainee says China has secret jail in Dubai, holds Uyghurs", "For Complainers, A Stint In China's 'Black Jails', "Gay Men in Chechnya Tell of Black Sites Where They're Tortured, Some to Death", "Chechen police 'kidnap and torture gay men' - LGBT activists", "Persecution of LGBTI people in the Chechen Republic (Russian Federation)", "Russia: New Anti-Gay Crackdown in Chechnya", "Bush: Top terror suspects to face tribunals", "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons", "Poland feels sting of betrayal over CIA 'black site', "Poland ex-spy boss 'charged over alleged CIA secret prison', "Polish Ex-Official Charged With Aiding the C.I.A. 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. [15][16] Poland and Romania received the most direct accusals, as the report claims the evidence for these sites is "strong". Are private prisons safer? [4][5] A claim that the black sites existed was made by The Washington Post in November 2005 and before this by human rights NGOs. How many days was he out there on this ship? A jaw-dropping report from the NY Times exposes these prisons, dubbing them floating Guantnamos.. secret floating prisons. [95] Several other articles reported the retention of ghost detainees by the CIA, alongside the other official "enemy combatants". The Coast Guard has a broad mission. 4. Location at which an unacknowledged black project is conducted, "Blacksite" redirects here. The prosecutor of Bobigny court, in France, opened up an investigation in order "to verify the presence in Le Bourget Airport, on July 20, 2005, of the plane numbered N50BH". 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. Rinoplastia; Blefaroplastia [129][130], The future robustness of the highly secret investigation, in progress since 2008, may however be in some doubt. Reprieve, a human right's organization, claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006 and that the US may have used as many as 17 ships as " floating prisons " since 2001. 5 Jun. They are war criminals of the highest order. 1.3M views, 5.4K likes, 174 loves, 691 comments, 1.8K shares, Facebook Watch Videos from The Infographics Show: We all know prisoners are kept locked inside prison cells and monitored 24/7, but have. Seth Freed Wessler reported this story for The Times. Somebody could be put on a plane and brought back to the United States. He had left home a year and a half . 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?