Human rights groups name 39 CIA "disappeared" detainees

Mary Shaw, the Smirking Chimp

Amnesty International and five other human rights groups have just released a report that names 39 individuals who "are believed to have been held in secret US custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown." The report also names some relatives of suspects, including children as young as seven, "who were themselves detained in secret prisons." Below is the text of a press release issued today by Amnesty International, followed by a link to the actual report online...

continua / continued

Groups Sue US Over Fate of 39 'Disappeared'

by Jim Lobe
Three human rights groups sued the US government Thursday to force it to disclose what it knows about the fate of more than three dozen detainees in the "global war on terror" who are believed to have been held by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in secret prisons at some point over the past five years and who remain unaccounted for.
The three New York-based groups – Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the International Human Rights Clinic of New York University School of Law – filed their suit under the Freedom of Information Act, alleging that the government is withholding documents that can shed light on what happened to the 39 "disappeared" detainees and where they might be found.
"What we're asking is where are these 39 people now, and what's happened to them since they 'disappeared'?" said Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch, which, while not a plaintiff in the case, contributed to a report, also released Thursday, that forms the basis of the lawsuit.
"It is already a serious abuse to hold them in secret CIA prisons. Now we fear they may have been transferred to countries where they face further secret detention and abuse," she added.
The 21-page report, to which two other groups – London-based Cageprisoners and Reprieve – also contributed, details the names and other information about 39 people who "disappeared" after their apprehension. Most were detained in Pakistan between 2001 and 2005.
The report, entitled "Off the Record", also records the detention of the wives or young children – in one case, as young as six months old – of several of the detainees. The six groups said it was the most comprehensive listing of detainees who have disappeared that has been compiled since the launch of the war on terror in late 2001.
"The duty of governments to protect people from acts of terrorism is not in question," said Amnesty's senior research director, Claudio Cordone, in London. "But seizing men, women and even children, and placing people in secret locations deprived of the most basic safeguards for any detainees most definitely is. The US administration must end this illegal and morally repugnant practice once and for all." >>>cont

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