Denounce Torture

A new Amnesty report documents how the CIA has used private aircraft operators and front companies to preserve the secrecy of rendition flights and "black site" detention.  But in addition to exposing the CIA's exploitation of aviation practices to unlawfully transfer detainees to countries that torture, the report puts a human face on this issue by telling the story of three survivors of rendition:

In May 2005, three stunned and traumatized Yemeni men emerged from a covert network of US-run prisons scattered across continents. They had been transported from site to site on secret flights and detained since 2003 without any contact with the outside world. Amnesty International went to Yemen to interview them and the men’s gruelling stories shed a glimmer of light on the murky system of captures, transfers and secret detention that has been developed by the USA in the “war on terror”.

These cases, according to the report, point to the possible existence of "black sites" within Council of Europe countries.

The location of their final secret prison, a high security facility where they spent 13 months, remains unknown. However, the information provided by the men suggests that it could have been located in Eastern Europe. Tremendous effort was made to keep the location secret from the detainees – they were never allowed to look outside, labels were removed from food, and so on. And for month after month, the men had no idea whether it was day or night, sunny or rainy, or whether their torment of spending endless days staring at blank walls or being interrogated would ever end.

The report also underscores what impact detention has on individuals who are released:

Muhammad al-Assad told Amnesty International on his release: “For me now, it has to be a new life, because I will never recover the old one”. His business is in ruins, he is in debt and he doesn’t know if he will be allowed to return to Tanzania. Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah ‘Ali Qaru do not know if they will have the money or permission to return to their destitute wives in Indonesia. All three men believe that they will remain stigmatized as security risks and will never again be able to lead normal lives. All continue to suffer the dire mental and physical health consequences of torture and ill-treatment, including the prolonged periods in isolation and secret detention.

Read the report summary.

Download the full report in PDF.