Janice Anderson - War Crimes and Atrocities

One example of this practice was the case of a Yemeni businessman Abd al-Salam Ali al-Hila, who was handed over to the US authorities and then disappeared for a year and a half before turning up at Guatanamo Bay detention centre. Although there have been many reports in the media regarding the renditions of suspects to third countries, this case was different – in fact, it was the ‘reverse’. Foreign authorities picked up the suspect in a non-combat situation and handed him over to the USA without the basic protection afforded to criminal suspects.

Al-Hila was literally kidnapped from the streets of Cairo and disappeared when under US custody. When al-Hila was picked up on 19 September, 2002, during a business trip to Cairo, he was taken to Baku in Azerbaijan and later to the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. After his disappearance, his family did not hear from him until April 2004, when they received a letter, which was smuggled out of Afghanistan. Al-Hila has sent subsequent letters to his family to let them know he is still alive via the International Committee of the Red Cross and, most recently, from Guatanamo.

Unfortunately, the al-Hila case is not unique. It appears that the Bush administration feels it is within its legal rights if the detainees come under the label of ‘terror suspects’.

The term ‘black sites’ is a military term that literally means ‘secret jails in foreign countries’, which are operated by the CIA. Recently the term has gained notoriety when the Washington Post published a controversial article claiming the existence of black sites, which was vehemently denied by many European countries. The secret facilities for detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists are believed to be in Thailand, Afghanistan and several other democracies in Eastern Europe, on top of the already notorious Guatanamo Bay prison in Cuba. This hidden network of internment is all part of the illicit war on terrorism at present being carried out by the CIA. It relies on the assistance of other foreign intelligence agencies, and the concealment of any details is paramount to the success of their operations. Due to what the CIA and the White House consider the clandestine nature of these black sites, virtually nothing is known about who is kept where and the exact locations. This information is only available to a handful of people to protect national security and because of the fear that the information could be leaked out. Although the CIA has issued reports and testimonies regarding the alleged abuse carried out at Guatanamo Bay, it strongly denies the existence of any black sites.

In 2003, three Yemeni nationals all disappeared. When their whereabouts was eventually disclosed it appeared they had been kept in a series of secret locations run by US agents. The reason for the clandestine operation was so that it put the victims beyond the protection of the law, while at the same time concealing any violations from external scrutiny. The three men were Salah Nasser Salim ’Ali, Muhammad al-Assad and Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah.

The nightmare started on the night of 26 December, 2003, in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, where Muhammed al-Assad had lived since 1985. Al-Assad had just sat down to dinner with his Tanzanian wife, Zahra Salloum, and her brother and uncle, when he heard a knock at the front door. The three men at the door were an immigration officer and two state security officials, who ordered al-Assad to surrender his passport and mobile phone. As al-Assad walked away from the men to get his passport from his study, he was grabbed from behind; his hands were handcuffed behind his back and his head was covered with a hood. He was forcibly pushed into the back of a car, which sped away from the house, leaving al-Assad in a state of shock.

He was frightened and kept asking his captors what was happening to him and where were they taking him, but they gave him no reply. He was taken back to a flat and questioned for several hours, before being taken to a waiting plane. All the time al-Assad was wearing a hood, so he had no idea where he was. However, he was aware of the roaring of the plane engines. Again he asked his captors where he was being taken, and this time they responded, ‘We don’t know, we are just following orders, there are high-ranking ones who are responsible.’

The tenuous link under which al-Assad seems to have been held for so long was his supposed dealings with a black-listed charity. He ran a small business importing car parts and also rented out offices in a small building that he owned. Just prior to his arrest, al-Assad had leased one of the offices to the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which was a Saudi Arabian charity that the USA believed was involved in terrorist funding. The arrest of the other two men Salah ’Ali and Muhammad Bashmilah seemed to have been triggered off purely because they had recently visited Afghanistan.

Al-Assad’s flight lasted for about three hours and when they landed he stepped out onto the tarmac into hot sunshine. From the airport al-Assad was taken to a cell where his hood and handcuffs were removed. It was a large, dirty room with a foam mattress and two small windows up near the ceiling. His food was passed to him through a small hole in the door and he thought he was kept there for about three weeks. The only person that spoke to him was his interrogator and translator, who kept asking him about his associations with the Al-Haramain charity. Judging by the accent of his jailers he thought he had probably been taken to East Africa.

After this period of internment, al-Assad was cuffed, hooded and taken to an airport, and this time the flight lasted a lot longer, possibly about eight hours. At his new destination the weather was considerably cooler, and again he had no idea of where he had been taken. He was held in a cell with no windows and nothing but a piece of matting on the floor. He remembers feeling cold but wasn’t even given the luxury of a blanket. For a number of days he was left completely on his own, and after what he thinks was about nine days, he was interrogated once again, this time in English.

Next he was taken by car to a smaller, and what seemed to be a much older, cell. He was held here for several months and was occasionally questioned by the same interrogators and always about the same thing, his connection with the charity.

Al-Assad’s next move was by helicopter, and his description of his next detention centre is the same as that given by the other two men. He said that the guards were all dressed in black and their faces were permanently covered. The only way they communicated with him was by hand gestures and the cell, which had no windows, meant that he never knew whether it was day or night, or what the conditions were like outside.

All three men were subjected to the same regime of interrogation – constant white noise played through loudspeakers and artificial light 24 hours a day. They were forbidden to speak to anyone with the exception of the interrogators and were only taken for a shower once a week. Salah ’Ali also reported that he had been suspended from the ceiling and had the soles of his feet beaten so badly that he was unable to walk when he was finally released from the hooks. On another occasion he was stripped and beaten by a circle of masked soldiers bearing sticks.

In May 2005, all three men were taken to a secret detention centre somewhere in the Yemen and today they are still being held without having received an official trial or charges. Yemeni officials said they had been given explicit instructions by the US government to continue to detain the three men until they receive further instructions.

Zahra Salloum was told that her husband had been deported to the Yemen because his passport was not valid, and this story was repeated by the media. Salloum was suspicious about the story and phoned al-Assad’s 75-year-old father who lived in the Yemen. He travelled to the capital to see if he could find his son, but he was assured by the Yemini government that al-Assad had never entered the country. Determined to find out what had happened, he continued his journey to Dar-es-Salaam, where he filed a habeus corpus petition with the Tanzanian courts. Al-Assad’s father was later to learn from Tanzanian officials that his son had been handed over to US custody, but no one knew where he had been taken.