US government must reveal information about prison ships used for “terror suspects”
02.06.08 In June 2005 the UN's special rapporteur on terrorism spoke of “very, very serious” allegations that the United States was secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships in the Indian Ocean region.
Reprieve, the legal action charity, believes that the US has operated a number of ships as floating prisons (possibly as many as 17), where prisoners have been interrogated under torturous conditions before being rendered to other, often undisclosed locations. Details regarding the operation of prison ships have emerged through a number of sources, including the US military and other administration officials, the Council of Europe, various parliamentary bodies and journalists, as well as the testimonies of prisoners themselves.
Prisoners believed by Reprieve to have been held on US prison ships include Ibn Al Sheikh Al Libi, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, John Walker Lindh and David Hicks.
Following his capture by Northern Alliance forces in November 2001, John Walker Lindh, the so called ‘American Taliban’, was transferred first to the USS Peleliu and then to USS Bataan. On board, he received medical treatment for dehydration, hypothermia and frostbite. In addition, the bullet wound he received two weeks previously was removed from his leg.
The alleged number three in Al Qaeda, Ibn Al Shaykh Al Libi was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001. He was soon handed over to US custody, and taken to the USS Bataan. Information derived from Sheikh Al Libi under torture in Egypt – later recanted and admitted by the Administration to be false – was relied upon by George Bush and Colin Powell as justification for going to war in Iraq. Instead of being taken to Guantánamo Bay in September 2006 with the fourteen other “high-value detainees”, Sheikh Al Libi was returned to Libya where he is apparently being held incommunicado and is dying of untreated tuberculosis.
A former Guantánamo prisoner told Reprieve about conditions aboard the USS Bataan:
There were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on television. The people detained on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo.
The USS Bataan is also known to have been operating in the Indian Ocean region.
Reprieve believes that prisoners held aboard the USS Bataan were routinely photographed and examined by medical personnel in between interrogations, and that such records are held by the US administration.
When questioned in December 2001 regarding the purpose of holding prisoners on ships, Rear Admiral John D. Stufflebeem, Director of the Navy Staff, said:
I don’t know the specifics … central command determines for either medical considerations, for the protection of those individuals, for the isolation in the sense of not having forces that would try to come get somebody out of a detention centre, for a security aspect, and obviously an interest to continue interrogation.
Reprieve will be issuing a full report on the use of prison ships later this year.
Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s Director, said: “The US administration chooses ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their human rights.”
He added: “By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.”
For further information, please contact Andy Worthington at Reprieve’s Press Office on 020 7427 1099 or email Andy@reprieve.org.uk
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