Secret Detention in CIA Black Sites P3

New terrorism laws should adhere to human rights principles. John von Doussa QC

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Salah ‘Ali described being suspended from the ceiling and having the soles of his feet beaten so badly that when they took him down from the hooks he had to crawl back to his cell.(17) He was stripped and beaten by a ring of masked soldiers with sticks. "When one got tired of hitting me, they would replace him," he told Amnesty International. "They tried to force me to walk like an animal, on my hands and feet, and I refused, so they stretched me out on the floor and walked on me and put their shoes in my mouth". Another time, he said, a guard noticed he had a bad foot, and forced him to stand on it throughout the night while they interrogated him: sometimes during interrogation they held plates of food near his face while they ate, although he was not fed; sometimes they put cigarettes out on his arm.

After about 10 days the Jordanian guards hooded and shackled him, and stuffed foam into his ears before driving him to an airstrip. He was taken onto a plane and laid out on his back on the floor or a stretcher, his arms chained to the floor. He flew for about three or four hours, he says, and when he arrived, he was taken to see an English-speaking doctor, and then by English-speaking guards to his cell.

Muhammad Bashmilah had first been arrested in Indonesia in August 2003, as he and his wife stepped off a train in Surabaya; in his case too, his captors identified themselves as immigration officials. Zahra, his Indonesian wife, was allowed to go, while Muhammad Bashmilah was moved to Jakarta to be questioned about his passport and identity card, and more extensively about his movements since leaving Yemen in 1999, including his three-month visit to Afghanistan in 2000.

He was released in September, and he and his wife travelled to Jordan to meet his mother, who had gone to Amman to have a heart operation. On arrival in Jordan, his passport was taken and he was told to report to the GID to collect it. He went several times, but did not get his passport back. On his fourth visit, on 19 October 2003, he was asked if he had ever been to Afghanistan; as soon as he said yes, he was handcuffed and taken to the intelligence detention centre.

Muhammad Bashmilah is a small, vibrant man, about 38 years old, who speaks openly, if caustically, about most aspects of his detention. On both occasions he has been interviewed by Amnesty International, however, he has broken down in tears in the attempt to describe his treatment in the GID’s cells in Jordan. A prison official in Yemen told Amnesty International that he believed Muhammad Bashmilah had been tortured even more severely than Salah ‘Ali.

After three days in custody, Muhammad Bashmilah said that he was allowed to see his mother for 10 minutes. She later told him that she had returned the following day only to be told "your son is a terrorist", and that he had been removed to Saudi Arabia or Iraq.

In fact, he says, he had been taken in the early hours of the morning from his cell to an airstrip about 30 minutes away. Already hooded, his clothes were cut "very harshly" from his body and replaced with blue clothing, and he was shackled and cuffed. He says he felt completely disoriented, still in shock over his treatment in Jordan, and very frightened for his wife and mother.

Although Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah ‘Ali were friends from Aden and Indonesia, they had not been held together in Jordan, and neither knew that the other was in custody.

Amnesty International first raised the case of Muhammad Bashmilah’s "disappearance" in a letter to the Jordanian authorities in April of 2005, before he had re-appeared in Yemen. There was no response, and no acknowledgement that he had ever been in Jordanian custody. Following the release of Amnesty International’s report in August 2005, which included accounts from both Salah ‘Ali and Muhammad Bashmilah of their detention in Jordan, the Jordanian GID claimed: "…the recent allegations on torturing Yemeni citizens (Saleh Naser Salm Ali and Mohammad Faraj Bashmela) highlighted the size of false allegations targeting Jordan, noting that the abovementioned Yemenis were NEVER detained at the GID detention center, however, they were merely deported for exceeding their residence permit, and left to Iraq."(18) As subsequent events make clear, however, neither of the men was deported from Jordan, although both were transferred from Jordanian custody.

Transferred to US custody
The men do not know where they were taken. They may well have been transferred out on the same plane, as they left at about the same time, both describe a small plane with US guards, and both say they travelled some three to four hours. From Amman they could have reached Iraq in that time, although they could just as easily have ended up in Sudan, Turkey or parts of Eastern Europe. In any case, it is clear that they arrived in the same place, on or about the same day. In separate interviews with Amnesty International, they both described a windowless, underground facility. Each was kept in isolation, in a cell measuring about 1.5 x 2m, containing a bucket for a toilet, a foam mattress and a Qur’an.

During the six months they spent there, they left their cells only to be interrogated. They were asked over and over again about their activities in Afghanistan and Indonesia, and were shown dozens of photos, including of each other.

If they found anyone they recognised in the photos, they were brought back for more questioning, otherwise, they remained alone in their empty cells. Muhammad Bashmilah says that he was once shown a photo of Taysir Alluni, the al-Jazeera journalist, and told that if he said he knew him, his situation would improve(19). "I did know him," he told Amnesty International with a grin, "but they found out it was only from the television, and there were no favours for me." Neither one ever saw any other detainee, although both believe that others were held there. Muhammad Bashmilah said there were several interrogators, both men and women: all of them were white, wore Western clothing, and spoke English with US accents. There were also a number of different interpreters, some of them native Arabic speakers. "They were not all there for us", he said.

The third man, Muhammad al Assad, estimates that his initial flight from Dar es Salaam took about two to three hours. He recalls that they landed in a hot place, and he thinks that one of the jailers who took him to the interrogation room spoke Arabic with a Somali or Ethiopian accent, and that the bread he was given was typical of East Africa. But of his arrival, less than 12 hours after being dragged from his home, he remembers only fear and confusion. The guards brought him from the plane, and left him, still hooded and shackled, in what turned out to be his cell. "I was so afraid that I couldn’t move," he said, "so I stood very still there for a very long time until finally someone looked in and shouted in Arabic: ‘sit down’."