", And all of these men say "we understand that we've broken laws. We could no longer endure living in such conditions for that prolonged period of time, Arcentales wrote later in a letter. Reports state that he, too, was waterboarded, in addition to being threatened with sodomy. [1] A 2021 Associated Press news story defined black sites as "clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with a crime and have no legal recourse, with no bail or court order." Author: Traci Tong (PRI) However, much of this cocaine was never even destined for America, yetArcentales and thousands of others are now rotting in Federal prisons after being senselessly tortured all of which is at your expense. The installation is currently home to roughly 4,000 military personnel and independent contractors. It is one of the several prisons set up by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks and was intended to hold people suspected of having links with terrorists. The wide open seas must be convenient to dump the bodies/dispose of the evidence. US Suspected of Keeping Secret Prisoners on Warships: UN Official The UN has learned of "very, very serious" allegations that the United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships, the UN's special rapporteur on terrorism said. ottawa national forest dispersed camping Call Us Now. From secret black site prisonsoperating in Chicagowith no due process, to midnight raids in which babies faces are blown off by police grenades, attempting to stop Americans from self-medicating has proven to be a disastrousfailure. Marty also underlined that European countries probably had knowledge of these covert operations. For other uses, see, United Kingdom and British overseas territories, United Nations Convention Against Torture, "Detainee says China has secret jail in Dubai, holds Uyghurs", "For Complainers, A Stint In China's 'Black Jails', "Gay Men in Chechnya Tell of Black Sites Where They're Tortured, Some to Death", "Chechen police 'kidnap and torture gay men' - LGBT activists", "Persecution of LGBTI people in the Chechen Republic (Russian Federation)", "Russia: New Anti-Gay Crackdown in Chechnya", "Bush: Top terror suspects to face tribunals", "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons", "Poland feels sting of betrayal over CIA 'black site', "Poland ex-spy boss 'charged over alleged CIA secret prison', "Polish Ex-Official Charged With Aiding the C.I.A. Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) prepared a report based on interviews with black site detainees, conducted October 611 and December 414, 2006, after their transfer to Guantanamo Bay. At some point prior to 2005, the prison was again relocated, this time to an unknown site. In the historic city of Bucharest, the CIA tortured and interrogated high-risk terrorists for years in a basement prison, under the nose of roughly two million Romanians. Inicio Quines somos? The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".UK officials have further denied any claims and many investing officials agree to it that UK was not involved in the In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. [26], In a September 7, 2007, public address to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, rare for a sitting Director of Central Intelligence, General Michael Hayden praised the program of detaining and interrogating prisoners, and credited it with providing 70 percent of the National Intelligence Estimate on the threat to America released in July. Documents on Interrogation", "Debate Erupts on Techniques used by C.I.A. (One of my first reactions was noted by central texas, above. In a European context, what the U.S. does would not meet the standard, he stated. [129][130], The future robustness of the highly secret investigation, in progress since 2008, may however be in some doubt. [11], A European Union (EU) report adopted on February 14, 2007, by a majority of the European Parliament (382 MEPs voting in favor, 256 against and 74 abstaining) stated the CIA operated 1,245 flights and that it was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centers where prisoners have been tortured were operated in Poland and Romania. Planning and building a new prison is a time consuming exercise. 7. He had left home a year and a half . It's out of their control after that, but we're arresting people in international waters, often on foreign boats, thousands of miles from the United States. [125], Gomes was highly critical of the Portuguese government's reluctance to comply with the European Parliament Commission investigation into the CIA flights, leading to tensions with Foreign Minister Lus Amado, a member of her party. I wrote to dozens of men and received letters back from many of these men who'd been detained on these Coast Guard ships, describing the conditions of their confinement. The countries named were: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. [136], On June 27, 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted on Resolution 1562 and Recommendation 1801 backing the conclusions of the report by Dick Marty. Are they allowed to use a proper bathroom? To quote the report, "At this stage of the investigations, there is no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret CIA detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other country. Somebody could be put on a plane and brought back to the United States. [61] The Temara interrogation centre, 8 kilometres (5mi) outside the Moroccan capital, Rabat, is cited as one such site. In April 2009, CIA director Leon Panetta announced that the "CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites", in a letter to staff and that "[r]emaining sites would be decommissioned". The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program. Well, John Kelly was in charge of Southern Command, the Department of Defense area of operation in Latin America that's in charge of managing the drug war in Latin America. In December 2014 the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) published an executive summary of a secret 6,000-page report on CIA techniques. They helped us stop a planned strike on a U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, and to prevent a planned attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, and to foil a plot to hijack passenger planes and to fly them into Heathrow Airport and London's Canary Wharf. The order also provided that "The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future. An important aspect of black site operation is that the legal status of black site detainees is not clearly defined. Since the 2012 launching of Operation Martillo, or hammer in Spanish, the Coast Guard has detained more than 2,700 people in international waters on suspicion of smuggling cocaine to Central America. Since then, the site has been used to train Lithuanias state security service. Yes exactly right, and we are going to have a hell of a time righting things. Ireland was so troubled in the 1820s and 30s that gaols were overflowing. "[116], On December 6, 2007, the CIA admitted that it had destroyed videotapes recordings of CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects involving harsh interrogation techniques, tapes which critics suggest may have documented the use of torture by the CIA, such as waterboarding. Reprieve's research pointed to at least 17 US warships being used as secret CIA black sites. This process is called "extraordinary rendition". Bush said that the interrogation techniques "have been fully disclosed to appropriate members of Congress".[113]. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. In Iraq, Abu Ghraib was disclosed as a black site, and in 2004 was the center of an extensive prisoner abuse scandal. The war on drugs has produced the vilest police state one can imagine. Very often, detainees are brought to port in one of these cutters, then placed in a hidden room in a helicopter hangar or in a room below deck andhidden there for the day while the Coast Guard cutter refuels or the Coast Guard crew get a bit of a break and then are brought back out to sea.". Your email address will not be published. For the next 70 days, Mr. Arcentales and the other man he was detained with were held always chained by their ankle to the deck of a ship or to a cable running along one of these large Coast Guard or Navy ships for 70 days. Location at which an unacknowledged black project is conducted, "Blacksite" redirects here. It enforces drug laws on the oceans and, what few people know, is that the U.S. Coast Guard has actually been deployed in recent years deep into the Pacific Ocean to interdict drug smugglers moving between South America Colombia, Ecuador and Central America, where the drugs often cocaine are dropped off and then often moved up through Mexico. The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. Reprieve, a human right's organization, claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006 and that the US may have used as many as 17 ships as " floating prisons " since 2001. The technical solution of "The Flying," presented by David . [124], On February 5, 2007, Portuguese general prosecutor Cndida Almeida, head of the Central Investigation and Penal Action Department (DCIAP), announced an investigation of "torture or inhuman and cruel treatment", prompted by allegations of "illegal activities and serious human rights violations" made by MEP Ana Gomes to the attorney general, Pinto Monteiro, on January 26, 2007. Metal containers at Bagram Air Base were reported to be black sites. Although the UK has long claimed that ghost prisoners havent been held at Diego Garcia, in a 2015 interview with Vice News, Lawrence Wilkerson (US Secretary of State Colin Powells former chief of staff) revealed that terrorism suspects were abducted and brought to the ocean base for special interrogations.