Secret detention may amount to crime against humanity: UN experts
I fully believe things are not as bad now as they were under Bush/Cheney . . . but I am not convinced the US is still not using black sites to house special detainees.
While commitments by President Barack Obama to dismantle and investigate secret detentions were welcomed, the experts also called for clarification of grey areas including short term CIA holding facilities and those operated by the military Joint Special Operation Command. . . . Extraordinary rendition involved abducting suspects without legal proceedings, and flying them to foreign countries or secret CIA prisons.
There are ongoing questions about current operative US secret detention sites. In late 2009, questions continued to be raised about Bagram:
The Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, which is the principle air base of the US forces currently stationed in the country, has been identified as a site for a secret US detention facility by various human rights researchers and by the ex-detainees who were previously held in the prison known as the "Black Jail".
As per the description given the former inmates, the black jail is comprised of windowless concrete jail cells that serve as solitary confinements and the only source of light is a bulb is switched on 24×7, which could be a tactic to deprive the inmate of all sense of time. The detainees were visited by officials twice a day for their interrogation sessions. According to a former inmate of the black jail,
The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place. They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there.
What there is NO doubt about is that secret detention is a crime against humanity, and continued use of secret facilities is now fully a liability of the Obama Administration, which did not, as I recall, campaign on promises of continuing war crimes. More information is available on the UN Report.
The report cites the United States among dozens of countries that have captured and held terror suspects in detention. Other countries accused of detaining security suspects or opposition members in secret places include Algeria, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Russia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
The U.N. investigators also welcome commitments by the Obama Administration to close CIA detention facilities, but they say they would like clarification about what has happened to people held in CIA sites in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It would be nice to hear something about our current practices in the State of the Union tonight. As if.