UN Launches Probe of Secret Detention Sites

~



(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

U.N. human rights investigators are launching a year-long global investigation into secret places of detention. They note the use of such facilities has increased since the global war on terror was declared after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

The investigators say their probe will look at so-called rendition flights used by the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, in the United States to secretly transfer suspects to third countries for interrogation.

The UN probe also will examine the policies of secret detention as practiced by other nations around the world.

Cracks are appearing in the wall of silence surrounding the secret practice of extraordinary rendition as prisoners are coming forward to tell of their ordeals.

“The torture was going on sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly,” said a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Binyam Mohamed, who accuses the British security service MI5 of helping U.S. intelligence agents interrogate him after he was seized in Pakistan in 2002. Mohamed claims U.S. agents took him to Morocco, where he was tortured.

~