Secret CIA Prisoners Still Missing (AlertNet)

  Human Rights Watch says the U.S. government should account for all the missing detainees once held by the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Feb. 27, 2007 -- NEW YORK (AlertNet) -- The U.S. government should account for all the missing detainees once held by the Central Intelligence Agency, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday.

  The 50-page report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention," contains a detailed description of a secret CIA prison from a Palestinian former detainee who was released from custody last year. Human Rights Watch has also sent a public letter to US President George W. Bush requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of the missing detainees."

  President Bush told us that the last 14 CIA prisoners were sent to Guantanamo, but there are many other prisoners 'disappeared' by the CIA whose fate is still unknown," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. "The question is: what happened to these people and where are they now?"

  In early September, 14 detainees were transferred from secret CIA prisons to military custody at Guantanamo Bay. In a televised speech Sept. 6, President Bush announced that with those 14 transfers, no prisoners were left in CIA custody.

  The former CIA detainee, Marwan Jabour, told Human Rights Watch about a number of other people who were in CIA detention but whose present whereabouts are unknown. Jabour saw one of these men, Algerian terrorism suspect Yassir al-Jazeeri, as recently as July 2006 in CIA custody.

  "The Bush administration needs to provide a full accounting of everyone who was 'disappeared' into CIA prisons, including their names, locations, and when they left US custody," Mariner said.

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