Bush urged to explain 'disappeared' detainees

Up to 38 people who may have been held in secret CIA prisons are missing, according to an American human rights group.

In a new report Human Rights Watch also detailed a terror suspect’s allegations that he was held for over two years at a so-called “black site” where he was kept naked for six weeks and chained to the wall of his cell so tightly that he could not stand up.

Marwan Jabour alleged he was placed in painful stress positions that made it difficult to breathe and was threatened with being put in a suffocating “dog box” if he did not co-operate.

Earlier in Pakistan, he told HRW, he had been beaten, burned with a hot metal rod and had string tied tightly to his penis to prevent him from urinating.

He said he was interrogated by Americans but that nobody physically abused him while they were present.

HRW has demanded that US President George Bush explain where the “disappeared” detainees have gone.

Last year he admitted the existence of the secret prisons for the first time when he revealed 14 detainees had been transferred to Guantanamo Bay but said the centres had now all closed.

Inmates were subjected to “tough” interrogation methods, the president said, but he denied they had been tortured.

Intelligence officials told The Washington Post more than 60 detainees had been held in such facilities over nearly five years.

HRW said it feared the missing prisoners might have been transferred to foreign prisons where they remained under the CIA’s effective control, or transferred to countries where they may face torture.

Mr Jabour, who is Palestinian, told the organisation about a number of other people who were being held by the CIA but whose present whereabouts are unknown.

He said he saw one of them, Algerian terrorism suspect Yassir al-Jazeeri, as recently as July 2006 in CIA custody.

“The US government has long condemned these abusive practices in its policy statements and annual human rights reports,” HRW’s Ghost Prisoner report said.

“Its own use of them severely undermines its moral authority on human rights.”

Mr Jabour told The Washington Post he helped al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who fled from Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and had attended training camps in the country in 1998.

He was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, in May 2004 and said after that was transferred to a secret prison where he stayed more than two years, nearly all of the time alone in a windowless cell with little human contact besides his captors.

He was not allowed even to send them his wife and three young daughters a letter to reassure them that he was alive, he claimed.

“It was a grave,” Mr Jabour said.

“I felt like my life was over.”

The conditions gradually improved however and he was eventually moved to a larger, quieter room and given access to books.

A year into his detention, he was allowed to see a movie once a week, choosing from a library of more than 200 films.

He was released in September last year.

US counterterrorism officials would not confirm the account, but said they say they still viewed Mr Jabour as one of al Qaida’s most dangerous members.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency’s interrogation programme had been conducted lawfully “with great care and close review” and had produced “vital information that has helped disrupt plots and save lives”.

“The United States does not conduct or condone torture, nor does it transfer anyone to other countries for the purpose of torture,” he said.

“There are now no terrorists in the CIA programme,” Mr Bush said in September.

“But as more high-ranking terrorists are captured, the need to obtain intelligence from them will remain critical and having a CIA programme for questioning terrorists will continue to be crucial to getting lifesaving information.”

HRW’s letter to the president contained two lists of missing detainees, 16 of them people it believes were held in CIA prisons and 22 who may have been held the centres.