The tenuous link under which al-Assad seems to have been held for so long was his supposed dealings with a black-listed charity. He ran a small business importing car parts and also rented out offices in a small building that he owned. Just prior to his arrest, al-Assad had leased one of the offices to the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which was a Saudi Arabian charity that the USA believed was involved in terrorist funding. The arrest of the other two men Salah ’Ali and Muhammad Bashmilah seemed to have been triggered off purely because they had recently visited Afghanistan.
Al-Assad’s flight lasted for about three hours and when they landed he stepped out onto the tarmac into hot sunshine. From the airport al-Assad was taken to a cell where his hood and handcuffs were removed. It was a large, dirty room with a foam mattress and two small windows up near the ceiling. His food was passed to him through a small hole in the door and he thought he was kept there for about three weeks. The only person that spoke to him was his interrogator and translator, who kept asking him about his associations with the Al-Haramain charity. Judging by the accent of his jailers he thought he had probably been taken to East Africa.
After this period of internment, al-Assad was cuffed, hooded and taken to an airport, and this time the flight lasted a lot longer, possibly about eight hours. At his new destination the weather was considerably cooler, and again he had no idea of where he had been taken. He was held in a cell with no windows and nothing but a piece of matting on the floor. He remembers feeling cold but wasn’t even given the luxury of a blanket. For a number of days he was left completely on his own, and after what he thinks was about nine days, he was interrogated once again, this time in English.
Next he was taken by car to a smaller, and what seemed to be a much older, cell. He was held here for several months and was occasionally questioned by the same interrogators and always about the same thing, his connection with the charity.
Al-Assad’s next move was by helicopter, and his description of his next detention centre is the same as that given by the other two men. He said that the guards were all dressed in black and their faces were permanently covered. The only way they communicated with him was by hand gestures and the cell, which had no windows, meant that he never knew whether it was day or night, or what the conditions were like outside.
All three men were subjected to the same regime of interrogation – constant white noise played through loudspeakers and artificial light 24 hours a day. They were forbidden to speak to anyone with the exception of the interrogators and were only taken for a shower once a week. Salah ’Ali also reported that he had been suspended from the ceiling and had the soles of his feet beaten so badly that he was unable to walk when he was finally released from the hooks. On another occasion he was stripped and beaten by a circle of masked soldiers bearing sticks.
In May 2005, all three men were taken to a secret detention centre somewhere in the Yemen and today they are still being held without having received an official trial or charges. Yemeni officials said they had been given explicit instructions by the US government to continue to detain the three men until they receive further instructions.
Zahra Salloum was told that her husband had been deported to the Yemen because his passport was not valid, and this story was repeated by the media. Salloum was suspicious about the story and phoned al-Assad’s 75-year-old father who lived in the Yemen. He travelled to the capital to see if he could find his son, but he was assured by the Yemini government that al-Assad had never entered the country. Determined to find out what had happened, he continued his journey to Dar-es-Salaam, where he filed a habeus corpus petition with the Tanzanian courts. Al-Assad’s father was later to learn from Tanzanian officials that his son had been handed over to US custody, but no one knew where he had been taken.
It appears that two months earlier the same thing had happened to Salah Nasser Salim ’Ali and Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah. All three men had entered the USA’s covert network of illegal detentions and had simply ‘disappeared’. The aim of the network is to try and collect as much information as they can through the use of long-term interrogation, without any judicial oversight. What is also worrying is the fact that is was a high-ranking official like an immigration officer who made the original arrest. This would suggest that the CIA are placing considerable reliance on foreign security and intelligence services to aid them in their rendition operations. The detainees are denied their legal right to speak to a lawyer, their families, doctors or even to be given a fair trial.
What these three cases have brought to light is the fact that the rendition system is not just for ‘high category’ detainees, and it is feared that the network is far more complex than originally believed. The three ordinary men mentioned here detained in at least four different secret locations, which were most likely to have been in different countries, judging by their descriptions of the length of their flights.
In September 2005, the Minister of the Interior Rashad Al-Alimi reported that the three men had been accused of being members of terrorist groups. They said their trial would commence as soon as they received the files from the CIA, but as yet no information has been forthcoming.
Muhammad Bashmilah stated, ‘If there are really charges we are ready to defend ourselves… we are Yemenis in Yemen, so why is the minister waiting for the Americans to decide?’
Following mounting investigation in Europe, it is believed that the US Senate will soon approve a rule that will necessitate the director of national intelligence to provide regular and detailed updates about any covert detention centres that are maintained by the USA overseas. This would also require an in-depth report on the treatment and condition in which the detainee is held.
On 17 February, 2003, an Egyptian cleric by the name of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (also known as Abu Omar) was allegedly abducted by the CIA as he walked to his mosque in Milan to take morning prayers. He had been living in asylum in Italy after his Islamic organization was declared illegal by the Egyptian government. Omar literally vanished off the face of the earth and nothing was heard of him until
13 months later, when he was able to make several phone calls to his friends and relatives. He claimed to have been abducted by US agents and taken to a joint US/Italian base, from where he was flown to Egypt. In Egypt he was subjected to aggressive torture tactics, such as beatings and electric shocks applied to his genitals. At the time of the phone calls, Omar had been released from detention on the orders of an Egyptian judge due to lack of evidence against him. However, a short while later he was again arrested and his whereabouts are no longer known.
Unhappy with the misuse of European soil during rendition operations, an Italian judge, Guido Salvini, issued a warrant for the arrest of 22 people believed to be agents or operatives of the CIA in June 2005. By November, the Justice Ministry in Italy requested for the extradition of the 22 suspects from the USA, and in December European arrest warrants were issued. These warrants were enforceable in all the 25 EU member countries and did not require the approval of any government.
The 22 agents have been accused of abducting Abu Omar without Italian permission and flying him to Egypt for interrogation. Italy claims that the abduction of Omar not only hampered their own investigations into Italian terrorism, but also violated Italian sovereignty. The arrests of these agents by Italy are part of a retaliation against the rendition policies used by the CIA. Many Italian citizens have voiced quite openly that they are not happy about the prospect of people being taken away from their own country to be tortured elsewhere. Sweden has also been looking into the activity of rendition, and Canada has set up hearings after one of its citizens was captured by US agents and flown to Syria for questioning without the knowledge of the Canadian government.