Floating U.S. black-site prisons and more on Diego Garcia

i posted just the other day on the possible existence of u.s. prison ships...

here's some more from the guardian...

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

diego garcia is a busy little place with a lot of covert activity... it's also about as far away from nosy reporters and prying eyes as it's possible to get (with the possible exception of antarctica, where i fully expect there's some pretty black stuff going on as well)...

here are some google earth shots of and a bit of background on diego garcia... note the ships in the harbor...


The above shows the entire Diego Garcia
atoll surrounding the lagoon. Although
you can't see them very well in this shot,
there are 7 ships in the lagoon and 2
in port.


The above is a closer-in shot of the
airbase. The port is in the middle left
and the housing area is on the extreme
upper left.

from wikipedia... i've highlighted particularly interesting facts in bold...

Diego Garcia (-7.317, 72.417) is an atoll located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south off Colombo, Sri Lanka's southern coast. Diego Garcia is the largest atoll by land area of the Chagos Archipelago. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a British overseas territory.

Since the enforced depopulation of Diego Garcia in the years leading up to 1973, it has been used as a military base by the United States and the United Kingdom. Diego Garcia hosts one of three ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein and Ascension Island) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system. GEODSS that tracks satellites optically along with the other GEODSS sites at White Sands Missle Range and on top of Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii. The Scripps Institute maintains Project IDA/IRIS sesmic montitors used there to correlate worldwide sesmic events for locating and underground nuclear testing for the US Govenment. Project ECHELON is also hosted there to provide worldwide reception of electronic signals. SNOOPY planes out of Offut AFB in Omaha regularly stop there as they skirted foreign countries intercepting SIGNET from their borders. The Anotonov-225 jet flys there providing cargo heavy lift for the island. B-1's from Ellsworth AFB still launch daily from there for OIF and OEF, as well as B-2's, and formerly B-52's were launched from there against Iraq during the Gulf War. To this day Navy P-3 Orion Subhunters operate out of there. The Navy Submarine Warfare Center is located there. The island is outfitted with sonophone microphones capable of detecting ship Screws turning 5000 miles away. The SR-71 Blackbird flew out of BIOT during the Cold War. The island's shape (similar to that of a human footprint) has led the US Navy to refer to Diego Garcia as "The Footprint of Freedom." You must have a US security clearance to even visit the island. Flights are provided by AMC out of Paya Lebar AB in Singapore.

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A possible CIA "black site" on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean

for some reason, diego garcia has always fascinated me... it's extremely remote, lying some 1000 miles off the southern coast of sri lanka... a friend from a previous life was a u.s. air force navigator who told me tales of flying in and out of diego garcia... what a perfect spot (terrible choice of words, i know) for a cia "black site" prison...

Allegations that the CIA held al-Qaida suspects for interrogation at a secret prison on sovereign British territory are to be investigated by MPs, the Guardian has learned. The all-party foreign affairs committee is to examine long-standing suspicions that the agency has operated one of its so-called "black site" prisons on Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that is home to a large US military base.

Lawyers from Reprieve, a legal charity that represents a number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, including several former British residents, are calling on the committee to question US and British officials about the allegations. According to the organisation's submission to the committee, the UK government is "potentially systematically complicit in the most serious crimes against humanity of disappearance, torture and prolonged incommunicado detention"

[...]

Clive Stafford Smith, the charity's legal director, said he was "absolutely and categorically certain" that prisoners have been held on the island. "If the foreign affairs committee approaches this thoroughly, they will get to the bottom of it," he said.

[...]

Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general who is professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, has twice spoken publicly about the use of Diego Garcia to detain suspects. In May 2004 he said: "We're probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq." In December last year he repeated the claim: "They're behind bars...we've got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo."

MPs on the committee may inquire into a Gulfstream executive jet which has been linked by its registration number to several CIA prisoner operations - known as extraordinary renditions - and which flew from Washington to Diego Garcia, via Athens, on September 11 2002, soon after the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected planner of the September 11 attacks the previous year.

A prison of some sort is known to exist on Diego Garcia: in 1984, a review by the US government's general accounting office of construction work on the island reported that a "detention facility" had been completed the previous December.

[...]

One possibility which the foreign affairs committee may explore is that suspects have been held on a prison ship off the coast of Diego Garcia. The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, has said that he has heard from reliable sources that the US has held prisoners on ships in the Indian Ocean. There have also been second-hand accounts from detainees at Guantánamo of prisoners being held on US naval vessels.

.
here are some google earth shots of diego garcia...


The above shows the entire Diego Garcia
atoll surrounding the lagoon. Although
you can't see them very well in this shot,
there are 7 ships in the lagoon and 2
in port.


The above is a closer-in shot of the
airbase. The port is in the middle left
and the housing area is on the extreme
upper left.

from wikipedia... i've highlighted particularly interesting facts in bold...

Diego Garcia (-7.317, 72.417) is an atoll located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south off Colombo, Sri Lanka's southern coast. Diego Garcia is the largest atoll by land area of the Chagos Archipelago. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a British overseas territory.

Since the enforced depopulation of Diego Garcia in the years leading up to 1973, it has been used as a military base by the United States and the United Kingdom. Diego Garcia hosts one of three ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein and Ascension Island) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system. GEODSS that tracks satellites optically along with the other GEODSS sites at White Sands Missle Range and on top of Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii. The Scripps Institute maintains Project IDA/IRIS sesmic montitors used there to correlate worldwide sesmic events for locating and underground nuclear testing for the US Govenment. Project ECHELON is also hosted there to provide worldwide reception of electronic signals. SNOOPY planes out of Offut AFB in Omaha regularly stop there as they skirted foreign countries intercepting SIGNET from their borders. The Anotonov-225 jet flys there providing cargo heavy lift for the island. B-1's from Ellsworth AFB still launch daily from there for OIF and OEF, as well as B-2's, and formerly B-52's were launched from there against Iraq during the Gulf War. To this day Navy P-3 Orion Subhunters operate out of there. The Navy Submarine Warfare Center is located there. The island is outfitted with sonophone microphones capable of detecting ship Screws turning 5000 miles away. The SR-71 Blackbird flew out of BIOT during the Cold War. The island's shape (similar to that of a human footprint) has led the US Navy to refer to Diego Garcia as "The Footprint of Freedom." You must have a US security clearance to even visit the island. Flights are provided by AMC out of Paya Lebar AB in Singapore.

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"Passive suicide" in Guantánamo: "The immoral has become so mundane"

This is my country! Land of my birth!
This is my country! Grandest on earth!
I pledge thee my allegiance,
America, the bold,
For this is my country to have and to hold.

Clive Stafford Smith, the legal director of Reprieve, a British charity that provides legal representation to prisoners around the world, offers an op-ed in the LA Times on Guantánamo.

[T]he irony of this place runs deep, as does the tragedy. The base motto is "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom," even though my clients, who are prisoners in the detention center, have none.

[...]

Most of the secrecy in Guantánamo involves suppressing bad news about the base rather than anything that should really be classified. But I obey the rules or I go to jail, so until I get permission, I can only write about what I see, not what is said.

[...]

After crossing the bay on the 8 a.m. ferry, an escort drove me down Recreation Road, past the golf course. I noticed a yellow sign. The soldiers were admonished that their value of the week should be "Compassion."

[...]

It is sometimes a minor rule change, imposed from far above, that inflames me. I always carry lozenges, and some months back, a hunger-striking client agreed to take one to soothe his sore throat. By my next visit, the list of "contraband" had expanded to bar this insignificant salve.

[...]

In more than 20 years trying death-penalty cases, I have visited all the worst prisons in the Deep South, yet none compares to Camp Six here. To the military, this tribute to Halliburton's profiteering is state-of-the-art; to the human being, it is simply inhumane. The prisoners have an average of 23 hours a day in isolation, six hours of direct sunlight a month, perhaps one fishing magazine a week to read, and never, ever the chance to see a loved one. The immoral has become so mundane.

here's a little bit about reprieve...

Reprieve provides frontline investigation and legal representation to prisoners denied justice by powerful governments across the world, especially those governments that should be upholding the highest standards when it comes to fair trials.

Reprieve lawyers represent people facing the death penalty, particularly in the USA, or when those facing execution are British nationals . And we represent prisoners denied justice in the name of the ‘War on Terror,’ including those held without charge or trial in Guantánamo Bay and the countless secret prisons beyond. None of these prisoners can afford to pay for representation.

and here's some of what reprieve has to say about al jazeera journalist, sami al haj, clive stafford smith's client, who has spent over five years in detention...

Reprieve ... released statements from two leading psychiatrists diagnosing a serious decline in the mental condition of Guantanamo Bay prisoner Sami al Haj. The reports by noted Texan psychiatrist Dr. Dan Creson and British psychiatrist Dr. Hugh Rickards call for urgent and immediate treatment for Mr. al Haj.

Reprieve lawyers have represented Mr. al Haj since 2005. Reprieve provides frontline investigation and legal representation for prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

Dr. Creson’s report suggests that Sami al Haj is suffering from severe depression and may be deteriorating to the point of imminent death:

“The … diagnosis best fitting the clinical picture that emerges … is Major Depression with psychotic features. It is also clear that his depressed affect bears little resemblance to depressive states one sees in the ordinary clinical practice of Psychiatry. He, in my opinion, fits into a sub-category of severe depression often seen in complex emergencies where an individual has given up all hope; where nothing remains relevant to survival. Such individuals have been called “passive suicides” by some humanitarian aid workers.”

[...]

“Mr Al Haj has the symptoms necessary for a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but it does seem a bit premature to use the term “Post” when the trauma is on going… Forced feeding is, in my opinion, always traumatic, even when it is done with respect and kindness. Indeed, the general ambiance of disrespect and planned humiliation are psychological traumas that contribute to depression and hopelessness.”

He goes on to say:

“The marked change in attitude that was noted and the description of Mr al Haj’s current behaviour suggests to me that Mr al Haj no longer has the ability to cope with his relentlessly traumatic environment and is in the process of withdrawing into himself; in effect, he is becoming a case of passive suicide. His cognitive changes, e.g. paranoia, are symptomatic of his depression, but probably also worsen as his physical deterioration increases. As his environment becomes more painful and less humane, with each new punitive act he is forced to endure, he will lose even whatever remaining will to live that he now retains.”

sami al haj has been held for nearly six years without charges... he has been on a hunger strike for 247 days and force-fed that entire time...

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