By Maarten den Heijer

In an earlier post, I commented on some of Dick Marty’s investigations into the morbid human rights consequences of the war on terror. (I still have the feeling that all was doomed to go wrong the moment people started talking about a war). Now, Marty has presented his second report on Europe’s involvement in the US Secret Detention Program. Because that report has been widely covered elsewhere, I would like to turn our attention to another report on the US-led ‘disappearances’, which was made public last week and didn’t receive that much media coverage. The name of the report is ‘Off the Record’ and was drawn up by six ngo’s, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. The report is actually a list of 39 persons – (former) terrorist suspects – of whom it is either known or about whom there is strong evidence that they have been detained by the US and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. September last year, Bush admitted that the CIA had used secret prisons outside the US, but reassured us that all detainees (he spoke of 14), had been transferred to Guantanomo Bay – where they, of course, will be brought to ‘justice’. And, Bush said: the US does not torture; but what he probably meant is: the US simply redefines torture (read this article). The ngo-report presents us with a group of persons which were left out of Bush’s speech: three persons whose detention has been officially acknowledged by the US, 19 persons about whom there is ‘strong evidence’ that they have been secretly detained and another 18 about whom there is ‘some evidence’ of secret detention. A majority of these persons have never been transferred to US territory but were apparently dumped into the hands of befriended governments after they were used for interrogation purposes. The report makes clear that the US Secret Detention Program is not something from the past but very much in operation, which is also evidenced by the transfer of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi from secret CIA custody to Guantanomo Bay in April 2007. It is hard actually, to find any stronger evidences for violations of international law than those presented in the report. I understand that terrorist suspects should be arrested, detained and interrogated. But can anyone tell me: why do these persons need to be kept in secret prisons? – Maarten

For an enlarged version of the first picture, click here. About the other picture: Mustafa Setmariam Nasar is one of the persons mentioned in the Off the Record-report. Nasar is a Syrian Spanish citizen who featured on the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list and was apprehended by Pakistani officials on 1 November 2005. In April 2006, Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed that Nasar had been handed over to US custody, and was no longer in Pakistan. In July 2006, his name was included in the US government’s ‘Terrorists No Longer a Threat’ list. To date, no information about his whereabouts has been released by the US government.