Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Not good for PR

BBC News - US accused on 'missing' prisoners
Thirty eight people believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons - or black sites - are missing, according to a report by a US human rights group.

[. . .]

The group has asked US President George W Bush to reveal the location of these detainees and close all US black sites.
These are actually pretty strong allegations, considering that "missing" (used as a verb not an adjective) people is a practice generally associated with Third World authoritarian regimes.

However, what strikes me about the claim is that they don't seem to produce any hard evidence that the prisoners were ever in US custody. The argument seems to come from the story of a former prisoner.
Palestinian Islamic extremist Marwan al-Jabour told HRW he saw or spoke to a number of those named in the report while he was held by the CIA between 2004 and 2006.
I don't know if they have anything else they are basing their suspicions on or not.

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