I received the following statement from Human Rights Watch:
The Bush administration’s continuing reliance on secret CIA prisons violates basic human rights standards, Human Rights Watch said today.
The announcement that Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility from CIA custody raises worrying questions about how long he has been detained by the CIA, where he was held, what kind of treatment he endured, and whether other prisoners still remain in CIA detention. The CIA has previously detained numerous detainees for months and even years.
“The CIA’s secret detention of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi is a blatant violation of international law,” said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. “This transfer shows that Congress will have to act to end the CIA’s illegal detention program.”
By holding people in unacknowledged, incommunicado detention, outside of the protection of the law, the Bush administration has violated the international legal prohibition on enforced disappearance. The CIA’s reliance on enforced disappearance also raises serious concerns about the likelihood of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Notably, numerous detainees previously transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo have claimed that they were subjected to torture.
Human Rights Watch also criticized the administration for transferring new detainees to the Guantanamo facility. Just one month ago, the Department of Defense announced that it had transferred to Guantanamo a Kenyan citizen, Mohammad Abdul Malik, arrested in Mombassa.