All we seek is justice.… We hope the new Libya, freed
from its dictator, will have positive relationships with the West. But this
relationship must be built on respect and justice. Only by admitting and
apologizing for past mistakes … can we move forward together as friends.
—Abdul Hakim Belhadj, military commander during the
Libyan uprising who had been forcibly returned to Libya in 2004 with US and UK involvement,
Libya, April 12, 2012[1]
When rebel forces overtook Tripoli in August 2011, prison
doors were opened and office files exposed, revealing startling new information
about Libya’s relations with other countries. One such revelation,
documented in this report, is the degree of involvement of the United States government
under the Bush administration in the arrest of opponents of the former Libyan
Leader, Muammar Gaddafi, living abroad, the subsequent torture and other ill-treatment
of many of them in US custody, and their forced transfer to back to Libya.
The United States played the most extensive role in the
abuses, but other countries, notably the United Kingdom, were also involved.
This is an important chapter in the larger story of the
secret and abusive US detention program established under the government of
George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the rendition of individuals
to countries with known records of torture.[2]
This report is based mostly on Human Rights Watch interviews
with 14 former detainees now residing freely in post-Gaddafi Libya and information
contained in Libyan government files discovered abandoned immediately after
Gaddafi’s fall (the “Tripoli Documents”). It provides
detailed evidence of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees in US custody,
including a credible account of “waterboarding,” and a similar
account of water abuse that brings the victim close to suffocation. Both types
of abuse amount to torture. The allegations cast serious doubts on prior assertions
from US government officials that only three people were waterboarded in US
custody. They also reflect just how little the public still knows about what
went on in the US secret detention program.
The report also sheds light on the failure of the George W. Bush
administration, in the pursuit of suspects behind the September 11, 2001 attacks,
to distinguish between Islamists who were in fact targeting the United States and
those who may simply have been engaged in armed opposition against their own
repressive regimes. This failure risked aligning the United States with brutal dictators
and aided their efforts to dismiss all political opponents as terrorists.
The report examines the roles of other governments in the abuse
of detainees in custody and in unlawful renditions to Libya despite demonstrable
evidence the detainees would be seriously mistreated upon return. Countries
linked to these accounts include: Afghanistan, Chad, China and Hong Kong,
Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Sudan, Thailand,
and the United Kingdom.
Finally, the report shows that individuals rendered to Libya
were tortured or otherwise ill-treated in Libyan prisons, including in two cases
where the Tripoli Documents make clear the United States sought assurances that
their basic rights would be respected. All were held in incommunicado detention—many
in solitary confinement— for prolonged periods without trial. When
finally tried, they found that the proceedings fell far short of international fair
trial standards.
Most of the former detainees interviewed for this report
said they had been members of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group (LIFG)—a
group opposed to Gaddafi’s rule that began to organize in Libya in the
late 1980s and took more formal shape in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. At
that time, Islamist opposition groups were springing up across the Middle East,
North Africa, and Asia in response to governments they deemed corrupt,
oppressive, and not sufficiently Islamic.
Libya was no exception. In 1977, several years after Gaddafi
took power, he imposed his unique political system, the Jamahiriya, or “state
of the masses,” on the country. The government confiscated property, and began
regulating every aspect of life, from religion to economics to education, in
entirely new and often incomprehensible ways. Many Libyans, including traditional
Muslims who were particularly outraged by the changes Gaddafi made to the
practice of Islam and considered them blasphemous, expressed their opposition. Gaddafi
put down dissent brutally, focusing in particular on Islamist opposition groups
who, due to their alignment with Islamist groups abroad and the deep devotion
of many members, he treated as a dangerous threat. Those suspected of even the slightest
connection with the movement were rounded up, imprisoned, and sometimes executed,
including in public and broadcast on television. It is in the context of
this crackdown that the LIFG began to organize and set out, from bases both
within and outside Libya, to overthrow Gaddafi.
Virtually all the former Libyan detainees interviewed by
Human Rights Watch said that they fled the country in the late 1980s because of
Gaddafi’s repressive policies against organized Islamic opposition groups
and against persons perceived to be associated with such groups, due to their
religious practices. Some joined the LIFG while in Libya and others once
outside the country. All but one said they participated in the fighting in
Afghanistan that eventually defeated the Soviet-installed government of Mohammed
Najibullah in 1992 and used the training they gained there for LIFG-led anti-Gaddafi
efforts.
After the September 11 attacks on the United States, being
Libyan without documentation in Afghanistan, and being part of an armed Islamic
opposition group, placed these Libyan expatriates at high risk of arrest. That
was true even if—as all those interviewed for this report claim—their
group was not at war with the West. And so many of them fled, along with their
families, moving from country to country, including to destinations such as
Malaysia and Hong Kong as well as Mali and Mauritania. It was in these
countries that they were taken into custody before being sent elsewhere.
For many of the individuals profiled here, this will be the
first time their stories are told because until last year they were locked up
in Libyan prisons.
These stories provide new details about serious human rights
violations in US detention sites, US and UK collaboration with the Gaddafi
government, and the roles of several other countries that assisted in renditions.
This information includes:
New accounts of abuse in secret Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) black sites: Five former LIFG members told Human Rights Watch that
they were detained in US run-prisons in Afghanistan for between eight months and
two years. The abuse allegedly included: being chained to walls
naked—sometimes while diapered—in pitch dark, windowless cells, for
weeks or months at a time; being restrained in painful stress positions for
long periods of time, being forced into cramped spaces; being beaten and
slammed into walls; being kept inside for nearly five months without the
ability to bathe; being denied food and being denied sleep by continuous,
deafeningly loud Western music, before being rendered back to Libya. The United
States never charged them with crimes. Their captors allegedly held them
incommunicado, cut off from the outside world, and typically in solitary confinement
throughout their Afghan detention. The accounts of these five men provide extensive
new evidence that corroborates the few other personal accounts that exist about
the same US-run facilities. One of those five, before being transferred to
Afghanistan, as well as another former LIFG member interviewed for this report,
were also held in a detention facility in Morocco.
New evidence of “waterboarding” torture
and a similar practice during interrogations: One former detainee,
Mohammed Shoroeiya, provided detailed and credible testimony that he was waterboarded
on repeated occasions during US interrogations in Afghanistan. While never
using the phrase “waterboarding,” he said that after his captors
put a hood over his head and strapped him onto a wooden board, “then they
start with the water pouring…. They start to pour water to the point
where you feel like you are suffocating.” He added that, “they
wouldn’t stop until they got some kind of answer from me.” He said
a doctor was present during the waterboarding and that this happened numerous
times, so many times he could not count. A second detainee in Afghanistan
described being subjected to a water suffocation practice similar to waterboarding,
and said that he was threatened with use of the board. A doctor was present
during his suffocation-inducing abuse as well. The allegations of waterboarding
contradict statements about the practice from senior US officials, such as
former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who testified to the Senate that the CIA
waterboarded only three individuals—Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah,
and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.[3] Former
President Bush similarly declared in his memoirs that only three detainees in
CIA custody were waterboarded.[4] Former
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has also denied the use of waterboarding by
the US military.[5]
Unlawful rendition: All interviewees said
their captors forcibly returned them to Libya at a time when Libya’s
record on torture made clear they would face a serious risk of abuse upon
return. All had expressed deep fears to their captors about going back to Libya
and five of them said that they specifically asked for asylum. One of them, Muhammed
Abu Farsan, sought asylum in the Netherlands while in transit between China and
Morocco. He said his asylum application was
ultimately denied and he was sent to Sudan, where he held a passport. But
Sudanese authorities kept him in detention and, shortly after his arrival,
individuals representing themselves as CIA officers interrogated him on three
different days. Within two weeks he was sent back to Libya. Though the
Netherlands is the only government that actually had provided any of the
Libyans we interviewed with an opportunity to challenge their transfer, the
Tripoli Documents contain information suggesting Dutch officials might have
been aware that Abu Farsan would ultimately be sent to Libya from Sudan. To the
extent they knew that there was a genuine risk he would be returned to Libya, they
violated his rights against unlawful return.
More information aboutWestern collusion with the
Gaddafi government: The Human Rights Watch interviews and the Tripoli
Documents present new details showing a close degree of cooperation among the
US, the UK, and other Western governments with regard to the forcible return
and subsequent interrogation of Gaddafi opponents in Libya. Ten of the fourteen
Libyans interviewed for this report were rendered back to Libya within about year
of the date when Libya, the United States and the United Kingdom had formally mended
their relations, seven within the five months. The mending of relations was
very publically marked by a visit from British Prime Minister at the time, Tony
Blair, to Libya on March 25, 2004. The collusion is ironic, given that years
later these same governments would end up assisting Gaddafi’s opponents
in their efforts to overthrow the Libyan leader. Several of those opponents are
now in leadership positions and are important political actors in Libya.
Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi: Al-Libi’s
case is significant, among other reasons, because the United States relied on
statements obtained through his interrogation while in CIA custody to justify
the 2003 invasion of Iraq: Al-Libi died in a Libyan prison in 2009—a
suicide, according to Libyan authorities at the time—so it is difficult
to obtain information about him today. But by talking to family members and
others detained with him in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Libya, Human Rights
Watch has pieced together some new details about al-Libi’s time in CIA
custody and circumstances surrounding his death. Human Rights Watch also observed
photos of al-Libi that Libyan prison officials appear to have taken on the
morning of his death which allegedly depict him in the manner he was found in
his cell. The photos show bruising on parts of his body.
The United States, Libya, and most of the other countries discussed
in this report are party to important international human rights treaties,
including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment. Persons apprehended in armed conflict situations would also have
been protected by the Geneva Conventions of 1949. These treaties prohibit not
only torture, but all cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Importantly, they
also prohibit sending an individual to a country where that person would face a
genuine risk of torture or ill-treatment.
In discussing rendition policies, former Bush administration
officials have tried to justify the forced returns that took place during the
administration by saying they always got “promises” from the
receiving countries or “diplomatic assurances” the transferees would
be treated humanely. As evidenced by US State Department country reports
on human rights in the mid-2000s, however, the US government was well aware of
the torture and ill-treatment taking place in Libyan prisons.[6]
The Gaddafi government’s many executions of its opponents after summary
trials would have made it obvious to anyone involved in the rendition of LIFG
members to Libya that they would be at grave risk. The US government’s
perfunctory resort to diplomatic assurances—unenforceable agreements
between governments to not harm a person being transferred, shown in the
Tripoli Documents to have been used in two transfers—reflect a callous disregard
for the lives and wellbeing of people who the United States never should have
returned to Libya.
Several individuals interviewed for this report said they
endured physical abuse and mistreatment in Libya, some of which amounted to
torture. This included being beaten with wooden sticks[7]
and steel pipes;[8] whipped,[9]
including with ropes[10] and
electric cables;[11]
slapped, kicked and punched;[12] and
administered electric shocks.[13]
At the same time, other interviewees said they were not
subjected to physical abuse in Libyan custody. Some speculated this may have
been due to prison reforms initiated by Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif
Gaddafi, or agreements they had heard were made between the United States and
Libya (perhaps diplomatic assurances) that transferees would not be mistreated.[14]
But, neither Saif Gaddafi’s reforms nor US diplomatic assurances, if
obtained, appear to have protected those detainees who were subjected to
torture and ill-treatment. Nor did they protect detainees from being placed in
solitary confinement—which can amount to torture—ensure their
access to family members and legal counsel, or make sure they were promptly
charged and fairly tried. Typically detainees had no lawyers and were denied
family visits, sometimes for as long as two years.[15]
All of those interviewed said they were held for years before finally being
charged with any offense. Once charged, they were appointed a lawyer to whom
they either never spoke or who did not assist in their defense.[16]
They faced summary trials, and all detainees interviewed for this report were
convicted, receiving sentences of lengthy prison terms up to life imprisonment,
or the death penalty. At least three said they were subsequently interrogated
in Libyan prisons by US, UK, or other foreign agents.[17]
Summary of the Cases
Detentions in Afghanistan and Morocco: Of the men
interviewed for this report, the five who experienced the worst abuses and spent
the longest period in secret US detention are Khalid al-Sharif (Sharif);
Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed al-Shoroeiya (Shoroeiya); Majid Mokhtar Sasy
al-Maghrebi (Maghrebi); Saleh Hadiyah Abu Abdullah Di’iki (Di’iki);
and Mustafa Jawda al-Mehdi (Mehdi). All but Mehdi appear to have been held in the
same locations for their first period of detention which they all said was in a
US-run detention facility in Afghanistan. The four were then moved to a second
location, apparently also in Afghanistan, to which Mehdi was later brought. In
total, Sharif was in both locations for two years, Shoroeiya for about 16
months, Maghrebi for about eight months, and Di’iki also for about eight
months. Mehdi was only in the second location and he appears to have been
detained there for about fourteen months. Prior to his detention in Afghanistan,
Di’iki said he was also held in a facility in Morocco for about a month where
he said he was interrogated by US personnel though it is not clear if they were
running the facility. In addition to these five, Human Rights Watch also interviewed
Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi (Madaghi), who was described in the Tripoli
Documents as Di’iki’s deputy.[18] He was arrested in
Mauritania, sent to Morocco, held there for about five weeks, and then rendered
to Libya. All six were senior members of the LIFG. Khalid al-Sharif, deputy to
Head of the LIFG, Abdul Hakim Belhadj (see below), being the most senior
member.
Transfers to Libya That Began in Asia: For three interviewees,
their returns to Gaddafi’s Libya began in Asia. Two of these three cases—those
of Abdul Hakim Belhadj and Sami Mostafa al-Saadi, are already well documented.
Information about US and UK involvement in their renditions was revealed when
the Tripoli Documents were discovered last year and a number of the documents
made public.[19] Belhadj
is the former head of the LIFG and a longtime opponent of Gaddafi. He and his
wife were taken into custody in Malaysia with the help of the United
Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service (commonly known as MI6) and
detained for several days by the CIA in Thailand. The United States then
sent him to Libya around March 9, 2004. Libyan intelligence Chief Musa Kusa had
Belhadj brought directly to him. “I’ve been waiting for you,”
he reportedly told Belhadj.[20]
Belhadj’s transfer occurred just weeks before UK Prime Minister Tony
Blair flew to Tripoli on March 25 for a very public rapprochement with Gaddafi.[21]
The same day, Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell announced it had signed a deal worth
up to £550 million (approximately $1 billion US) for gas exploration
rights off the Libyan coast.[22]
Saadi had been a senior LIFG leader and was the
group’s religious leader and religious law expert. The Tripoli Documents
contain communications from the CIA offering to help the Libyan government secure
Saadi’s return to Libya and confirming MI6 involvement as well. Saadi was
rendered to Libya from Hong Kong just days after Blair’s visit to Libya.
Five other former LIFG members interviewed for this report were also rendered
to Libya that year, and two more the following April. Communications contained
in the Tripoli Documents, relating to Belhadj and Saadi, are a key part of a
lawsuit against the UK government.[23] They
have also formed the basis of an investigation by the UK police into the government’s
role in their rendition.[24]
In addition to these eight, Human Rights Watch interviewed
another senior LIFG member, Muhammed Abu Farsan, who had been with Belhadj and
Saadi in Asia before they were detained. As described above, Abu Farsan sought but
failed to obtain asylum in the Netherlands, which sent him to Sudan. In Sudan
he was interviewed by individuals representing themselves as being from the CIA
on three different occasions. Within two weeks, Sudan returned him to Libya.
Transfer from
Guantanamo Bay: We also
interviewed Abdusalam Abdulhadi Omar as-Safrani, who as of this report’s
writing was one of two former Guantanamo detainees sent back to Libya by the
US. He said he was not a member of the LIFG. He was detained with Ibn-al-Sheikh
al-Libi (see below) by US and Pakistani forces before being sent to Guantanamo.
Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi (Sheikh al-Libi):Sheikh al-Libi, also reportedly not a member of the
LIFG, was held in US custody for years, allegedly tortured, and then rendered
to Libya. We could not interview him for this report because he died in Libyan
custody, allegedly by suicide. His rendition and torture is of particular
importance because it produced intelligence that the CIA itself has recognized was
unreliable but that nevertheless played a significant role in justifying the US
invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Detainees Rendered from African Countries to Libya: We
interviewed four other Libyans picked up in different places in Africa and then
transferred to Libya: one from Sudan, Ismail Omar Gebril al-Lwatty (Lwatty);
one from Chad, Mafud al-Sadiq Embaya Abdullah (Embaya); and two from Mali,
Abdullah Mohammed Omar al-Tawaty (Tawaty) and Othman Salah (Salah). These
interviews contained less evidence than the others of foreign or Western
government involvement in the actual transfer, though there are indications
that Western governments were involved in the initial apprehensions and
subsequent interrogations. The African countries themselves, however, were
equally obliged not to render these individuals to Libya, without process and
against their will.
Most of the Libyans
profiled in this report were imprisoned until February 16, 2011, when the
uprisings against Gaddafi began. LIFG leader Abdul Hakim Belhadj, his deputy, Khalid
Sharif, and LIFG religious leader Sami al-Saadi were released a year earlier,
on March 23, 2010, as part of a negotiated release of hundreds of prisoners. Belhadj,
Saadi and Sharif had to publically renounce their aim of overthrowing the
government by force as part of the deal.
Many of those interviewed were also involved in the
uprisings against Gaddafi. Sharif, Saadi, and Di’iki were all rearrested
during this time for anti-Gaddafi activities and held until August 2011, when
Tripoli fell to rebel forces. Belhadj commanded a brigade that played a key
role in the uprisings and the taking of Tripoli. Shoroeiya, Sharif, and others
interviewed for this report said that many former LIFG members who managed to
escape arrest after the uprisings began, but are not profiled here, participated
politically in the uprisings and militarily in organizing and training rebel
forces. Belhadj and Saadi both ran as candidates for their respective political
parties during the July 7, 2012 elections.[25]
US diplomats have engaged with Belhadj and his party since they
emerged as important players in Libya’s new democratic landscape, and
several US Senators, including John McCain, have met with him. Sharif is now head of the Libyan National Guard. One of his
responsibilities is providing security for facilities holding high value
detainees (mostly officials of the former Gaddafi government) now in government
custody. Di’iki also works at the Libyan National Guard and has similar responsibilities.. Mehdi and
Shoroieya are prominent members of the same political parties to which Belhadj
and Saadi belong, respectively.
Key Recommendations
To the United States
Government
Consistent with its obligations under the Convention against
Torture, investigate credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment since
September 11, 2001 and implement a system of compensation to ensure all victims
can obtain redress.
Acknowledge past abuses and provide a full accounting of every
person that the CIA has held in its custody pursuant to its counterterrorism
authority since 2001, including names, dates they left US custody, locations to
which they were transferred, and their last known whereabouts.
Create an independent, nonpartisan commission to investigate the
mistreatment of detainees in US custody anywhere in the world since September
11, 2001, including torture, enforced disappearance, and rendition to torture.
To the Government of
the United Kingdom
Provide a full accounting of the involvement of British security
services in the detention or transfer of individuals to other countries without
due process since September 11, 2001.
Set up a new, judge-led inquiry into the UK’s involvement
in detainee abuse and renditions to torture with full independence from the
government and authority to allow it to establish the truth.
To the Government of
Libya
Promptly investigate all allegations of torture and ill-treatment
in detention facilities run by the state and armed groups in a thorough and
impartial way.
Hold accountable all those responsible for using torture or
ill-treatment against persons in custody.
To the Governments of
Pakistan, the Netherlands, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Chad,
Mauritania, Mali, Morocco, and Sudan
Conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into the role each
government played in either the detention and abuse or the transfer or
rendition of individuals identified in this report to Libya, where they faced a
substantial risk of torture or persecution.
Where warranted, prosecute individuals found to have engaged in
torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and provide a means for
victims to obtain redress.
Methodology
This report is based primarily on interviews Human Rights
Watch conducted during a research trip to Libya from March 14 to March 27, 2012;
documents that Human Rights Watch discovered in Libyan foreign intelligence
chief Musa Kusa’s office on September 3, 2011; and Human Rights Watch research
on unlawful rendition and secret detention by the United States and other
governments over the past decade.
During its March 2012 trip to Libya, Human Rights Watch
conducted in-depth interviews with 14 former detainees who had been transferred
to Libya between 2004 and 2006. Before each interview, we informed interviewees
of its purpose and the kinds of issues that would be covered, and asked whether
they wanted to participate. We informed them that they could discontinue the
interview at any time or decline to answer specific questions without consequence.
We did not offer or provide incentives to persons we interviewed. We conducted
each interview individually and in private.
Human Rights Watch was previously aware that seven of these
individuals had been transferred to Libya. We had already interviewed four of
them in 2009 while they were still in Libya’s Abu Salim prison, but had
conducted those interviews in an open courtyard, occasionally within the
earshot of guards.[26] The
fall of the Gaddafi government and the prisoners’ release from detention
provided Human Rights Watch with an opportunity to speak to them in private,
without the stress of prison conditions, and in greater depth about their
experiences.
These interviews and documents led Human Rights Watch to
other individuals who had also been unlawfully rendered, detained, and
interrogated with varying levels of foreign government involvement. In
addition, Human Rights Watch worked with Sheikh Othman, a former LIFG member
who worked in the Tripoli Military Defense Council. He was in charge of
compiling the names of those who had been returned to Libya against their will,
with foreign government involvement. He himself had been rendered to Libya from
Mali in 2006. Othman provided Human Rights Watch with the names and contact
information for 21 former prisoners who he said were returned to Libya during
the Gaddafi era with US, UK, or other foreign government involvement. Much of
this information overlapped with information we already had, but some of it was
new. Of those on Othman’s list that we were not able to interview, one
was no longer alive (Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi). Another, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed
Hamuda Bin Qumu, the only other Guantanamo detainee to be returned to Libya
besides Abdusalam Abdulhadi Omar as-Safrani, refused to speak with us. We were
unable to reach six others. As a result, we were not able to confirm or deny
these other alleged transfers to Libya. In addition, Othman said that another
15 people had been turned over to Libya from prisons in Sudan, more than 70
from Saudi Arabia, and at least eight from Jordan. Due to limited time, Human
Rights Watch was not able to investigate these claims.
Human Rights Watch interviewed some family members of people
who had been returned to Libya, as well as family members and former cellmates
of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who died while in Libyan custody.
Tripoli Documents
On September 3, 2011, Human Rights Watch discovered a number
of Gaddafi-era files, abandoned, in the offices of former Libyan intelligence chief Musa
Kusa in Tripoli.[27] Scores
of those documents—several of which are presented here for the first time—provide
important information on the high level of cooperation between the United States
and the United Kingdom in the rendition of Gaddafi’s political opponents
to Libya. (See Appendix 1 for a complete list of the documents drawn on in this
report.)
The documents include communications between Musa
Kusa’s office and the CIA, and between Kusa’s office and the MI6.
They show a high level of cooperation between the United States, the United Kingdom,
and the government of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on the transfer of
Gaddafi’s opponents into Libyan custody. The documents are significant because
they shed light on the still opaque CIA renditions program, identify former
detainees by name, and provide corroborating evidence in several specific
cases, most notably confirming the involvement of the US, the UK, and other
governments.
Past Human Rights Watch Interviews in Libya
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, Human Rights Watch,
journalists and other nongovernmental organizations have reported on CIA secret
detention sites, tracked the names of missing detainees believed to be in US
custody, and requested information as to their whereabouts.[28]
In 2006 and 2007, Human Rights Watch received reports from Libyans abroad that
several individuals who had been in US custody had since been sent back to
Libya. Some media outlets also reported these returns.[29]
By February 2009, Human Rights Watch had the names of seven Libyans we believed
had been detained by the CIA and transferred to Libya. In April 2009 Human
Rights Watch got access to the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, the main prison
where the government held political prisoners and the site of a massacre in
1996 where roughly 1,200 inmates were killed within a few hours. During the
2009 visit, we confirmed that five of the seven had indeed been transferred to
Libyan custody and we were able to interview four of them, though only for a
limited period of time and not entirely in private. The fifth, Ali Mohammed
al-Fakheri, also known as Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, declined to speak with us. Two
weeks later, according to the Libyan government, he committed suicide.[30]
I. Background
Libya from the 1970s to the 1990s
Twelve of the fifteen men profiled in this report said they
left Libya between 1988 and 1990. Of the three others, one left in 1991 and the
others in 1996.[31] Libya
at the time was a brutal police state.[32] Dissidents
were arbitrarily arrested and held for years without charge, and often for long
periods in incommunicado detention.[33]Torture of those in custody was rampant.[34]
Family members of suspected opponents of the government were harassed, threatened,
and detained.[35] It was
a country in which the death penalty could be imposed on “anyone who
calls for the establishment of any association or party which is against the
Revolution in purpose and means.”[36]
Leading up to this period Gaddafi had developed a unique
political philosophy, a hybrid of socialism and Islam called the Third
Universal Theory, which sought independence from communism and capitalism. This
theory was enshrined in the “Green Book,” which he wrote to present
his theory of a system of government called Jamahiriya, or “state
of the masses.”[37] According
to the Green Book, the Jamahiriya system was the final evolution of
democracy, because citizens did not elect representatives but participated
themselves directly in governmental affairs. All citizens were obliged to
participate in Basic People’s Congresses in their local districts, where
they could debate all matters of government. Parliaments were considered
“a misrepresentation of the people,” and parliamentary governments
were “a misleading solution to the problem of democracy.” Political
parties were considered “contemporary dictatorships.”[38]
New laws banned any group activity based on a political ideology opposed to
these views.[39] As
Gaddafi once declared, “It [the revolution] is a moving train. Whoever
stands in its way will be crushed.”[40]
Gaddafi created Revolutionary Committees, an extensive
surveillance system that mobilized citizens to support his political agenda.[41]
The rights to freedom of speech and assembly were virtually non-existent.[42]
Both local and international phone calls were routinely monitored, as evidenced
by the extensive monitoring equipment found after Gaddafi’s fall.[43]
In the years that followed, police and security forces arbitrarily detained
hundreds of Libyans who opposed, or authorities feared could oppose, the new
system, subjected them to arbitrary detentions, and many were killed.”[44]Libyan authorities referred to these
individuals as “stray dogs.”[45] On many
occasions, the executions were carried out in public and broadcast on
television.[46]
Gaddafi also made major changes to the practice of Islam in Libya
that he expected others to follow.[47] For
example, the second source of authority in Sunni Islam, the Sunnah (the
acts and sayings of the Prophet as told by his companions), was discarded.[48]
The Islamic calendar was changed so that it no longer started with the date of the
Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina, but rather with the date of his
death ten years later.[49] Libya
began fasting for the holy month of Ramadan on a different day from the rest of
the Middle East.[50]
The most contentious of these changes was the discarding of
the second Sunnah, which was deeply offensive and sacrilegious to Muslims, and
not just those in Libya. Though Gaddafi was not the only one advocating this at
the time, it was very much a minority position and put him at odds with the
clerical establishment, as well as Islamists.[51]
In the early 1980s, a series of fatwas were issued against
Gaddafi which proclaimed him a heathen.[52] Libyans
who were opposed to Gaddafi’s changes began organizing. In turn Gaddafi
stepped up surveillance and repression against them.[53]
Many victims of the detentions, and killings going on at the time were members
of Islamist opposition groups.[54] The
former head of Libya’s foreign intelligence service, Musa Kusa, once
reportedly boasted to foreign visitors that he monitored domestic Islamic
extremists so closely that he knew the name of every Libyan with a beard.[55]
Even fleeing the country did not mean escaping
Gaddafi’s reach. In the 1970s and 80s, Gaddafi’s government reportedly
formed assassination squads that tracked down and killed his opponents abroad.[56]
Flight from Libya
State restrictions on the practice of Islam were the main
reason most of the men interviewed for this report said they had left Libya, though
some also cited more general freedom of expression issues. “I had a beard
when I was at the university and it was obvious I used to pray,” said
Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi, one of the men who fled Libya in 1990 only to be
sent back by foreign governments. “I was afraid to show anything like
that because such an appearance was considered an act of outright opposition. I
started to be followed by a security person…. All of this plus the
continuous arrests of people made me decide to leave Libya because I knew that
if I stayed I would end up in prison.”[57] Another
former detainee, Abu Farsan, said he prayed at home and avoided the mosque
because “going to the mosque was the route to prison.”[58]
Those interviewed said that after they had left the country,
a number of friends and relatives who stayed behind were harassed, detained, or
killed.[59] After
he fled Libya in 1988, Sami al-Saadi said that security forces repeatedly
harassed his elderly father, even breaking into his house and beating him. Two
of Saadi’s brothers were also arrested and imprisoned in Tripoli’s
high security prison, Abu Salim, where many political prisoners were held.
After being held for several years without trial, both lost their lives in the
1996 Abu Salim massacre, in which prison guards killed some 1,200 prisoners after
a revolt over prison conditions.[60]
All of the men interviewed for this report were in their
late teens or early twenties when they left Libya. Some of them were founding
members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), discussed below. After
leaving Libya, most were among a large group of Libyans who went to Afghanistan
around this time, where they joined other Libyans there fighting with rebel
groups, referred to broadly as “the mujahidin,” against Soviet
military forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government.[61]
The United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and several other governments backed
the Afghan rebels with covert funding, weapons, and training for the fighters.[62]
The Saudi government for example, contributed $350 to $500 million per year for
the mujahidin through a US government controlled Swiss bank account.[63]
“In Saudi Arabia, everyone was talking about the Afghan Jihad,”
said Osmail Omar Gebril al-Lwatty, one of the rendered Libyans who fought in
Afghanistan. “They made it so easy for us. There were camps where you
could live normally and train, in Jalalabad and Khost, then you went to
Peshawar to get equipped.”[64]
A well-known Palestinian cleric at the time, Abdullah Azzam,
authored numerous statements and texts, one of which was published as a book, considered
by many to constitute a fatwa (legal pronouncement), in which he argued that
Muslims had a personal obligation to defend Afghanistan against the Soviets.[65]
“I believed the people in Afghanistan were oppressed,” said Sami
al-Saadi, when explaining to Human Rights Watch what took him to
Afghanistan.”[66] He
added that the Libyans who went also viewed their time in Afghanistan as a way
to obtain military training that they could eventually use to overthrow Gaddafi.
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
The date the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) was
founded is unclear. According to some senior members, the LIFG grew out of a secret
group that was formed in Libya in the late 1980s out of frustration with
Gaddafi’s rule and his crackdown on organized Islamist opposition.[67]
Some scholars, however, assert that the group formed in Afghanistan in the
1990s.[68]
“So many people think that we established our organization in Afghanistan
and that it was due to the ideas in Afghanistan, but we started here in Libya
in 1988,” said Mohammed al-Shoroeiya, who was the LIFG’s Deputy
Head of the Military Council.[69]“We had one goal, getting rid of the
Gaddafi regime.” In any case, the LIFG appears to have become a more
organized and larger entity in Afghanistan during the 1990s.[70]
After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, a
struggle to remove the Soviet-backed proxy government of Mohammed Najibullah
continued through the early 1990s. Infighting among many Afghan factions ensued
and intensified, with many areas in Afghanistan, including Kabul, engulfed in
civil war.[71] The
fighting made it difficult for many Libyans to remain in Afghanistan. The LIFG
began covertly sending operatives into Libya, staging operations against the
government.[72] It also
set up bases in Pakistan and Sudan, as well as in Europe and the Middle East. From
1995 until 1998, the LIFG waged a low-level insurgency, mainly in eastern Libya,
intended to overthrow Gaddafi militarily. It staged three unsuccessful attempts
to assassinate Gaddafi between 1995 and 1996.[73]
“The regime was like an upside down pyramid built
upon the personality of Gaddafi. Get rid of Gaddafi and everything
changes,” Shoroeiya said. “That was our goal.… We
didn’t anticipate that other groups [in Afghanistan] would have ideas
to fight against others in this world.”
The LIFG did not formally announce its existence until
Libyan authorities discovered it in June 1995, after a clash over the rescue of
an LIFG member who was under armed guard in a hospital.[74]
This clash forced the LIFG into the open and was the start of several serious
battles between the LIFG and the Libyan government for the next three years. This
included large-scale aerial bombardment of the LIFG’s strongholds in
eastern Libya.[75] By
1998, the government succeeded in crushing the group’s Libyan operations,
and many of its members fled. Some sought asylum in the United Kingdom and
elsewhere in Europe, but a large number of them returned to Afghanistan, one of
the only locations where, according to many of those interviewed for this
report, Libyans who did not have proper papers or documentation were able to remain.[76]
“At the time there was no other country that allowed us to be together
and train,” said Muhammad Abu Farsan, an LIFG member who had fled Libya
in 1990.[77] Many
were also drawn to the Taliban’s concept of an Islamic state.[78]
At the time, many others from the region, such as Morocco and Algeria, who
sought to overthrow their governments for being insufficiently Islamic, also
went to Afghanistan.[79] Al Qaeda
tried to use these groups and their members to further its own aims but most of them reportedly resented these efforts.[80]
Some senior members of the LIFG said that al Qaeda tried to
persuade the LIFG on several occasions in 2000 and 2001 to form an alliance
with them, but that the LIFG refused.[81] At the
time, the LIFG was the largest Arab armed group in Afghanistan besides al Qaeda.[82]
In meetings in Khandahar, Afghanistan, in April and May 2000,
both Sami al-Saadi and Noman Benotman, senior LIFG members, said the LIFG demanded
that bin Laden cease using Afghanistan as a base from which to launch
operations.[83] After
the September 11, 2001 attacks, most of the core leadership of the LIFG, with
some exceptions, fled Afghanistan, sure they would be swept up in
post-September 11 arrests and unwilling to stay behind and fight with the
Taliban and al Qaeda.[84] Indeed,
as is documented in this report, many senior LIFG members were arrested in 2003
and 2004. The biggest blow came in March 2004 when both Belhadj, head of the LIFG,
and Sami al-Saadi, the LIFG’s religious leader, were taken into custody and
sent back to Libya with direct US and UK participation.
Years later, there was speculation that two other longtime
LIFG members—one of whom reportedly had been detained by US forces in
Bagram, Afghanistan, but escaped, Abu Yahya al-Libi,[85]
and another who remained behind in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, Abu
Layth al-Libi[86]—had
joined al Qaeda.[87]
In late autumn of 2007, these reports appeared to be confirmed
when Abu Layth al-Libi announced that the LIFG had joined al Qaeda.[88]
This assertion, however, was later rejected by core leaders of the LIFG, which posted
statements on several websites saying it was unauthorized. The LIFG “had
no link to the al Qaeda organisation in the past and has none now,” the
statement read.[89]
In fact, by the time Abu Layth made the announcement, the
core leadership of the LIFG, then imprisoned in Libya, had already begun reconciliation
talks with the Gaddafi government.[90] The mediator
for these talks was Saif al-Islam, one of Gaddafi’s sons.[91]Noman Benotman, a LIFG member based in the UK,
was allowed to return to Libya for the talks.[92] Abu
Layth al-Libi and Abu Yahya al-Libi reportedly opposed reconciliation.[93]
In January 2008, Abu Layth was reportedly killed in a US air strike.[94]
Ultimately the LIFG leadership imprisoned in Libya did
reconcile with the Libyan government. Part of that reconciliation involved the
publishing of a book, over 400 pages long, called “Corrective Studies in
Understanding Jihad Accountability and the Judgment of the People,” in
which the LIFG renounced the use of violence to achieve political aims.[95]
The book was authored by six of the LIFG’s most senior members: Belhadj,
Saadi, Sharif, Abd al-Wahhab (the elder brother of Abu Yahya al-Libi), Mitfah
al-Duwdi, and Mustafa Qanaifid. It ultimately resulted in the early release in March
2010 of three of the men interviewed for this report—Belhadj, Sharif and
Saadi—along with hundreds of other prisoners.[96]
Clearly some prominent LIFG members did sympathize with and even joined al Qaeda, but the announced merger did not occur until years after the LIFG’s core leadership were detained, with US and UK help, and locked up in Libyan prisons. All of the former LIFG members
interviewed for this report said that the LIFG never shared the ideology of al
Qaeda or any of its goals. “It happened that we found ourselves in the
same place at the same time as al Qaeda: in Afghanistan, where we sometimes
fought next to them when it was to liberate the country, but we were never at
their service,” said Belhadj, the head of the LIFG who would play a
leading role in the resistance that overthrew Gaddafi in 2011. “There was
no other place [besides Afghanistan] for us to go,” said Saadi, the LIFG’s
religion and legal expert. He said that al Qaeda asked the LIFG to join them,
as other jihadist groups had, but that the LIFG refused. “Our purpose,
the object of our fight, was the Gaddafi regime and we did not want to open any
conflicts up with Western governments or with anyone besides the Gaddafi regime,”
he said.[97]
The US government took a different view. After September 11,
2001, Gaddafi condemned the attacks against the United States, said the US government
had the right to retaliate, and urged Libyans to donate blood to victims. He later
said that the United States and Libya had a common interest in fighting
terrorism.[98] Shortly
thereafter, on September 25, 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive
order freezing the assets of the LIFG in the United States.[99]
One month later, senior administration officials went to Tripoli to meet with
Musa Kusa, who handed over information on Libyans who he claimed were allied
with al Qaeda, as well as the names of several Libyan militants living in the United
Kingdom.[100] And in
December 2004, after the United States and the United Kingdom had reconciled
with Gaddafi and a number of LIFG leaders had been sent back to Libya, the US
State Department placed the LIFG on its list of terrorist groups.[101]
Later the State Department elevated the LIFG to an al Qaeda “affiliate.”[102]
Gaddafi’s Rapprochement with the West
Gaddafi’s willingness to provide intelligence about
Islamist armed groups, and his agreement to give up Libya’s
“weapons of mass destruction” program, appear to have been key to the
thawing of relations between Libya and Western governments.[103]
Some correspondence in the Tripoli Documents reflects this new
relationship.[104] In September
2003, Gaddafi also agreed to pay compensation to family members of those killed
in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988; in
return, international sanctions against Libya would be lifted.[105]
In February 2004 the United States opened a diplomatic mission in Tripoli and, in
June 2006, the US State Department rescinded Libya’s designation as a
state sponsor of terrorism.[106] The
Tripoli Documents also show that at some point in March 2004, the CIA began to set
up an office in Libya.[107]
On March 25, 2004, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair paid a visit
to Libya, the first by a British prime minister since 1943. He and Gaddafi
formally mended relations between the two countries and discussed their
“common cause” in counterterrorism operations.[108]
On the same day, Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell announced it had signed a deal
worth up to £550 million (approximately $1 billion US) for gas
exploration rights off the Libyan coast.[109]
Gaddafi’s rapprochement with the West had profound
effects on the LIFG. After the United States added the LIFG to its official
list of foreign terrorist organizations, the United Kingdom followed suit in
October 2005.[110] As one
prominent LIFG member, Noman Benotman, said at the time, “Now anyone who
is an enemy of Kadafi is also an enemy of the United States.”[111]
After the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of
Afghanistan in October 2001, the Libyans who had been training with the LIFG in
Afghanistan—as well as many other armed groups that had established a foothold
in Afghanistan—broke apart and fled. Many of the Libyans initially went
to Pakistan and then on to Asia, Africa, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Those
who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that they constantly feared apprehension
and that their worst fear was being captured and returned to Libya. Mustafa
Jawda al-Mehdi said he begged his American captors not to send him back:
I informed them that I faced a real danger if they sent me
back. I was wanted in Libya…. If I reached Gaddafi that was when the real
‘ceremony’ was going to begin. I was so clear. I said they will
kill me, they will torture me…. It was the first time I cried actually,
the first tears I wept were when they told me I was being handed over to the
Libyans.
PLACES OF ARREST, DATES OF TRANSFER, AND TIME IN US SECRET DETENTION IN
AFGHANISTAN OF FIVE LIBYANS HELD IN US CUSTODY
The dates in the table are
approximations based on the accounts of the five Libyans as well as
corroborating information from other detainees thought to be held in the same
location. For example, the transfer between the different Afghan facilities is
believed to have been around April 25, 2004, but that may not be the exact date
for each detainee.
*) The dates for Di'iki are
estimates. He said he was arrested on October 12, 2003, detained in the first
location in Mauritania for about two to three weeks, and then in the second
place for about two weeks. That would have occurred around November 12-19,
2003. He said he was then sent to Morocco, where he was held for about one
month.
That
took place around December 8-15, 2003. He said he was then transferred to
Afghanistan in early January 2004; he thought it was around January 7, 2004. If
that is correct, it would mean he was in detention either in Mauritania or
Morocco for longer than he thinks, or he is mistaken about the date of transfer
to Afghanistan. In either case, he said he was forcibly returned from a second
facility in Afghanistan to Libya on August 22, 2004.
**)
The dates for the time Maghrebi was in the first and second location in Afghanistan
are estimates. He said that in the first location he was in his first cell for
about two months, then another cell for about 15 days and then a third cell for
another one and a half to two months. This would put him in the first cell
until around February 10, 2004, the second cell until March 10, 2004, and the
third cell until sometime between March 10 and April 25, 2004. Several other
detainees said they were transferred around April 25, 2004 to a second location
and Maghrebi said he was with about six other people during his transfer, so we
believe that he was moved to the second location on that same date. The April
25 date is consistent with his assertion that he was held in the second
facility for about four months and was returned to Libya on August 22, 2004
with Shoroeiya and Di'iki.
II. Detainee Accounts from Afghanistan and Morocco
This section focuses on six individual cases involving
detentions in Afghanistan or Morocco and subsequent transfers to Libya. We have
grouped them together because, of the 14 individuals interviewed by Human
Rights Watch, these are the ones whose unlawful renditions to Libya were most
clearly connected to the United States. They also are the ones who spent the
longest period of time in US custody, and experienced the most serious abuse.
Five of them reported being held in US-run prisons in Afghanistan for between
eight months and two years before being transferred to Libya. Four of the five
were detained in Pakistan before being transferred to Afghanistan and one was
detained in Morocco before being sent to Afghanistan. A sixth individual,
connected to the latter by a communication in the Tripoli Documents,[112]
was also held in Morocco. Unlike the others, he was not sent to Afghanistan but
rather straight to Libya from Morocco.
Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed al-Shoroeiya and Khalid
al-Sharif
Mohammed
al-Shoroeiya (Shoroeiya)[113] and Khalid al-Sharif (Sharif)[114] are two former LIFG members who
said they left Libya in 1991 and 1988 respectively. Pakistani authorities
arrested the two together in Peshawar, Pakistan, in April 2003. Pakistani and
US personnel interrogated and then transferred them to US-run detention
facilities in Afghanistan. While they were physically abused during
interrogations in Pakistan, they said the mistreatment in Afghanistan was
much worse.
Shoroeiya
and Sharif said that once in Afghanistan, they were detained and
interrogated—for more than a year in Shoroeiya’s case, and for
two years in Sharif’s case—by US personnel. This included being
chained to walls naked—sometimes while diapered—in pitch black,
windowless cells, for weeks or months at a time; being restrained in painful
stress positions for long periods of time, being forced into cramped spaces;
being beaten and slammed into walls; being kept inside for nearly five months
without the ability to bathe; being denied food; being denied sleep by
continuous, deafeningly loud Western music; and being subjected to different
forms of water torture including, in Shoroeiya’s case, waterboarding.
Following
their US detention, they were rendered to Libya, where they were again abused
in detention. Both were eventually summarily tried and convicted, with
Shoroeiya sentenced to life in prison and Sharif sentenced to death by firing
squad. Sharif was released on March 23, 2010, after nearly five years in
prison, as part of a negotiated agreement involving other imprisoned LIFG
leaders and hundreds of other prisoners. Shoroeiya was released on February
16, 2011, when the uprisings against Gaddafi began.
Human
Rights Watch interviewed Shoroeiya and Sharif separately on two different
days in March 2012 in Tripoli and then again by phone from New York in May
2012. Human Rights Watch also spoke to Shoroeiya in Abu Salim Prison in
Tripoli in April 2009. The men have been in contact with one another since
their release from Libyan custody.
Departure from Libya
Sharif was born in 1965 in Tripoli and left Libya in April
1988 when he was 23 because “the situation was getting worse,” he
said. “Our religious people were subjected to abuse. We had no ability to
express ourselves, no choices. Even attending the mosque was a crime.” He
had been studying pharmacology at college in Tripoli. He and some others
started a secret group to try and overthrow the government, but one of his
friends was executed. After that, he and others in the group decided to leave
Libya, out of fear, but also to organize and train. Sharif left Libya for Saudi
Arabia, then Pakistan and Afghanistan. He became very active in the LIFG, eventually
becoming the deputy head of the organization. In 1995 he moved to Sudan, where
he said the LIFG started to take some action against the Libyan government. He
said he was forced to leave Sudan in 1996 and went to Turkey, then back to
Pakistan, where he lived until 2002. After the September 11 attacks, he and his
family went to Iran, but in Iran he was detained and forced to return to Pakistan.
He arrived back in Pakistan in early 2003.[115]
Shoroeiya is from Misrata in eastern Libya. He was born on
March 22, 1969 and left Libya in 1991. He was in the middle of his studies in
science but left, he said, because of threats against committed Muslims,
especially those who were students. He first went to Algeria and then to join
other members of the LIFG in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 1995 he moved to
Sudan, where the LIFG was based and planning actions against the Gaddafi government.
The actions drew new recruits, he said, but the Sudanese government would not
allow the LIFG to train the recruits, so they moved back to Afghanistan. He
left Afghanistan for Turkey in 1999 and married an Algerian woman, Fawziya,
while there. They returned to Afghanistan in 2000 and were in Kabul during the
September 11 attacks, though they quickly moved to Karachi, Pakistan. He said that
for him this was a very frightening time and that the LIFG did not agree with bin
Laden’s actions. He told Human Rights Watch, “[f]or us there were
huge differences between us [al Qaeda and the LIFG], but we knew that they were
going to see us all as one group together. At that time, the US lost its
ability to distinguish between people.” He began to feel that Karachi was
not safe, so he moved to Peshawar. He wanted to try and get to Iran as other LIFG
members had done, but his wife was pregnant so his ability to travel was limited.[116]
Arrest and Detention
Shoroeiya and Sharif were
both arrested in Peshawar on April 3, 2003. Shoroeiya was living with his wife,
Fawziya, and their 9-month-old daughter, Aisha. Sharif was staying on the
second floor of Shoroeiya’s home.[117] Around noon, the house was suddenly surrounded by
what seemed to both of them like scores of police, some in vans with black
windows.[118] Sharif tried to escape by jumping out the window
and climbing over a wall next door. In the process he broke his foot.[119] Shoroeiya was also injured during the arrest,
breaking his leg.[120] Shoroeiya was detained for about ten days in a
place he referred to as “Khyber.” Sharif said he was detained for
about seven days in a building called the “army stadium” near a fairground.
Both places were in Peshawar, but it is not clear if these were the same
locations.
Both men were then moved to a facility in Islamabad,
Pakistan’s capital. Sharif and Shoroeiya said they were in cells next to
each other while in Islamabad.[121] Sharif
said he knew he was in Islamabad because he had been living in Pakistan by then
for many years and knew Islamabad well. He was not blindfolded, and on the
second day of his arrival he was brought to a hospital in Islamabad to treat
his broken foot.[122]
During this period both say they were interrogated by
Pakistani and US personnel. Shoroeiya said there were two teams of Americans,
one in Peshawar and one in Islamabad, all men. Sometimes he was hooded during interrogations,
but not always. The Pakistanis at times beat him during these interrogations, in
some cases after the Americans ordered them to do so. Whenever he was beaten,
however, the Americans would leave the room.
Sharif provided additional details of his arrest and
detention in Pakistan, including his reasons for believing his captors and
interrogators were Pakistani and American. After the arrest, he was immediately
blindfolded and hooded. The interrogation began on the same day as the arrest,
right after he was taken to the detention facility in Peshawar. He said he
believed it was a Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) facility because during
his detention the guards were wearing Pakistani military uniforms and the
officers, who were in civilian clothes, had a file on him.
During his interrogation, Sharif’s blindfold and hood
were taken off. He said that because of his broken foot he could not walk, and he
would be carried into the interrogation room, an American on one side, a
Pakistani on the other. He said the American, who spoke Arabic poorly, would
ask the questions and when Sharif did not provide an answer they seemed to
think was adequate, the Pakistani would step on his broken and untreated foot. The
Pakistani officer would also beat Sharif and lash him with a whip all over his
body.
Sharif said that while he was detained in Peshawar, a
Pakistani officer who spoke to him in Pashto beat him. He spread Sharif’s
legs apart and kicked him in his groin. The officer also hit Sharif on his head
with a whip so violently that he nearly lost consciousness. While the Pakistani
was beating him, a different American sat on a chair right in front of him.
On another occasion at the Peshawar facility, the first
American asked him in his poor Arabic for help finding Abu Faraj al-Libi (now
detained in Guantanamo). He offered millions of dollars as a reward. This
questioning session did not involve any physical abuse. Sharif said that during
the final few days of his detention he was not interrogated. He was then moved
to Islamabad.
Both Shoroeiya and Sharif said they were interrogated by
Pakistanis and Americans at the facility in Islamabad. Sharif said that a few
hours after he arrived he was told he was going to be transferred to a place
where he would be “better able to speak.” He said the comment felt
like a threat.
CIA Rendition Transportation Procedures
The
accounts of many former detainees subjected to CIA renditions between the
years 2002-2005 show standardized treatment during transfer. In most cases,
the detainee was stripped of his clothes, photographed naked, and
administered a body cavity search (rectal examination). Some detainees described
the insertion of a suppository at that time. The detainee was then dressed in
a diaper. His ears were plugged, headphones were placed on his head, he was
blindfolded or provided black goggles, and his head was wrapped with bandages
and adhesive tape. The detainee’s arms and legs were shackled and he
was put into the transportation vehicle.[123]
(Hereinafter “CIA rendition transportation procedures”).
The UN
Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners allow the use of
instruments of restraint when prisoners are being transferred. However, some
instruments may never be used, such as chains or irons, and others, including
handcuffs and straitjackets, shall never be applied as a punishment.[124]
The transfer of a prisoner also does not permit treatment that would amount
to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.[125] While the US was
entitled to use constraints as necessary for transporting detainees by plane,
some of these methods, particularly when used in conjunction with others,
appear intended to punish the detainee or were, at a minimum, degrading.
After one week in Islamabad, both said they were stripped,
blindfolded, handcuffed, and their legs shackled.[126]
Their captors also put ear plugs in their ears and hoods over their heads.[127]
Shoroeiya said that they did some additional things to him, but they were
things he could not describe to a female Human Rights Watch researcher.[128]
Before being stripped, Sharif mentioned that they examined his mouth, ears, and
eyes. The two said they were then
taken on a vehicle, and then boarded onto a plane.
They flew for about half an hour to a location they believe
was inside Afghanistan. Sharif said that after they disembarked, the detainees were
thrown into the back of trucks. Sharif believed he was brought to a hangar-type
facility near Kabul airport.[129]
Shoroeiya also said he was in a hangar-type facility and believed it was in or
near Bagram Air Base, which is about 40 kilometers north of Kabul airport.[130]
Neither was sure of their locations but both said they knew they were in
Afghanistan because of the time it took to fly to the location and the fact
that the guards were dressed in traditional Afghan clothing when they first
arrived, occasionally spoke to them in Dari (the local Afghan language), and
served them Afghan food. Both knew they were detained in the same location
because although they never saw each other, occasionally they were able to talk
to one another over the loud music that played constantly.[131]
Both were detained in this first location in Afghanistan for
about a year. Shoroeiya gave the exact dates, stating that he was there from
April 18, 2003 to April 25, 2004.[132] Sharif
said he was there for about a year from the time he arrived from Islamabad,
though he did not know the exact date of his arrival, until sometime between
April 20 and April 25, 2004. They were then moved to a second facility that
they both also believed was in Afghanistan and run by Americans. Shoroeiya
stayed there for about four months and Sharif for approximately one year.
The following is a description of the first facility in
Afghanistan, where they allege the worst abuse occurred.
Afghanistan I
Shoroeiya and Sharif each said they were kept in
almost total darkness the entire time they were in the first facility in
Afghanistan. Their cells, as well as the rooms where they were interrogated,
were dark. Guards and interrogators would come to them with flashlights and in
some cases strong spotlights they would shine in their eyes. In addition to the
darkness, there was loud, Western music blaring constantly.[133]
Both said they were denied clothing during the first few months of their
detention.
Shoroeiya had a thin mat in his cell, while Sharif
said he had a carpet, perhaps a mat, in his cell. Both had a bucket in their
cell they were to use as a toilet. The men said that chemicals were in the
bucket that, when mixed with their urine and excrement, gave off a terrible
stench. Shoroeiya drew a layout of the facility where he was detained and his
cell for Human Rights Watch (see below). He was in cell one, which he said was
slightly bigger than the rest of the cells. According to Shoroeiya, there were
about 15 cells for prisoners in this same location.[134]
Though neither Sharif nor Shoroeiya saw other
prisoners, occasionally they were able to talk when there was a break in the
music or the volume lessened. Sharif said these periods were usually very short
so he and the other prisoners would immediately take the opportunity to shout
to each other. Once, the break lasted an entire day: “One day there was a
day-long failure of the music so it was a great opportunity for us to talk,”
said Sharif.[135]
They would try and remember names and details of each other’s cases so
that if anyone got released, they could communicate this information to their families
and the outside world.
From this type of communication, Shoroeiya was able
to provide a list of those who he believed were detained within this facility.
Some he just knew by nickname or first name and where they were from.[136]
They include:[137]
Abu Yasser al Jazairi, from Algeria;[138]
Omeir, from Yemen;[139] Reyad,
from Yemen; Khalid Sharif; Majed;[140] Nassem;
Ahmad, from Malaysia; Malik, from Saudi Arabia; Mu’ad, from Syria; Saleh
De’ayki;[141] Ibn
Sheikh;[142] Marwan,
from Yemen; and Ayoub.[143]
From the sound of their voices and information he
obtained from other prisoners, Shoroeiya drew where he believed each individual
was detained within the facility.[144]
Sharif also said that he was either able to speak
to, or heard the voices of, other prisoners during his detention in this
facility:[145]
Abu Nasseem al-Tunisi; Marwan al-Yemeni; Assad Allah—the
son of Sheikh Ibn Omar Abdul Rahman—from Libya; Shoroeiya; Majed Adnan;[146]
Salah al Di’iki;[147] someone
from Malaysia whose name he could not remember; someone from Baluchistan; Abu
Ammar, but he was not sure of his name; and Ibn Sheikh al-Libi.[148]
Sharif also said he learned the names of some prisoners he
was told were there before he arrived, who he believed were transferred to Guantanamo.[149]
They were:
Abu al-Faraj al Libi;[150] Nuqman
from Zliten; Abu Ahmad; Abu Omar al Baidawi, from al Bayda; and Munir al Khomsi,
from Khoms.
Sharif said his cell was about 4 x 3 meters. It had a steel door in the middle and
a window with steel bars over the door. On what he described as the backside of
the cell there was also another small window.[151]
Shoroeiya did not provide measurements for his cell, but he said it was
slightly bigger, and drew it as slightly bigger than Sharif’s cell.
Shoroeiya’s cell also had a door with a window at the top with bars on it
and a slot in the middle of the door that the guards used to pass food through
and check on him occasionally. There was a small window, about 10 x 30 centimeters
that had bars on it too, was about 13 centimeters from the ground, and provided
some ventilation.[152] He
added that it also “was a very good entrance for rats.”[153]
In their cells, during the first three to four months of
interrogation, which both called the first “period” of interrogation,
each was chained to two iron rings that came out of the wall. Shoroeiya said
the rings were about one meter above the ground. They described being chained
to these rings, sometimes by one arm so that the other arm and both legs were
free (Position 1); sometimes by both arms with both legs free or at times
chained together (Position 2); and sometimes both legs and arms were all
shackled to the ring together (Position 3;). Later, after about a four-month
period of intense interrogation and abuse, Shoroeiya said he was allowed to be
unchained in his cell and to walk freely around it.
“I
would try to take that time to use the bucket for a toilet I had in my room,
but could not do so all the time, so I usually would just pass urine through my
clothes.”
Sharif said that at one point he spent two weeks in position
3, with both his arms and legs shackled to the iron ring. During this time,
they would unchain him only once a day for half an hour to eat the one meal
they gave him. Afterwards they would chain his hands and feet back up to the
wall: “I would try to take that time to use the bucket for a toilet I had
in my room, but could not do so all the time, so I usually would just pass
urine through my clothes.”[155]
Shoroeiya said he was in either position 1, 2, or 3 in his
cell for four months continuously after he first arrived. After four months he
was not shackled or handcuffed but was able to move freely around his cell
until he was moved to the second place of his detention in Afghanistan on April
25, 2004. Both men said they were not able to shower or bathe during the first
several months of their detention.
“For the first three months we were not able to have
any showers. We could not wash our bodies.”[156]
Shoroeiya said of that same time period, “That whole time we didn’t
even get a drop of water over our body. We couldn’t cut our hair or
even the nails of our fingers. We looked horrible. We looked like
monsters.”[157] After
this first period, they were allowed to shower for 10 to 15 minutes weekly.
They were also allowed some exposure to the sun, for a short period of time,
mostly once a week for the whole year.[158]
Sharif said sometimes his captors sent him to a cell where
his hands were suspended above his head for significant periods of time. One
time this period lasted three days. During this time he was provided limited
sustenance:
They only gave me water once, at night. They gave me a
milkshake and a small cup of milk with cocoa. That was all I had for three
days. They banned me from going to the restroom for those three days. I had to
pass urine and go to the bathroom standing up. I wasn’t wearing clothes.
At night, they gave me some water to drink but poured the rest of it over my
body. I was trying to move to create some warmth in my body. Because of the
lack of sleep for three days, I went hysterical. I thought I was going crazy.
Everything was spinning around me and it was totally dark.[159]
On another occasion he said he was in a room that was about
1.5 x 1.5 meters.[160] Again
his hands were suspended above his head from an iron bar that went between the
walls. His feet could touch the ground but he also could only stand on one foot
because his broken foot was still not healed. There were no windows and it was
dark, but there were small, “yellow” holes. He could see a small
red light that made him think there may have been a camera in there. They left
him there for several hours.
Shoroeiya said that when he first arrived, he was also put
in a place with his hands suspended above his head in a similar position,
though he describes the conditions differently.
He said it was a very narrow room or box, about 0.5 meters
wide and just high enough for him to stand with his hands above his head. He is
1.75 meters tall. His hands were handcuffed to a bar that went across the top
of the room. There were other rooms next to his. His feet could touch the floor
but he could only stand on one leg because the other leg was still broken and very
swollen. Speakers built into the walls of the box were on each side of his head
just centimeters to his ears blasting loud Western music. There were no
windows. It was dark but there was just enough light to see what he said looked
like blood stains on the walls. He was held there, with his hands suspended
above his head, for one and a half days, with no food, naked, with the music
blasting loudly the entire time.
“I found a woman
there who was screaming and beat on the table. She literally told me,
‘Now you are under the custody of the United States of America. In this
place there will be no human rights. Since September 11, we have forgotten
about something called human rights. If you think you are going to stay here
in a very good room and get your newspaper daily, you are
wrong.’”
Shoroeiya and Sharif both alleged this facility was run by
Americans. With one exception, however, they said the Americans were not
wearing official uniforms.[161]
Shoroeiya said all of the Americans were dressed in black with caps on their
heads and sometimes, when they carried out severe physical abuse, they wore
masks. They were able to see some of this, despite the darkness, because guards
and interrogators would come to them with lights on their foreheads and
flashlights in their hands.
Afghan guards brought them food and maintained the facility,
but mostly the Americans ran it. Shoroeiya said he knew the guards were Afghan
because he spoke Dari and Pashto, and some of them spoke to him in these languages
when he first arrived and occasionally afterwards. After some time, however,
the guards stopped all interactions entirely. Shoroeiya said the guards wore
traditional Afghan clothes in the beginning but then later began also wearing
black clothes with military boots and facemasks similar to the attire of the
Americans. Sharif said that when he spoke Pashto or Dari, the guards never
spoke back but would sometimes give indications that they understood what he
was saying. He also said their dress was “mixed,” with some in
Afghan clothes and some all in black with black facemasks.[162]
When asked how they knew they were in US custody, they each
said it was made very clear.
Sharif said that after he arrived at the facility:
I was approached by a tall, thin officer from the army [he
was in uniform] who told me he was American. He was bald, but not naturally—his
head was shaved. He had a lamp with a light on his head and was with a translator.
And the room was totally dark—the only light in there was the light on
his head. He started threatening me. He said, ‘Now we can kill you and no
one will know. We want to hear about your last plan to strike America. All of
what you said in Peshawar, we are not interested in that. We want new things
now.[163]
Later this army officer would suddenly be very nice to Sharif,
asking if his leg was hurting and promising to get him some medical attention
for it.
Shoroeiya said that within
the complex, there were several types of rooms. One was a group of rooms where he
was interrogated. Another set of rooms were freezing cold and were used to
submerge the prisoners in icy water while lying on plastic sheeting on the
ground. A third set of rooms he called the “torture rooms,”
where they used specific instruments. One of these instruments was a wood plank
that they used to abuse him with water.
Although he did not refer to the abuse he received as
waterboarding, the abuse he described fit that description.[164]
The Interrogators
Shoroeiya said the interrogators, all of whom he believed
were American, came to him in three waves.[165] The
first group would do a sort of soft interrogation, just asking questions. They
were wearing what Shoroeiya described as “special forces” black
uniforms with black caps on but no masks. Then the second group would come in.
They were also wearing the same type of black uniforms with caps on, but unlike
the first group, had what appeared to be some sort of bodyguards with them.
“They were tougher,” he said. They had “some sort of
specialists in this group who were very rough with us and who did the beatings,”
he said. “The third group was the toughest.” They also wore the
same black uniforms, but their faces were masked. They were the ones that used
what he called “torture instruments:” the waterboard, the small
box, and a tall, thin box. Sharif said the interrogators were assisted by interpreters
who, based on their accents, he believed to be from different Arab countries,
possibly including Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, and Syria.[166]
Sharif also mentioned that at times he had been interrogated by women while he
was naked. It was not clear if this occurred in one or both of the places in
Afghanistan where he was detained.[167]
Waterboarding
Shoroeiya said the board was made of wood and could turn
around 360 degrees (see above).[168]
Sometimes they would strap him onto the board and spin him around while wearing
a hood that covered his nose and mouth. This would completely disorient him. While
he was strapped to the board with his head lower than his feet, they would pour
buckets of extremely cold water over his nose and mouth to the point that he
felt he was going to suffocate. After the hood was put over his face, he said, “then
there is the water pouring…. They start to pour water to the point where
you feel like you are suffocating.”[169] When
asked how many times this was done to him, he said “a lot …a
lot … it happened many times …. They pour buckets of water
all over you.”[170]
Shoroeiya in a later interview explained that each session
took about half an hour, and during this half hour he was waterboarded many
times.[171] He
said he felt like each time lasted about three minutes but said there was no
way to really tell time. When told that the United States had admitted to doing
this to a few people for between 20 and 40 seconds each time, he said he was
sure his sessions were definitely longer than that.[172]
He said: “I could hold my breath for 20, even 40 seconds, so it was
definitely longer than that.”[173]They
would do this numerous times over and over again during a session. They would
ask him questions in between. He told Human Rights Watch,
“They wouldn’t stop until they got some kind of
answer from me.”
He said there were doctors present. He knows they were
doctors because his leg was broken while he was there and he was treated by
these same people. The doctors would monitor him as the cold water was poured
on him, and when his body temperature got too low, they would order warm water
be added to the cold. Once his temperature was okay, they would begin adding cold
water again.[174]
In addition to waterboarding, his interrogators would also
make a sort of basin out of a type of plastic sheeting. They would have him lie
down on the floor in the basin and then pour freezing water over him. Shoroeiya
said the water was so cold it had a gel-like, icy texture. Again, when his body
temperature got too cold, they would pour warmer water on him. Doctors were
present during these sessions also, monitoring his body temperature. He was often
naked when subjected to both types of abuse with water.[175]
Sharif described being subjected to a similar type of
treatment, though not with a board.[176] He
said he was threatened with use of the board, was shown the board, and was
aware it was being used on other prisoners, but that it was not used with him. During
this treatment, Sharif would be made to lie down on his back on plastic
sheeting while guards would hold the sides of it up, so that when water was
poured in, it would not spill out. The water was freezing cold, with an icy,
gel-like consistency. His whole body was lying in it. While this was going on
he would be made to wear a black hood made out of thick cloth over his head and
they would also pour jugs of freezing cold water directly over his nose and
mouth. Sharif told Human Rights Watch:
Sometimes they put a hood over my head and they lay me down
and they start to put water in my mouth.… They poured the water over my
mouth and nose so I had the feeling that I was drowning. I couldn’t
breathe.… I tried to turn my head left and right as much as I could to
take in some gulps of breath. I felt as if I was suffocating.[177]
When asked how often this happened, he said he could not be
sure about the number of times or how long the sessions lasted:
“I really can’t be sure about the numbers. I
spent three months getting interrogated heavily during the first period and
they gave me a different type of torture every day. Sometimes they used water,
sometimes not.… Sometimes they stripped me naked and sometimes they left
me clothed.”[178]
Sharif said a male doctor was present during the sessions
with water. He could feel him putting his hands on his upper arms while
he was undergoing this treatment, as if he were measuring his body temperature.
He would then tell others in the room to either continue with the treatment or
stop.[179] Sharif
also said that the cast he had on his leg due to his broken foot became soft as
a result of this water treatment, so the doctor put another type of cast on him
that had three sides that could be removed. They would take off his leg cast
before the sessions with water and then put it back on afterwards, binding it
with mesh.[180]
Wooden Box
Shoroeiya described the use of a small wooden box, about 1 x
1 meter in size, with a lock on it and small holes on the sides. A number of
times his American interrogators would threaten to lock him in the box. He said
that he was only actually put in there on one occasion which lasted for an hour
or more.[181] While
in the box, they prodded him with long thin objects through the holes on the
side of the box.[182]
Sharif said he was threatened with use of a box that fit the
same description, but they never actually put him inside. He told Human Rights
Watch, “Then he [the interrogator] brought me a small box. They said,
‘We are going to push you into this box and we will close it.
That’s what’s going to happen to you if you don’t talk and
tell us everything. We will squeeze you until you fit inside this
box.’”[183]
Wooden Wall
Both Shoroeiya and Sharif said they at times were taken to a
room that had a wooden wall and Americans beat them against it. Sharif said, “They
had a ring covered with foam that they would put around my neck and then they
would push me against the wall. They were also slapping and punching my face
and torso.” Sharif explained that his back was to the wooden wall when he
was being pushed into it.[184]
Sharif said that the Americans warned him that unless he was
more cooperative, they would strap him to a table (pointing to a steel one that
was in the room), turn him upside down and leave him like that until he died.
Afghanistan II
Shoroeiya said he was
moved with other prisoners to another facility on April 25, 2004.[185] Sharif said the transfer took place sometime
between April 20 and 25, 2004.[186] Sharif said he knew he was in a group because he
could hear voices all around him, but he was not sure who was in the group.[187] Shoroeiya believes Sharif was among those moved
with him.[188]
Sharif said he went through a process similar to what he
went through when he was taken from Islamabad to the first detention facility in
Afghanistan: his captors cut off all his clothes; examined his mouth, eyes, and
ears; took pictures of him while naked; put him back in diapers; and put him
back in clothes. They then put plugs in his ears, covered his eyes, and put a
hood over his head and headphones over his ears on the outside of his hood.[189]
Shoroeiya described similar treatment during the move and said whenever they
moved him from place to place he went through the same process. Then they were
put in a plane and flown somewhere. The plane took off from someplace very near
where they were being detained. They knew this because they did not have to
travel very far to get to the plane. Once they landed they were rushed to a
helicopter and flown somewhere again.[190]
After landing, they were taken to a new detention facility
about a five minute drive from where they landed. They were sure it was still
in Afghanistan, though again, they were not sure exactly which part of
Afghanistan. “We lived in Afghanistan for a long time. We know the
atmosphere and the climate there,” said Shoroeiya. “When you look
at the buildings, you can tell from the structure and the materials they are
made out of that it is Afghanistan.”[191] Both
thought they might have been taken to a location not far from where they were
previously detained, but neither could be sure. They suspected the plane and
helicopter flights were intended to deceive them into thinking they had been
moved far away because their captors, who they again alleged were Americans,
seemed to go to a lot of effort, in addition to the flights, to make them think
they were somewhere else.[192] They
brought in food from places like Turkey and Germany, Shoroeiya said.[193]
They asked them where they thought they were and when they answered
Afghanistan, they asked them, “Why, how can you be sure?”[194]
Shoroeiya said the structure of the second location differed
from the first in that it was more like a building than a hangar.[195]
Sharif also said the facility was much newer: “This place was brand new.
We could tell it was new because everything in it was new, even the toilets,
and there were all new cameras, and all new microphones and speakers everywhere.”[196]
Shoroeiya also said there were cameras everywhere.[197]
In the prior location, Sharif said, there were not cameras and microphones
everywhere, just loudspeakers.
Shoroeiya described the building itself where the cells were
contained as being “closed and tight.”[198]
The cells themselves had only a door, not a gate, and there was “no
ventilation at all in there.”[199] Sharif
also said “it was all closed in, no bars, just walls.”[200]
This time, they both said, they were not handcuffed to a round steel ring
connected to a wall but to a long chain that was connected to the floor of
their cell.[201]
“We were locked to the floor like animals. You could
walk around but your legs were still chained.”[202]
Sharif said he had a toilet and a basin as well as a
mattress in his cell.[203] He
also said there was a very loud noise, like the sound of a turbine, going on
all the time. “When the door to your cell opened, you could hear it very
loudly but if your door was kept closed, you couldn’t hear it as
well,” Sharif said. “It kept us from being able to speak to each
other.”[204] Loud
music was also played at times, but it was not continuous like it was in the
other location, Sharif said.
In this location, both Shoroeiya and Sharif said there was
not the same kind of physical abuse there was in the other location. It was
more just isolation, restraint, use of music and noise, and continuous
interrogation. Sharif told Human Rights Watch,
The whole period of my detention they were interrogating
me. I can’t remember a time I spent more than two days without
interrogation. They brought me photos of people from all over the world, photographed
in other countries, and they would ask, “Do you know this guy, do you
recognize him?” When I would say no, they were astonished. They would
say: “How come you don’t know this guy? He was in Pakistan, how
come you don’t know him?”[205]
Shoroeiya said there were intrusive searches and rough
treatment, but it was more psychological abuse—not treatment with instruments
as in the first location. The American interrogators here were in civilian
clothes, not masked and not wearing black.[206] The
guards were Afghans and, like the guards at the prior location, wore all black uniforms
and facemasks. According to Shoroeiya, however, the guards at the second
location looked “neater” and were not the same guards as at the
first location.[207]
Shoroeiya’s
Transfer and Treatment in Libya
Shoroeiya was sent back to Libya on August 22, 2004. He was
threatened many times with being sent back to Libya, but on the day it happened
they did not let him know where he was being taken.[208]
“I didn’t realize I was back in Libya until I
actually arrived in Tripoli,” he said. “It was a horrifying
feeling. It was terrible.… We knew that Gaddafi had been treating
people, especially from our group, in a very bad way.”[209]
After he arrived, Shoroeiya was housed in several different
prisons, including Tajoura, al Nasser bureau, Sikka, Ajn Zara, and finally Abu
Salim, where he was taken in 2006. Initially he was not mistreated. He said
that foreign intelligence chief Musa Kusa personally told him upon arrival that
there was some kind of agreement with the United States not to mistreat those
who were transferred back to Libya with US assistance. Though he was not abused
personally, he heard and saw other prisoners (who had not been sent back with
US assistance), being abused. After about six months he too was abused, he said.
In addition to long periods of solitary confinement, the guards punched him and
beat him with sticks, steel pipes, and electrical cables that were used as a
whip. He was bloodied and bruised, but the abuse never resulted in broken or
fractured bones. The physical abuse was sporadic and mostly occurred in one
prison on Sikka Road. Conditions improved once he got to Abu Salim prison
sometime around 2006.
He had been allowed to see his Algerian wife, Fawziya, and
his child, Aisha, for the first time in September 2004. The last time he had
seen Aisha, she was nine months old. “By this time [she] was running
around and talking,” he said.[210] He saw
them again two months later, but then not again until April 2006. After that he
received four visits and then no visits for another two years, after which he
was able to see his family for about half an hour every 60 days. Several months
after her husband was apprehended in Pakistan, Fawziya contacted the Libyan
embassy in Pakistan. They did not have any information on her husband’s
whereabouts, but made arrangements for her and her daughter to go to Libya to
be with Shoroeiya’s family. She had never been to Libya before. It was not
until August 2004 that she had any news about her husband. “The first
time I knew he was alive was when the Americans handed him over to Musa
Kusa,” she told Human Rights Watch.[211]
After several years of detention without charge, Shoroeiya was
finally taken to court. On his first appearance, the court read out the
charges; the next time, the court appointed him a lawyer; and the third time,
the court sentenced him to life in prison.[212] He
told Human Rights Watch,
“It was like an absurd play. I was presented to the
court in June, met my lawyer once, and then they sentenced me in July. The
whole thing, the three days combined, took about an hour.”
Despite the sentence, he
said he still was hopeful that he would one day be released. “In all
honesty, I could even imagine us sitting here like we are right now, having a
conversation,” he said. “I knew there were people like [Human
Rights Watch] out there trying to get the truth, letting people know about
Gaddafi and all that was going on at Bagram.” Shoroeiya was imprisoned until
February 16, 2011, when the uprising began against Gaddafi.
Shoroeiya said the most difficult thing him while in Libyan
custody was that he knew how his detention was affecting his family. He said,
“The biggest suffering for any prisoner like myself
was the situation with our families. When my daughter comes to me and says they
prevented her from going to school or my wife comes to me and says she
doesn’t have a dime to spend, that is suffering. You asked me about the
physical abuse. That was number 10 on the list of the worst things that I was
going through.”[213]
Sharif’s Transfer
and Treatment in Libya
Sharif was not returned to Libya until many months after Shoroeiya.
Prior to this, his American interrogators frequently asked him what he thought
they should do with him. This question was one of the “most disturbing
things to me psychologically,” he told Human Rights Watch. By then, he
said, “it was clear—they knew I was not associated with al Qaeda
and was not a threat to the US. They kept asking me ‘What is the
solution for you? We are not just going to open the door for you and let you
go.’” He suggested they help him get political asylum in another
country; he promised to respect the laws of that country and begged them not to
transfer him to Libya. “I will sign any document … [b]ut please,
don’t send me back to Libya. If you send me back there I will be sentenced
to death and killed,” he said he told them.
Despite his pleas, Sharif was transferred to Libya on April
20, 2005. His US captors secured his hands, blindfolded him, took off his
clothes, examined his body, and took photographs of him naked.[214]
They then drove him by car somewhere five or ten minutes away. When they took
the hood off his head, he found himself in a shipping container and his arm was
handcuffed to a steel ring welded to the wall of the container. The container
was in a hangar that appeared to be some sort of military storage facility. He
said he could tell because it was filled with boxes of ammunition and other
military equipment, even large airplane bombs. At that point he was informed he
was being transported to Libya. “I felt like this was the end,” he
told Human Rights Watch. “I am a military opponent of the Gaddafi regime,
a leader of an armed group against Gaddafi, that participated in actions
against him, and now I am going to be handed over, delivered to him.”
Sharif said that once in Libya, although he was held in
extreme isolation for prolonged periods of time, he was not physically abused.
“Fortunately, it was the destiny of God or my fate that during this time,
Gaddafi was trying to brighten his image with the outside world and build good
relationships with the West,” he said. The periods of solitary confinement
were extremely difficult: “Even in the cells next to me, there was no
one. For six months I was kept like that, not able to talk. Every morning they
would bring you what you were going to eat and then leave. … I could not
even hear people walking to and from the bathroom or hear anyone moving around.
I was totally and completely alone.”
Unlike Shoroeiya and others, he was held in just two
locations: Tajoura, in the same cell for two years and eight months, and then
Abu Salim. In January 2008 he was taken to court, convicted of attempting to
overthrow the regime, and sentenced to death by firing squad. He said
that at one point he was interrogated by individuals speaking French who said
they were from the French intelligence service. He was allowed family visits
sporadically in the beginning, denied them entirely for a year, and then later
allowed to receive regular visits once every two months.
Sharif was released,
along with Belhadj and Saadi, on March 23, 2010 after the three publicly renounced
their aim of overthrowing the government and the use of violence as a means to
political change.[215] Sharif was arrested again on April 28, 2011, a
little over two months after the Libyan uprising began. During this period he
often witnessed physical abuse including beatings, sometimes with iron rods,
and beards being lit on fire, among other things. We did not determine how long
Sharif was detained during this period or when he was ultimately
released. He is currently head of the Libyan National Guard. One of his
responsibilities is security in facilities holding high value detainees, mostly
officials of the former Gaddafi government, who are now in the custody of the
current Libyan government.
Majid
al-Maghrebi (Maghrebi)[216] is a former LIFG member who left
Libya in 1989. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and detained and
ill-treated by Pakistani authorities as well as interrogated by persons he
believes were Americans. He was then transferred to Afghanistan, where he was
held by the United States. He said US personnel interrogated and physically
mistreated him for about eight months. The United States then rendered him to
Libya, where he was again subjected to abuse. He was summarily tried and
convicted in Libya of trying to overthrow the government and was sentenced to
10 years in prison. He was released on February 16, 2011 when the uprisings
against Gaddafi began.
Human
Rights Watch interviewed Maghrebi in Tripoli in March 2012. The information
in this section is drawn from that interview, unless otherwise noted.[217]
Departure from Libya
Maghrebi was born in 1970. He said he left Libya in November
1989 at the age of 19 because the government had made it clear to him that anyone
who was serious about practicing Islam was a target. The authorities came to
his house looking for him and some of his friends were arrested, detained, and
even killed. “I feared for my life, so I decided to leave.”
Maghrebi left from Benghazi and traveled through Egypt and Saudi
Arabia before arriving in Afghanistan in December 1989. There he joined up with
other Libyans to become part of the LIFG. Two friends decided to return to
Libya to take part in LIFG operations against the government, but Maghrebi felt
it was too dangerous. His friends were arrested, sent to Abu Salim prison, and
killed in the Abu Salim massacre of 1996.
Maghrebi remained in Afghanistan, training in Libyan camps,
until after the Soviet-backed Afghan government was overthrown in 1992. He told
Human Rights Watch, “[w]e didn’t interfere in the Afghan matter.
Our aim was to get rid of the Libyan regime. The Afghan jihad helped me train
in how to use guns.” He went to Syria and Saudi Arabia twice, and then
from 1995 to 1997 he was with the LIFG in Sudan. From Sudan the LIFG attempted
to infiltrate Libya and conduct operations against Gaddafi, which failed. He
then went to Pakistan, got married in Peshawar in 1998, and moved to Kabul. He
was with the LIFG in Afghanistan in 2000. After the September 11 attacks, he returned
to Peshawar.
Pakistan
Maghrebi said that he did not feel Peshawar was safe for him
and he moved with his wife and two sons from apartment to apartment. On
November 14, 2003 at 1 a.m., Pakistani authorities arrested him at home. They
took him to a facility that he believes was in Peshawar and detained him there
for 39 days. During this time, Pakistani authorities, who spoke to him in
Pashto, repeatedly interrogated him, beating and otherwise ill-treating him. In
addition to slapping and punching him, they repeatedly struck him on his bare
back with a bamboo stick and a whip made of thick leather. He was not sure the
number of times this occurred but estimated about 15 separate occasions.
“I was screaming and crying openly,” he said.
He said that on one
occasion his interrogators used electric shocks on his feet until he lost
consciousness. They did this multiple times that day. Also, nearly every day,
they took him downstairs to a room where he was forced to lie on his stomach
with his hands handcuffed to the top of a steel frame and his feet handcuffed
at the bottom. They would take a rope and tie it around his shackled feet and
pull his legs towards his head, stretching him painfully.
Maghrebi said that during his detention in Peshawar, he was
interrogated on two occasions by individuals he believes were from the United States—once
a few days after he arrived and another time about half-way through his period
of confinement. He was blindfolded, so his vision was mostly obstructed, but he
believes they were American because he could recognize their American accents;
unlike the Pakistanis who spoke to him in Pashto, they spoke to him in very bad
Arabic, and they asked him questions that concerned the United States such as
the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and Abu Faraz al Libi (who, as previously
noted, is now detained in Guantanamo). The Americans were not present when he was
being beaten, but he thinks it was very unlikely they were not aware of his
mistreatment given his physical condition. He also said that during this time
he could hear the screams and pleas for mercy from other prisoners being
abused. He told Human Rights Watch,
“I can still hear the voice of one of the guys in my
head asking them to stop, saying blood was coming out of his mouth.”
In late 2003, Maghrebi was taken to a villa somewhere in
Islamabad. After a day and a half, guards blindfolded and handcuffed him and
took him to a car. In the car, several people spoke English and Arabic with a
broken accent then pushed him down on his stomach. Using apparent CIA rendition
transportation procedures, his captors cut off all his clothes, put something
in his anus using a plastic applicator, and put him in diapers. Then they put
earplugs in his ears, headphones on his head, and bandages all around his head
and eyes so he could not see. Then they wrapped adhesive tape all around him.
He also felt he was being chained but is not sure. They took him to a plane and
threw him in, “like I was a piece of luggage.”[218]Based on the period of time that passed
between when they took off and landed, he assumed they had taken him to Bagram
in Afghanistan, where the United States was known to be holding many detainees.
Afghanistan I
Maghrebi said that after his arrival in a facility in
Afghanistan, he was detained in a few different cells in the facility. Each
usually had a thin blanket and a bucket to use as a toilet. His first cell,
where he was held for just a short time, was about 2 x 2.5 meters in size. It
had a thin mattress when he first arrived, which was taken away after a few
days. His cell had almost no light. He told Human Rights Watch, “[i]t was
so dark I couldn’t find the bucket to use as a toilet. I banged my head
against the wall.” Loud Western music blared almost constantly the entire
time of his detention. At some point, he overheard Shoroeiya and Sharif talking
loudly over the music, and they were able to converse a little.[219]
He said he was denied food for the first five days after his arrival. He was so
sick he called for a doctor, but when the doctor came he behaved like an
interrogator. One night the “doctor” stripped him of all his
clothes, shackled him to the wall naked, and took away his blankets. Maghrebi
said he was left in that position the entire night.
After being held in the first cell, he was taken to a
different room and interrogated particularly harshly. He said his interrogators
cut off his clothes with scissors, shaved off all his body hair, and put him in
diapers.[220] They
handcuffed his arms to something above his head and shackled his legs beneath
him to the floor. They kept him in that position for what he said felt like
about 15 days, only taking him out of the room roughly five times for
questioning. He said,
“I was there for 15 days, hanging from my arms,
another chain from the ground. They put a diaper on me but it overflowed so
there was every type of stool everywhere, the temperature was freezing.”[221]
Loud music was blaring constantly. He could touch the floor,
but his legs became very swollen while restrained in this position. He said he
started having delusions; once he was sure he saw his wife and one of his
children in front of him. Sometimes the interrogations that took place during
these 15 days were conducted in front of a woman while Maghrebi was naked. They
would take his diaper off for these interrogations. The day they released him
from detention in this room, they brought him to the showers, chained one arm
to the wall and told him to shower. They were watching him, but he could not
move his arms to bathe so they had to bathe him.
He said that his next cell was completely dark. He was
handcuffed to a steel ring low to the ground, sometimes by one arm so the other
arm and both legs were free; sometimes by both arms but legs shackled together;
and at times with both arms and legs handcuffed together on the same steel
ring. These are the same positions that Shoroeiya and Sharif described being
detained in. (See illustrations and descriptions above). Sometimes they would
take him to another room and shackle his hands and feet together to the bottom
of the table and keep him there for hours. Towards the end of his time in this
cell, he was permitted to walk around freely in his cell but with his arms handcuffed
and his feet shackled together.
While he was detained, his captors brought him unclean water,
for prayers and drinking. “We could see inside the bottles, there was
this green fungus,” he said. “Sometimes there would be bugs in my
food. Once when this happened it made me cry.”
After one and a half to two months in this third cell, they
moved him to a different place. They used the same transfer procedures as they
had utilized when transporting him to the first site.[222]
Afghanistan II
Maghrebi, like Sharif and Shoroeiya, was taken to a second
location first by airplane, then by helicopter. He added that they moved him by
car from the helicopter to his place of detention. He did not know who else was
with him, but he was counting the chains trying to figure out the number of
other prisoners and thought there were about six. At this next location he was
put in a cell that was about 2 x 2 meters in size. He was kept naked in this
cell, which had a camera and speakers, for about two of the four months he was
there. His legs were shackled together, but from time to time his hands were
free. He had no mattress but a very small rug that he used at night to try and
cover himself up. It was cold. There were other prisoners there and they used
to call out to each other. Once he called out to Di’iki (see full case
description in later section), who answered him. He was hooded some of the time,
but his interrogators would take the hood off during questioning.
Maghrebi told Human Rights Watch that his interrogators
spoke English and looked like Americans or Westerners. They had Arabic-speaking
interpreters with them, who he believed were Americans from different countries
of origin. Though he was not clear about how he knew this, he said one of the
interpreters was a woman of Lebanese ancestry and the other two were men, one of
Egyptian ancestry and the other of Moroccan ancestry. He counted the number of
interrogators and said there were exactly 17.
Maghrebi told Human Rights Watch that he nearly went insane
in this cell. At one point he began banging his head against the wall and
stopped eating. Reacting to this, guards chained him again to the wall and put
cushions on the wall and on the ground that would prevent him from injuring himself.
He said,
“I screamed ‘I want to die, why don’t you
just kill me?’”
They then restrained him with a belt and started
“pretending to be nice,” bringing him a carpet for praying and a
Quran. They bathed him, tried to convince him to eat, and took him to a doctor.
It was around this time that they told him that they would be taking him
someplace else, though they did not say where. This place later turned out to
be Libya.
On various occasions while detained in both prisons, he was
photographed while naked from many different angles.
Transfer and Treatment
in Libya
Maghrebi said he was returned to Libya on August 22, 2004.
His American captors prepared him for transport using the exact same procedures
that they had employed when moving him from Pakistan to the first detention
center in Afghanistan and then from there to his current location. He thought
he was going to Guantanamo, but instead they took him to Libya.
Maghrebi was put into what he described as a container and
saw Di’iki and Shoroeiya in front of him. After he arrived he was housed
in a number of different prisons in Libya over a long period of time. The first
prison was Tajoura, where he was held for nine months. There he was beaten and
threatened with rape. He was then taken to an internal intelligence building,
Amen Dakhali, then another prison on Sikka Road, then Abu Salim prison, then al
Nasser bureau, then Ajn Zara (or Enzara), and then again to Abu Salim for the
duration of his detention.
After being detained without charge for nearly two years, he
was charged in December 2007 with attempting to overthrow the government,
summarily tried, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He said that during his incarceration
he was beaten many times, once so badly that he lost a tooth after being
punched in the jaw. He was also put into solitary confinement for long periods,
though for how long was not clear. He did not have contact with his wife until
April 2005. At that time he learned that one of his two sons, age 6, had died. He
saw his brother for the first time on July 22, 2006 and learned that his mother
had died of cancer four months earlier. Maghrebi was released on February 16,
2011.
Saleh Hadiyah Abu Abdullah Di’iki
Saleh
Hadiyah Abu Abdullah Di’iki (Di’iki)[223] is a former LIFG member who was in
US custody before being returned to Libya. He left Libya in 1990, spent time
training and fighting against the Soviet-installed Afghan government, and
eventually ended up in Mauritania. In 2003 Mauritanian authorities arrested
him. Both the Mauritanians as well as individuals he alleges were Israeli and
American interrogated him. The Mauritanian authorities then transferred him
to Morocco, where he believes he was again interrogated by Americans.
US
authorities transferred him from Morocco to Afghanistan, where US personnel
detained, interrogated, and ill-treated him. The United States eventually
transferred him to Libya, where he was detained for years before being tried
and sentenced to life in prison. He was released when the uprising against
Gaddafi began in February 2011 but then re-arrested shortly thereafter and
detained and mistreated until Gaddafi’s forces fell that August.
Human
Rights Watch interviewed Di’iki over the course of two days in March
2012 in Tripoli and then again by phone from New York in May 2012. The
information in this section is drawn from these two interviews unless
otherwise noted.[224]
Departure from Libya
Di’iki was born in 1973 and was 17 years old when he
left Libya in 1990. He had been studying applied engineering but had not yet
finished his studies. He said he left Libya due to abuse and harassment against
devout Muslims at the time. He first went to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he
became part of the LIFG, trained in Libyan camps, and participated in fighting
against the formerly Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah. He said
that after the Najibullah government fell in 1992, infighting among the
different Afghan armed factions made it difficult for Libyans to remain, so he
left the country in late 1992 for Mauritania. He said he lived in Mauritania until
June 1998 and, while there, pursued religious studies, worked with the LIFG,
and got married. He travelled to Syria and then back to the Afghanistan-Pakistan
region in 2000. He said that on September 11, 2001 he was in Karachi, Pakistan.
After the attacks, he went to Iran via Afghanistan, then to Malaysia, and then
back to Mauritania.
Arrest and Detention
Mauritanian authorities arrested Di’iki on October 12,
2003 and took him to the headquarters of the main military intelligence agency,
where he was interrogated for two to three weeks. He said that after two weeks,
the Mauritanian authorities informed him that they had no problem with him but
that the Americans wanted him detained. Then a second group of interrogators
came. They spoke Arabic but did not seem to be Mauritanian. He said a
Mauritanian official told him that these interrogators were Israeli. They took
him to a villa, which was called Kufra Zeina, asked him many questions about
Israel, and accused him of planning to use his car to blow up the Israeli
embassy in Mauritania. Di’iki called these allegations
“ridiculous.” Then he was taken back to military intelligence
headquarters where the senior official there, Abdullah, told him that someone
from the United States had come to ask him some questions. Di’iki said
that the American, who spoke to him in French, was perhaps under 30, of medium
height, with white skin and blond hair, and wearing glasses and military boots.
The man questioned him for one day. Di’iki remained at the military
intelligence building for another two weeks.
One day at noon, Mauritanian authorities handcuffed him and
took him to the airport. They told him he was being taken to Morocco because he
had a Moroccan passport. He said the Mauritanian authorities were well aware he
was Libyan. He had told them he only had a Moroccan passport because he could not
get a Libyan one. At the airport there was a small Fokker aircraft for 14
passengers waiting for them. When he arrived in Morocco, Moroccan agents took
him to a prison where he said there were a lot of names on the walls of people
who were eventually taken to Guantanamo. One he remembers was a Yemeni, Ramzi
bin al-Shibh.[225] Di’iki
told Human Rights Watch, “He had written on the wall, ‘For the one
who is going to read this, I am Ramzi bin al-Shibh and for anyone who can read
these lines, I ask him to please inform my family in Yemen that I believe that
on this date ___ I will be transferred to Guantanamo tomorrow.’”
Di’iki could not remember the date. Another was Kuwaiti, but he
couldn’t remember his name.
In Morocco, Di’iki was detained for about one month. He
said his detention conditions were not that bad. His cell was made of stone,
had a window and a mattress on the floor. “If you want to compare it to
the other places I was later held,” he said, “it was five
stars.” He was able to communicate with one other prisoner, Abu Omar
al-Maghrebi.[226] The
others were too afraid to talk. Abu Omar al-Maghrebi confirmed that he was in
Morocco, but the food and the guards who identified themselves as Moroccan and
spoke Arabic with a Moroccan accent also made this clear. Di’iki and Abu
Omar al-Maghrebi would signal by banging on the walls that it was safe to speak
and then they would whisper to each other through the wall very carefully so as
not to be heard. Abu Omar al-Maghrebi said he had come from Guantanamo and that
all the prisoners where the two of them were being held at the time seemed to
be taken to either Guantanamo or Bagram.
Di’iki said that in Morocco he was interrogated by a
woman who he believes was American. She was tall, blonde, with light green eyes,
about 35 years old, and wore civilian clothes and the same type of military
boots that the American interrogator in Mauritania wore. She spoke with an
American accent and used a female Tunisian interpreter. She interrogated him
about four or five times over the course of about two weeks. He said she was
continuously angry with him. He was blindfolded in the beginning, but then she
had the blindfold removed, saying that she was not afraid of “you Arabic
people.” When he asked if he could call his wife, who was seven months
pregnant, the interrogator accused him of being insensitive to the crimes that
“his people” had committed.
After a month, his guards took him to a place where he could
hear a plane. This was sometime in early January 2004, possibly January 7.
Another detainee was there—he could hear him walking—and he counted
six American guards. They used mainly sign language, but sometimes they said a
word or two in English, which they spoke with an American accent. They wore
military uniforms with American flags on them and had masks on their faces. He
said he saw from the eyeholes cut out of their masks that two had light skin and
one had dark skin.
They told him to bathe, and if he didn’t do it
himself, they said they would bathe him. His Moroccan handcuffs were removed
and he was re-handcuffed and his legs shackled. They cut off all his clothes
using scissors. He told Human Rights Watch,
“I was totally naked…Then they did horrible
things to me that I can’t talk about. They didn’t rape me but they
did terribly humiliating things.”
Then they diapered him, put patches over his eyes, plugs in
his ears, and a hood over his head. Then they wrapped him in what he described
as adhesive tape all around his head. He said every time they moved him to a
new place they went through this same procedure.[227]
Then they took him to the plane and threw him in the back. They lay him on one
side and bound him by rope. It was a very long trip and from time to time someone
he believed was a doctor would come around and put something on his finger,
which appeared designed to check his pulse. The person also examined his nose.
Afghanistan I
Di’iki said that after arrival he was put in a cell
approximately 2 x 2 meters. The cell was one of approximately 15 to 20 that
were in a big hangar. His was “very simple,” with no paint on the
walls and iron doors. He was handcuffed and his feet shackled for one month.
After that he was attached by one arm to a steel ring attached to the wall of
his cell, the position described by Shoroeiya, Sharif, and Maghrebi.
He said a number of
factors led him to the conclusion that he was in Afghanistan. Even though the
guards wore masks and rarely spoke to him, sometimes they wore traditional
Afghan clothes and they fed him Afghan food.[228] The Afghan bread specifically, he said, is very
distinctive. Also, though they clearly were not supposed to, some of the guards
spoke to him in Pashto.[229] Sometimes he could see a little bit of their
beards, too. After some time, they began to take him out once a week for about
15 minutes of exposure to sunlight. When they did this it was usually around
noon. They would stand him in front of a wall, and on several occasions he
could hear children playing nearby, speaking in Pashto.[230] At some point, his captors asked him where
he thought he was. He told them Afghanistan and said he could tell because of
the texture of the soil and the structure of the buildings.[231]
Other than the brief
outdoor sessions and weekly baths that he was allowed to take after some time,
his captors only took him out of his cell to interrogate him. Much of this time
he was kept naked, though it is not clear for how long. He went on a hunger
strike over this, asking only for clothes because he said it is forbidden in
Islam to pray while naked. He said,
“At that moment, if I had found anything in Sharia
[Islamic law] that would have allowed me to commit suicide, I would have done
it. But there is nothing. Suicide is prohibited in our religion.”
There was a loudspeaker over his head that played loud Western
music continuously. He said, “Even if the music they were putting on was
something nice, you would end up hating it because they were playing it so
loud.” It was dark almost all the time, but every now and then the lights
would come on—he thought usually because of some power failure or other
malfunction.
His interrogators would come to him with flashlights. He
believes his interrogators wore civilian clothes but had military boots on and
the American guards wore military uniforms. Several of the interrogators were
female. They all spoke English and used interpreters. He thought some of these
interpreters were American as well because their Arabic had a strong American accent.
Di’iki described his cell as rat and insect infested.
“We know most rats are afraid of humans but these ones were so
irreverent, going all over my head and body,” he said.
He told Human Rights Watch that this was the first time he
had described his confinement in detail and that in doing so he felt a sense of
relief. He was not sure he could adequately convey the abuse he received:
“They were taking good care to harm me with
psychological abuses. The concentration was on humiliating me. It was not
really physical abuse…. What they did to me was so humiliating I am not
sure I can explain it properly—especially forcing me to be naked.”
Sometimes when the music was low, he would speak to other
prisoners. He remembers speaking to Shoroeiya, Maghrebi, and Sharif. He also
heard the voices of two people from Yemen and one from Algeria, but he did not
remember their names. He said their voices seemed like they were close to him. Shoroeiya
and Maghrebi, he said, were both on his plane back to Libya in August 2004.
Afghanistan II
Di’iki said that after four months in the first place
of detention, he was moved to another location. This would have been sometime
in late April 2004. When they moved him, they used the same CIA rendition transportation
procedures that were used before.[232] He was
then taken to the next location either by helicopter or plane or both, he could
not remember. He did not know who else was on the flight with him. They arrived
at night, which he could tell because they took off his hood and blindfold.
In this location they seemed to be making a lot of effort to
get him to think he was no longer in Afghanistan. They brought in different
kinds of non-Afghan food in cans. He told Human Rights Watch, “I find it
very strange that the Americans were so intent on obscuring the fact that I was
in Afghanistan. In the second place they tried to change the entire set up and
I don’t know if it was just for me or for everyone else but they even tried
to change the food, they gave me canned food, to try and obscure the fact that
I was in Afghanistan.”
Nevertheless, Di’iki said he could tell he was still in
Afghanistan by the guards, who on one or two occasions accidentally spoke to
him in Dari. His cell was bigger than it was in the other location, though
still about 2 x 2 meters, but unlike the first location there was not a lot of
distance between each cell. The structure was more like a building and was much
bigger and newer. The first place was much simpler, less polished, and seemed
to be an older facility, made out of mud, bricks, and stones.
His cell in the second facility was gray, including painted
concrete floors that had a lacquer finish. His cell had two doors, one in front
of the other. His feet were shackled the entire three to four months he was
there, but not to the wall, so he was able to walk around. Occasionally, his
hands were cuffed as well. There was a camera in his cell in this second
location. In the middle of the room there was a hole connected to a sewage line
so his whole cell smelled every time a toilet flushed. There was loud music
playing constantly, but it seemed to be mostly outside his cell, not inside.
They also played other sounds, like the sound of water dripping or the sound of
an electric shock. They would use the loud electric shock sound sometimes to
wake the detainees up.
For his first few weeks in the new facility he was kept
naked. They gave him just one blanket that was very rough. He described it as
being “like from World War II. When I tried to use it, it was so prickly,
it was like getting acupuncture.” There was no mattress.
He again went on hunger strike, asking for clothes, a
mattress, a different cell, and to be told the direction of Mecca for prayer. He
said he was also very sick during this time, but “by the grace of God,”
managed to sleep about three quarters of the time. Sometimes a doctor would
come in to check on him, picking up an arm or a leg. He has a thyroid gland
problem that requires medication and rest but he did not tell anyone about it
because he was afraid they would use it against him. Before his detention he
weighed between 95 and 100 kilos (209 and 220 pounds) but by the time he
arrived back in Libya, he was 70 kilos (154 pounds), a loss of some 25 to 30
kilos (approximately 55 to 66 pounds). He is about 185 centimeters tall (approximately
6 feet 1 inch).
He said he faced fewer questions and interrogations in this
second location. The interrogators, who he believed were Americans, would
mostly just bring him photographs, asking him if he knew the person in them and
some questions about the people in the photos. As in the first location, the
interrogators wore civilian clothes. There again were American guards in
military uniform, but they appeared to play more of a supervisory role over the
Afghan guards, who at this location wore all black with facemasks rather than traditional
Afghan clothes.
Although the interrogations were less intensive, he felt
that time in this location was more difficult from a psychological perspective
because of the isolation. It was more difficult to communicate with others and detect
the passage of time. This and the lack of knowledge about his future—how
long he was going to be there and what they were going to do to him—made
his time in this facility very difficult:
“When you are in a place like this … when you
are alone and talking to no one, life is stopped. Nothing is new. The only
thing new going on is the interrogations.… I can guarantee they have
studied psychology very well.”
Di’iki said that
despite the circumstances, it was possible to find some humanity. He could tell
that the interpreter used by a doctor did not agree with the way he and the
other prisoners were being treated and once got into an argument with the
doctor over it in front of Di’iki. “This young man, every chance he
got, he would try and throw a smile or a joke my way,” Di’iki said,
“trying to cheer me up, show me some kindness.” He still
appreciates this small show of support from the interpreter.
Transfer and Treatment
in Libya
Di’iki said one day, which he later learned
was August 22, 2004, his captors told him he would be transferred the following
day, but did not say where. He thought he would be taken to Guantanamo. They
took off his metal handcuffs and put on plastic ones. Prior to that, however,
they put him through the same CIA rendition transportation procedures[233]
as they had on previous occasions, except this time, the man he believed was a doctor
took photos of him while he was naked. Then they put him in a shipping
container.
For a moment his blindfold was taken off and he
saw Shoroeiya on the floor of the container. On the plane back to Libya he
could tell that he was sitting next to someone but did not know whom. It was not
until he heard the driver say “back up” using the Libyan word
derived from Italian, indetro, that he realized he was in Libya. He told
Human Rights Watch,
“When I realized I was being sent back to Libya, I
thought they would hang me by my tongue. There was a guy from the east that
died that way and I was sure, because of what I had been writing and saying
about the regime, I would die that way too.”
Upon arrival his blindfold was removed and he was
put in a car with Maghrebi in which he was driven to Tajoura prison.
Di’iki was detained in solitary confinement at
Tajoura until May 2005. Then he was taken to Ain Zara, where he remained for 13
months. Then around June 2006 he was moved to Abu Salim, where he remained for
the duration of his detention. He was not physically abused while in detention
in Libya. While detained in Ain Zara, he saw his wife for the first time since
his return. Following that visit he had no family contact for about two years. When
he was moved to Abu Salim in 2009, however, the visits became more regular.
After being detained without trial for years, Di’iki
was charged with attempting to overthrow the government and, after a summary
trial, was sentenced to life in prison. He was released on February 16, 2011
when the uprisings against Gaddafi began but was arrested again on June 18,
2011 and held until Tripoli fell to rebel forces on August 24, 2011. He said
this last period of detention was the worst he experienced in Libya. He was
beaten repeatedly. A man came and broke a broom over his head, and he was
forced to be naked. He was in a cell with three other prisoners that was
smaller than 2 x 2 meters, including the toilet. Human Rights Watch did not find
out when he was finally released. Now Di’iki works with Khalid al-Sharif at the Libyan National Guard. Both he and Sharif are in charge of security at facilities holding high value detainees (mostly officials of the former Gaddafi government)
in Libyan government custody.
One of the Tripoli Documents, found in the folder
marked “USA” and containing a number of faxes apparently from the
CIA, mentions Di’iki in the context of an offer to transfer his supposed
deputy, “Mustafa Salim Ali Moderi Tarabulsi, aka Shaykh Musa” to
Libya. Mustafa Salim Ali Moderi Tarabulsi or Shaykh Musa’s real name is
Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi. Human Rights Watch interviewed Madaghi for this
report as well.[234] The
document where he and Di’iki are mentioned is dated April 15, 2004 (see below).
It appears to have been sent by the CIA to Libyan security.[235]
By then Di’iki had already been picked up in
Mauritania, moved to Morocco, and was being detained in the first location in
Afghanistan.
Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi
Mustafa
Salim Ali el-Madaghi (Madaghi)[236] was an LIFG member who said he
left Libya in 1990. He was arrested in Mauritania and coercively interrogated
by someone he believes was American. As the Tripoli Documents indicate, US
authorities later transferred him to a prison in Morocco, where he was held
for a month and then returned to Libya. In Libya he was charged with trying to overthrow
the government, given a summary trial, and then sentenced to life in prison.
This sentence was later reduced to seven years, then to four, but he remained
in custody after the four years were up, until the uprising against Gaddafi
began on February 16, 2011.
Human
Rights Watch interviewed Madaghi in Tripoli in March 2012. The information in
this section is drawn from this interview unless otherwise noted.[237]
Mustafa Salim Ali
el-Madaghi said he left Libya in 1990
because of religious oppression. He joined the LIFG in Afghanistan, spent time
in Sudan, and finally ended up in Mauritania. He was arrested in
Mauritania on February 5, 2004, where he was living with his wife and children.
He told Human Rights Watch that the Mauritanian intelligence service took him
to a detention facility, but no interrogations began until a group of
foreigners arrived about two days later. The foreigner who led the
interrogations spoke Arabic with a Lebanese accent and was dressed in civilian
clothes. He was joined in one interrogation session by the head of Mauritanian
intelligence and a Mauritanian interrogator named Ismael. Madaghi believes the
foreigner was American because he asked about threats to the United States,
talked on the phone in English, and sent text messages in English on his cell
phone.
The foreign interrogator in Mauritania questioned Madaghi
for about 10 days. He wanted Madaghi to confess to being part of al Qaeda, to
give up the location of a man named Abdul Rahman, and to describe the next attacks
being plotted against the United States.[238] The
interrogator also asked him if he knew people in al Qaeda as well as other
questions about Libyans in the United Kingdom. Madaghi said he explained that
he was with the LIFG, not with al Qaeda.
Madaghi said that the
foreign interrogator threatened him throughout the interrogations. He
told Madaghi that harm would come to his wife and family if he did not provide
the answers he wanted. His captors brought his wife to the detention center,
showed her to Madaghi through a keyhole, and threatened to rape her if he did
not cooperate. They also warned that his children would be orphaned. They went
to his home and returned with recordings of his children’s voices for him
to hear and then threatened their safety. The language used by the foreign
interrogator was full of derogatory and obscene sexual comments.
After two weeks another foreigner, who Madaghi said appeared
more European than the alleged American interrogator, administered a lie
detector test that Madaghi said he passed. He thought this might be the end of
his detention, but then he was taken to a different facility in Mauritania.[239]
In total, Madaghi was detained in Mauritania from February 5, 2004 until sometime
at the end of March 2004.
Morocco
Madaghi told Human Rights Watch that one night around
midnight, he was taken abruptly from the detention center in Mauritania and put
on a bus. He was blindfolded and his hands were bound, but he could see the
feet of the people holding him. At some point all the Mauritanians got off the
bus and others, wearing boots, got on. They took his blindfold off and he saw
that he was now in the custody of several large men, perhaps five or six. He
knew that he had been taken to the airport.
He believed the men who boarded the bus were Americans. They
were wearing black and had masks on their faces; through the eyeholes he could
see fair skin and eyes and light eyebrows. They were careful not to say very
much, but he could hear some English. His belief that they were American was
confirmed by the Tripoli Documents and his subsequent detention at a facility
in Morocco that appeared to be run by Americans. While on the bus they took off
all of his clothes; inspected his eyes, ears, and mouth with a device; took photos
of him; put him in diapers; covered his ears with headphones; put a hood and
blindfold around his head very tightly; and bound both his feet and hands
together—the standard CIA rendition transportation procedures.[240]
He was then put on a plane, though they did not tell him to where.
Upon landing, his guards put him in a cell that had Arabic
poetry written all over the walls. The guards would repeat phrases glorifying
the king of Morocco. Because once he heard Moroccan military training exercises
going on outside, he concluded the detention facility was either inside or near
a military base.
The interrogations
occurred intermittently and were conducted by Moroccans. Madaghi said that they
asked essentially the same questions that the interrogators in Mauritania had
but added more questions about Europe and other LIFG members such as Belhadj
and Saadi. They often threatened to beat him, but never actually did. Madaghi
said his cell was freezing cold. They also left him barefoot, bathed him in ice
cold water, and clothed him in short-sleeve shirts and knee-high pants. He was
kept in a cell that was below ground level, but there was a small window that
allowed him to see some light. With that and the sound of the call to prayer,
he was able to keep track of the number of days he was detained there—about
one month and five days. He did not speak to any other prisoners while there,
but there was a Moroccan woman in the cell across from his who would scream
from time to time. He could also hear other prisoners shouting and screaming. Occasionally,
late at night he would hear cars arriving, doors slamming, and the sounds of
new prisoners being brought in.
On April 14, 2004, according to the date on document from
the CIA, the CIA informed Libyan authorities that they were in a position to
“deliver” Madaghi, who was then in a prison in Morocco.
Transfer and Treatment
in Libya
On May 5, 2004, Madaghi was taken away without notice in the
middle of the night. They blindfolded him and put him in a car. Because it was
clear they were moving him again, he begged them not to send him back to Libya.
They drove for what felt like a very long time. Then they
put him in a place where he was left alone. He said he was again put through
the same CIA rendition transportation procedure as before.[241]
He was able to loosen the headphones a bit this time, and though he was beaten
for it, they did not tighten the headphones again, so he was able to hear a
little. Then they put him in another car and drove him to a plane. They put him
in the plane, but this time he was bound to a chair instead of to a bed. He
said the flight took a very long time. Every now and then someone would come
around and put something on his finger to check him. They stopped someplace to
refuel. He could tell they were at an airport because he could hear other
planes, and he could tell they were refueling because he felt the movement of the
refueling machinery. Because the flight took so long, he was sure he was being
taken to Guantanamo, but in fact he was taken to Libya.
Madaghi told Human Rights Watch that Musa Kusa came to see
him about two weeks after he arrived:
“He asked me: ‘Do you know who brought you
here?’ I didn’t want to say anything. He said ‘The Americans
brought you here. It’s all over now. There is cooperation between us and
the Americans.’ I was sure that was the case, but then he just confirmed
it for me.”
Some Eurocontrol flight data on file with Human Rights Watch
corroborated Madaghi’s belief that the United States rendered him to
Libya. The flight data states that a CIA-linked Gulfstream V, registration
N8068V (formerly N379P), used in other CIA renditions,[242]
filed a flight plan to go into Nouakchott, Mauritania on March 25, 2004 at 1:22
am local time (from Washington, DC, via the Canary Island of Tenerife,
presumably for refueling). This is around the time that Madaghi said he was
taken to Morocco. The data also shows a plan was filed to fly out immediately
to Rabat, Morocco, at 2:34 am, and to land in Rabat at 4:52 am. The pilots then
filed a plan to return to Washington (again, via Tenerife). The same
Eurocontrol flight data on file with Human Rights Watch also shows that
CIA-linked Gulfstream IV, registration N85VM, used in other CIA renditions,[243]
filed a flight plan to go into Rabat on May 4, 2004 (from Washington via Palma
Majorca), arriving at 10:52 PM, and then to Misrata in Libya. The flight
appears to have stopped and refueled at a military airport in Italy en route to
Misrata on or about May 5, 2004—the same day that Madaghi said he was
returned to Libya by the US.
Madaghi said he was not physically abused in Libya but that
his conditions of confinement were still very difficult. He was first held in
Tajoura prison for about one year, in solitary confinement in a 1.8 x 1.8 meter
cell. He was not allowed to speak to any other prisoners during this time. He
was then moved to Abu Salim for a few weeks, where he said the conditions were
worse than Tajoura and the cell smaller. He was then taken to al Nasser bureau for
another few weeks. He said his cell there was the worst of all: very dirty and tiny,
about the size of a mattress. It had no windows and no bed, just a blanket on
the concrete floor. He was then in Ain Zara for another year, from May 2005
until June 2006, and finally in Abu Salim for nearly five more years. After two
years in detention, he was charged with trying to overthrow the government, given
a summary trial, and then sentenced to life in prison. This sentence was later
reduced to seven years, then to four, but he remained in custody after the four
years were over. He was not released until the uprising against Gaddafi began
on February 16, 2011.
Mustafa
Jawda al-Mehdi (Mehdi)[244] was an LIFG member who left Libya
in 1989. He first went to Saudi Arabia, then to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He
was arrested in Pakistan in 2004 by persons he believed were with the Pakistani
intelligence services. He alleged he was interrogated multiple times and in
multiple locations by the same set of American interrogators. Subsequently,
he was transferred to Afghanistan, where he said US personnel detained,
interrogated, and mistreated him and then rendered him to Libya. In Libya he
was subjected to prolonged solitary confinement in multiple places of
detention. After a summary trial for his involvement with the LIFG, he was sentenced
to death. He was released from prison on February 16, 2011.
Human Rights Watch interviewed
Mehdi in March 2012 in Tripoli and then again by phone from New York in June
2012. The information in this section is drawn from these two interviews,
unless otherwise noted.
Departure from Libya
Mustafa Jawda al-Mehdi was born in Tripoli in 1965
and left Libya in 1989 at the age of 24. He had been working as an administrator
at the al Brega Oil Company. He said he left Libya because of the religious
persecution going on at the time: “Anyone who was committed to Islam, who
attended mosque five times a day, especially youths, was committing a crime—especially
those who dressed in a certain way, had a beard for example. It didn’t
matter which school of Islam you belonged to, just that you were devout.”
About 30 of his friends had been arrested, he said, and the authorities were
coming to his home asking questions, so he felt threatened. Many of his friends
were later imprisoned and killed in the 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre.
Mehdi said he first went to Saudi Arabia
“just to get out of Libya—to survive.” But once there, he
found that many people were going from there to Afghanistan and that it was
very easy to do so. He followed suit. It was in Afghanistan and Pakistan that
he first became involved with the LIFG. He stayed in the area, met his wife in
Peshawar, married in 1993, and remained in Pakistan until 2004.
Arrest and Detention
On February 23, 2004, when Mehdi was travelling on
Kohat Road about 10 minutes outside of Peshawar, around 20 cars suddenly
surrounded his vehicle. He was arrested by men that Mehdi believed were members
of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), because he recognized their
uniforms. Two other people with him were also arrested, but the authorities were
clearly just interested in him, as they asked for him specifically by the name
he was using at the time, “Ayoub.”
Documents found in Musa Kusa’s office, in a
binder marked “UK,” indicate that the British intelligence service
MI6, also referred to as SIS, was looking for Mehdi (noting that he was born in
1965 in Tripoli) at some point after January 29, 2003.[245]
Peshawar
Mehdi said he was detained in Peshawar for about 40
days at the Army Stadium in the military area. He told Human Rights Watch that
on that first day in detention, the interrogations were initially just done by
the Pakistani ISI, but by noon Americans were present. He said he knew they
were Americans because when they came, they put a hood over his head, used an
interpreter, and asked questions solely about the United States. He said the
same interrogators who questioned him in Peshawar later questioned him in
Islamabad and after that, in Afghanistan, where he was in US custody for 10
months. During those later interrogations, he was not forced to wear a hood and
could see their faces.
While in Peshawar, Mehdi was interrogated about
seven to ten times by an American woman, using an interpreter. He said he was
later able to tell that the interrogator had blond hair and green eyes, was of
medium height, and was likely in her thirties. He was not physically abused in
Peshawar, but he said the food was bad, the lights were on all the time, there
was just a mat on the floor, he was alone in the cell, and they threatened to
bring his wife there and rape her. Although he was not physically harmed, he
heard other people screaming in the basement.
Islamabad
After about 40 days in Peshawar, Mehdi said he was
taken to Islamabad, where he was held for another two and a half months. Approximately
8 to 10 other prisoners were there. After about two weeks, the same American
woman who interrogated him in Peshawar did so in Islamabad as well. She
interrogated him several times with an interpreter. One of these times there
was another woman there who was young, in her twenties, had black hair, and had
some sort of malformation in her teeth. His face was not covered during these
interrogations.
Mehdi said he was physically assaulted by
Pakistani authorities numerous times. Sometimes they beat him using a
broomstick on various parts of his body and other times they slapped him. They
also forcefully took away his clothes, leaving him naked. No beatings occurred
in the presence of US interrogators, he said, but the Pakistanis told him they
had “no problem with him, it was the US that had the problem.”
The first time
he saw his American interrogator in Islamabad, he told her the Pakistanis were
beating, him but she accused him of lying. She kept threatening to take him to
a place where he would “begin talking right away” if he did not
begin to provide more information. She kept insisting that he had been living
in Waziristan, along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan in its Federally Administered
Tribal Areas, and knew people there, but he said had been living in Peshawar
and was only on his way to Waziristan when he was arrested.[246]
Afghanistan
Mehdi said that one night in June the guards
entered his cell, told him he was leaving, and drove him—handcuffed and
with his face covered—to an airport about 15 minutes away. On the plane
there were both American and Pakistani guards, but when he spoke Urdu, the
Pakistanis responded in Pashto. He thought other prisoners were there with him,
but he was not sure. They landed after about half an hour at what he believes
was Kabul or Bagram. He told Human Rights Watch,
“I was scared. I knew that the worst was coming now.
I knew I was going to face worse than what I had before. It was true. I was right.
That’s when the nightmare began.”
He said that at the detention facility, two people
took him to a cell, put his hands up against the wall, and then cut off his
clothes with scissors. They put his bare feet in shackles and then chained him
by one arm to the cell wall. His arm was positioned so that the bottom of his
elbow was just about four fingers from the floor. He could stand up but only by
bending over, forcing him to either sit or lie down. “It was like torture
in medieval times,” he said. He remained in this position, totally
naked, for about two months. After two months his captors gave him some pants
and, a month later, a shirt. After the fifth month, they stopped handcuffing
him to the wall and he was able to move around inside his cell.
The guards there were all wearing what he
described as “black special forces” uniforms. They were masked and
wore black jackets that had four pockets in the front. They wore black boots
made out of a Gore-Tex-like fabric and black gloves. He thinks the guards were
a mix of Americans and Afghans, but he could not be sure. They never spoke to
him, but only communicated with signs and signals. Sometimes when his cell door
was opened to bring him food, he would hear guards speaking in English. And
when he was taken out of his cell for washing, he sometimes heard Dari- or
Pashto-style music coming from what he believed were the guards’ rooms.
His cell was approximately 2 x 2 meters. The
lights were kept on, along with cameras with microphones, 24 hours a day. He
also heard loud noises playing all the time from loudspeakers, as well as the
sound of a loud generator or turbine that never stopped. According to Mehdi,
the noise made it difficult for prisoners to speak to each other: “They
used loud music there, but it only appeared to be to punish prisoners. The
guards were very strict there.” The only other prisoner he heard during
his time there was a Yemeni man who was trying to talk to other prisoners. He said
he thought the man was Yemeni because of his accent, but he did not know his
name. As punishment for trying to communicate with other prisoners they played
extremely loud music in the Yemeni man’s cell. It was so loud that Mehdi could
hear it over the loud constant sound of turbines. He said he was too afraid to
ever try to communicate with other prisoners there. One time he knocked on the
cell next to him and someone knocked back but he was too afraid to try and
speak with him.
In his cell, there was a bottle of water, a rubber
spoon like the ones used to feed children, a small bucket with a chemical for a
toilet, and a thin blanket. There was no mattress. The floor was made of
painted concrete. The cell had two doors: a full door that was visible from the
exterior and an interior door with a gate. There were two holes: a small one allowed
people outside to see and talk to him, and a second one that his guards used to
pass food to him.[247] He
said there was virtually no ventilation in the cell—no natural air, just
air conditioning and one small hole. The vapors coming from the bucket,
combined with the lack of ventilation, made it very hard to breathe and caused
his eyes to burn. About one month into his time there, the air
conditioning was turned up so that it was very cold all the time, which seriously
aggravated his rheumatism.
Mehdi said he was interrogated daily, sometimes
twice a day, and often while naked in front of female interrogators. He said
that for the entire first month he was questioned while naked every day by a
woman. He believes this was the same woman who had interrogated him in Pakistan.
He said,
“She would scream and yell and was so angry. She
would throw chairs, push away tables. She would say, ‘Ok, we will start
all over again.’”
In total, about 10 different people, including four
women, asked him questions. Unlike the guards, the interrogators wore civilian
clothes, though some of them at times wore green camouflage military trousers
and regular T-shirts. He described them as very fit, as if they had received
professional physical training. Some questioned him over a day, others a week,
and some a month.
There were about 12 interpreters, possibly
American, he said, but from what seemed to be different backgrounds, such as
Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Lebanon. They spoke to him in Pashto, not Arabic. They
asked him questions about whom he knew and about people in photographs shown to
him. One of the reasons he is sure he was in US custody is that whenever they
asked him questions, they would say “Washington says this and Washington
says that.” Sometimes the interpreters asked questions of their own and
the interrogators would stop them and tell them only to ask the question they
told them to ask.
Mehdi figured out later that he was detained in this
facility for about 10 months, but while he was there it was nearly impossible
to keep track of time. Sometimes he could tell the passage of time by noting
when meals were delivered. Other times he would pour water on the floor before
he went to sleep and would try to tell how much time had passed based upon how
much water had evaporated. He was only able to tell how long he was at
the facility later by calculating the time between his arrest and return to
Libya.
Transfer and Treatment
in Libya
One night he was told that the next day, which he later
learned was April 21, 2005, he would be taken to Libya. He begged his American
captors not to send him back there:
I informed them that I faced a real danger if they sent me
back. I was wanted in Libya…. If I reached Gaddafi, that was when the real
‘ceremony’ was going to begin. I was so clear. I said they will
kill me, they will torture me. And [the proof of that was] I was [eventually]
sentenced to death [there]. It was the first time I cried actually, the first
tears I wept were when they told me I was being handed over to the Libyans.
He said he asked if any sort of international organization,
like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), would be involved.
When the Americans said no, he asked if they could be involved. He told Human
Rights Watch, “They just laughed and said ‘no.’ I knew the
dangers of being handed over without anyone registering me, I needed someone to
know, to be involved so it was public… If this went through the ICRC, I
felt like it would be safer.”
The next day the US personnel overseeing his detention transferred
him to another room where they took off all his clothes. They made note on a
human body chart of every mark on his body.[248] They
also took photographs of him naked.[249] Before
boarding a plane, they replaced one blindfold with another, which allowed him
to see a huge hangar with military equipment and large aerial bombs, indicating
he was at an air base.
He said he was put into a container containing a
three-person American team wearing black T-shirts. These men accompanied him on
the flight back to Libya. He was stripped again and more photos were taken of
him naked.[250] Then
they put him in diapers and put on earplugs, eye patches, and a hood over his
head. He was given something to drink and some clothes. They handcuffed him to
the seat and wrapped an adhesive or belt around him. He did not know it at the
time but later learned that Khalid Sharif was with him.
Upon arrival he heard Libyan voices all around him.
“Being returned to Libya was the worst fear I had,” he said.
“I thought this was the end—that the real interrogations were going
to start and the real suffering was going to begin.”
Mehdi said he was held
in a number of different prisons in Libya. While conditions were very
difficult, he was not physically abused. He was first detained for 14 months in
Tajoura, where he said he was held in poor conditions, kept in solitary
confinement for long periods, and subjected to numerous long and arduous
interrogations. The questions very often had nothing to do with Libya but were
about people from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and other countries. His interrogators demanded
information about the individuals and if they were part of al Qaeda. They often
came with photos, sometimes with English writing next to them.
He experienced the worst conditions while in Libya
in his next place of detention, al Nasser bureau, where he was held for four
and a half months. He was in solitary confinement during this time in a very
small cell that he said was about 2 x 0.5 meters in size, with no light.
“They just leave you there in this place and forget about you,” he
said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen to you.”
Then he was moved to what he called the “political part” of Ain
Zara prison for two months. Then on January 10, 2007, he was sent to Abu Salim
prison, where he was placed in the military section, along with Belhadj, Saadi,
and other senior LIFG members.
Initially the Libyan authorities accused him of
being a member of the LIFG and trying to overthrow the government. He first
denied the charges, but after long interrogations and time in solitary, he eventually
confessed. In 2006 he was charged and prosecuted. When at trial he tried to
deny the allegations and say the confession was forced, they returned him to solitary
confinement.
“I don’t know how to describe it,”
he said. “I was very hurt psychologically at that point. Because I had
been in a group and then they put me back in solitary—that was the most
horrifying moment for me.” He confessed after one day of solitary:
“I had had questions and solitary confinement. I said yes, whatever you
say, I will sign it.”
He was appointed a lawyer, but he never talked to
her. He had one day in court and then they issued a verdict on a different day,
when he was not there. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Mehdi remained
in Abu Salim until February 16, 2011, when the uprisings against Gaddafi began.
III. Transfers to Libya that Began in Asia
For three of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch, their
returns to Gaddafi’s Libya began in Asia. Their testimonies are described
below.
Abdul Hakim Belhadj (Belhadj)[251] said he left Libya in 1988. He
fought against the Soviet-installed government in Afghanistan in the early
1990s and later became the leader of the LIFG. After fleeing Afghanistan
following the September 11 attacks, Belhadj went to various countries, ending
up in China. From there, he and his wife sought asylum in the United Kingdom
by traveling through Malaysia. He was denied exit from Malaysia and detained
by immigration authorities there. After a subsequent attempt to reach the
United Kingdom by traveling through Thailand, Belhadj and his wife were
denied exit and detained by Thai authorities. They allege that while in
detention there they were interrogated and ill-treated by persons they
believed were Thai and US authorities.
Belhadj
and his wife were later rendered to Libya under circumstances indicating
American and British involvement, which is corroborated by documents in the
Tripoli Documents. Once in Libya, Belhadj was detained for years and
subjected to ill-treatment—including prolonged solitary
confinement—and numerous interrogations by Libyan, American, British,
and other foreign personnel. After six years in Libyan detention, Belhadj was
summarily tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. He was released in March
2010 as part of a “de-radicalization” initiative pushed by Saif
Gaddafi and later played a prominent role in the revolution. Most notably,
Belhadj served as commander of the Tripoli Military Council after
revolutionary forces seized control of the city from regime forces in August
2011. He resigned his post in May 2012 to run for election to the National
Congress.
Departure from Libya
Belhadj was born in 1966
in Tripoli. He left Libya in 1988 because he said it was impossible to live
under the Gaddafi government. “I was forced into exile, I didn’t
have a choice! In Libya we were living under a dictatorial regime that did not
permit any sort of freedom of thought or expression.… The Gaddafi regime
wanted to destroy us.”[252] He was in his last year of engineering school
when he left Libya. He first went to Saudi Arabia and then Afghanistan, where
he fought against the Soviet occupation of that country.[253] After the Soviet-backed Afghan government of Mohammad
Najibullah lost power in 1992, he and other Libyans who were part of the LIFG
focused on their main aim—the overthrow of Gaddafi. Belhadj went on to
become the leader of the LIFG, which from various locations around the world
waged a low-level insurgency against the Libyan government for many years. Belhadj
spent time in Turkey, Sudan, and other countries as well.[254] During this time the LIFG had bases in
several different countries but also in eastern Libya, where they launched
operations against the Gaddafi government. However, in the mid-1990s the LIFG
in Libya was crushed, and in 1999 Belhadj, along with other LIFG members,
returned to Afghanistan.[255]
Before September 11, 2001, Belhadj was based in Afghanistan
with other LIFG members.[256]After the attacks, he and other LIFG members
left the country, worried they would be swept up in US-led post-September 11 arrests.
Belhadj and others fled to different parts of the Middle East, Africa, and
Asia.[257] By
2004, Belhadj was living in China with his Moroccan wife, Fatima Bouchar. In
early 2004, with Bouchar pregnant, the couple feared they were under
surveillance and decided to seek asylum in the UK.[258]They first tried to travel to London from Beijing
in February 2004, but the authorities in Beijing sent the couple to Kuala
Lumpur, from where they had previously travelled.[259]
Malaysia and Thailand
In Kuala Lumpur, Belhadj and his wife were detained by
Malaysian authorities for 13 days and held in very bad conditions.[260]
“My wife needed a doctor and couldn’t get health care,”
Belhadj said.[261] He said
that one of his associates had visited the British embassy in Kuala Lumpur and
let officials there know that Belhadj wanted to seek asylum in the UK.[262]
Shortly thereafter the couple was told, though it is not clear by whom, that
they would be allowed to travel to the UK but only through Bangkok.[263]
However, after the two arrived in Bangkok, they were arrested while in the
airport waiting room.[264] They
were then taken to a special room in the airport in Bangkok in which, Belhadj
alleges, he and his wife were severely mistreated and abused by the CIA for
several days.[265]
While in CIA custody in Bangkok,
Belhadj said he was “stripped and beaten.”[266]
He was forced to be naked, wear a blindfold, was hung against a wall by one arm
and then by one leg, and was put into a tub with ice.[267]
He was also forced to wear earmuffs that were only removed when his captors
blasted his cell with loud music or when he was being interrogated.[268]
Belhadj said they gave them no food and they refused to get him a doctor when
he told them he needed one.[269] He
was asked about his alleged ties to al Qaeda, which he denied.[270]
Belhadj’s wife
said that she was dragged away from her husband at the Bangkok airport and feared
he was going to be killed. In an interview with The Guardian,
she said, “I thought: ‘This is it.’ I thought I would never
see my husband again…. They took me into a cell, and they chained my left
wrist to the wall and both my ankles to the floor. I could sit down but I
couldn’t move.” She said her captors included two tall, thin men
and an equally tall woman who were mostly silent and dressed in all black.[271] At the time, Bouchar was four and a half months
pregnant. “They knew I was pregnant,” she said. “It was obvious.”[272] She said her captors gave her water while she
was chained up, but no food for five days.[273]
The couple said they were separately put on a plane to Libya,
but were not aware that the other was on the flight.[274]
Belhadj said he was handcuffed and blindfolded and that his hands were tied to
his legs.[275] He was
crouched over, unable to stand or lie down, for the entire 17-hour journey. He
was forced to drink water and prevented from using the bathroom.[276]
He said he was beaten just before the plane landed.[277]
Sometimes his captors put a cushion under his elbows, providing brief respite,
but then took it away again.[278]
Bouchar later told The Guardian that her captors
forced her to lie on a stretcher and bound her to the stretcher from head to
toe with tape. They taped her stomach, arms, and then her chest so tightly that
she was unable to move. They then wound the tape around her head, covering her
eyes, before putting a hood and earmuffs on her. She was unable to move, to
hear or to see. “My left eye was closed when the tape was applied …
but my right eye was open, and it stayed open throughout the journey. It was
agony,” she said. She did not know where she was going or that her
husband was on the plane. Only upon arrival in Libya did she hear a man grunting
with pain, and realized her husband was with her.[279]
The Tripoli Documents
corroborate the couple’s account. The UK government appears to have
alerted Libyan authorities that Belhadj and his wife were in Malaysian custody.[280]
A document in the folder marked “UK” mentions that Abdullah Sadeq
(the name Belhadj was using at the time), travelling under a French or an Iraqi
identity, “is being held in the Sepang detention center in
Malaysia” with his “pregnant wife.”[281]
The document is undated, but notes that the couple was traveling around
February 21.[282]
Two faxes found in the folder
marked “USA,” both dated March 4, 2004 and marked “Secret
Release Libya Only,” appear to have been sent by the CIA to the Libyan
Security Service. One has a subject line that reads, “Clarification
Regarding the Rendition of Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq.”[283]
The other had a subject line that reads, “Urgent Request Regarding the
Extradition of Abdullah al-Sadiq from Malaysia.”[284]
It is not clear which fax was sent first, but the fax seeking clarification
begins by thanking the Libyan security service for the
“hospitality” that it showed to CIA officers during their recent
visit to Libya; remarks that the discussions had during that visit were “very
productive;” and pronounces that they are “committed to developing
this relationship” for the “mutual benefit” of both services.
It then goes on to read:
Our service is committed to rendering the terrorist Abu
Abdullah al-Sadiq to your custody. To this end, we have been in touch with the
Malaysian authorities to help facilitate the transfer of custody in atimely [sic]
manner. We do not yet have all the details from our station in Kuala Lumpur
regarding how and when this transfer will take place, but we are very hopeful
for a [sic] expeditious resolution to this matter. We will provide you with the
details as soon as they are available to us.[285]
The other fax dated the same day,
with “urgent request” in the subject line, says the United States
is working “energetically” with the Malaysian government to
“effect the extradition of Abdullah al-Sadiq” from Malaysia. It
says that the Malaysians have “promised to cooperate and to arrange for
Sadiq’s transfer to our [the CIA’s] custody” and that they will
be “very happy to service your debriefing requirements” and
“will share the information with you [Libyan security service].” The
fax also says that the CIA was “at a delicate point in [its] discussions
with the Malaysians” and therefore asks that the Libyans temporarily
“cease any further engagement” with the Malaysian government until
the CIA has “custody of Sadiq” or has judged that the Malaysians
are “unwilling to cooperate with the U.S. government.”[286]
Two days later, on March 6, the
CIA sent the Libyans another fax saying that Belhadj and his “pregnant (4
months) wife” would be leaving Kuala Lumpur on the evening of March 7, on
a commercial flight to London via Bangkok, corroborating Bouchar’s belief
that her captors knew she was pregnant.[287]
The CIA said it planned to take custody of the couple in Bangkok, and that it
was “vital” that a Libyan security officer be present to accompany
the couple on the flight from Bangkok to Libya.[288]
Also on March 6, the CIA sent another fax, with the subject line “Schedule
for the Rendition of Abdullah al-Sadiq,” to Libyan intelligence.[289] It details the flight plan for the aircraft that
was supposed to pick up Belhadj and his wife and take them to Libya. The fax
informs the Libyan intelligence service that the flight will leave Washington,
DC Dulles International Airport on March 6/7, make a stop in Tripoli and refuel
on March 7, then fly to the Seychelles, where it will remain overnight. Then on
March 8, it will leave the Seychelles for Bangkok, where it will refuel, presumably
pick up Belhadj and his wife, and fly to Tripoli, with a stopover for half a
day in Diego Garcia (a US naval air base in the British Indian Ocean
Territory).[290] The fax asks the Libyans to make sure their
officers “have the proper documentation for [the Seychelles], otherwise
they will not be allowed to leave the aircraft.”[291]
The flight plan laid out in the
document corresponds to some Eurocontrol flight data on file with Human Rights
Watch. According to that data, a flight plan for a Boeing 737 with tail number
N313P (the same tail number as a plane mentioned in Tripoli Document 2233, which
apparently transported the MI6’s Mark Allen and the CIA’s Steve
Kappes to Libya—see below), operated by Aero Contractors—a North
Carolina company widely reported to have been used by the CIA—filed a
flight plan to go from Dulles airport in Washington at 2:51 a.m. on March 7,
2004 and land in Tripoli at 12:01 p.m. local time. The plane then appears to
have flown beyond Eurocontrol’s area of responsibility, because it disappears
temporarily from Eurocontol’s flight records. The plane’s
trajectory is not recorded again in the Eurocontrol records until March 9, 2012,
when a flight plan was filed for a departure from Misrata, Libya on March 9 at
4:47 p.m. local time for Palma Majorca, an island off the coast of Spain.
Another of the Tripoli Documents provides evidence of the role of the United
States and the United Kingdom in Belhadj’s transfer back to Libya. At the
end of a two-page letter from “Mark in London” (presumably Mark
Allen, former head of counterterrorism at MI6 named in other Tripoli Documents)[292] dated March 18, 2004, to “Musa,” he
writes to “congratulate” Musa Kusa on the “safe arrival of
Abu ‘Abd Allah Sadiq,” the name Belhadj used at the time.[293] The letter continues, “[t]his was the
least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable
relationship we have built over the years.” Then, corroborating US
involvement, he writes, “Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans
to channel requests for information from Abu ‘Abd Allah through the
Americans. I have no intention of doing any such thing. The intelligence about Abu
‘Abd Allah was British. I know I did not pay for the air cargo. But I
feel I have the right to deal with you direct on this and am very grateful to
you for the help you are giving us.”[294] The exchange took place just a week before
British Prime Minister Tony Blair made an official visit to Tripoli and praised
Gaddafi for his willingness to help fight the so-called war on terror.[295] Earlier in the letter, details about the
upcoming Blair visit are discussed.[296] “No. 10,” paragraph 5 of the blurry
but legible document reads—referring to No. 10 Downing Street, the
residence of the British prime minister—is “keen” that he
meet the “Leader” in his tent. “[J]ournalists would
love it,” the letter continues. “If this is possible, No. 10 would
be grateful,” it reads.[297]
The Tripoli Documents formed the basis of a lawsuit that
Belhadj and his wife initially brought against the UK government and its
security forces.[298]
Later Belhadj and his wife also sued former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for
personally signing off on their abduction and transfer.[299]
When the suit was initiated, Belhadj said his main aim was an apology and
acknowledgement of wrongdoing.[300] Only
when requests for this were ignored did he decide to sue.[301]
Belhadj told the nongovernmental organization Reprieve, “What we have
asked for like many victims of rendition in the past is an apology. All we seek
is justice.… We hope the new Libya, freed from its dictator, will have
positive relationships with the West. But this relationship must be built on
respect and justice. Only by admitting and apologizing for past mistakes
… can we move forward together as friends.”[302]
The Tripoli Documents also led to a criminal investigation
by UK Police into MI6’s involvement in the rendition of Belhadj and Saadi
(see below), another Libyan who was rendered to Libya with MI6 and CIA
assistance.[303]
Treatment in Libya
Upon
arrival in Libya, Belhadj and his wife were driven separately to Tajoura prison
in Tripoli.[304] Belhadj
said he was then brought directly to Musa Kusa, who was standing right in front
of him when his blindfold was removed. “I’ve been waiting for
you,” Belhadj said Kusa told him.[305]
Bouchar was
put in a cell where she would spend the next four months.[306]
She told The Guardian that she was interrogated for about five hours a
day. “At one point a cot was brought in the cell along with some baby
clothes, nappies, a bed cover and a baby bath,” she said. “I really
thought I was going to have to have my baby there, and that we would both be
held there.”[307]
Bouchar was released three weeks before giving birth to a son.[308]
Belhadj was brought to her cell for a few moments before she was set free,
though not permitted to leave the country.[309]
Belhadj was held for six more
years, five of them in solitary confinement.[310] He said
he went for a year and a half without any sunlight. His treatment depended upon
how responsive he was during interrogations.He
was denied family visits for three years and then subsequently was able to
receive visits every three months. He said he was deprived of sleep and often
interrogated at night and forced to stand for long periods of time.[311]
While he was in Libyan custody, Belhadj said he was interrogated four
times by people he believes were American agents.[312] He was also interrogated by alleged British
agents during two sessions that lasted about two hours each.[313] He said they were very knowledgeable about
the LIFG and asked questions about members living in the United Kingdom. His
Libyan captors told him that his treatment would improve if he told the British
that the LIFG activists were linked with al Qaeda.[314] “I told the British, as I told everyone
else, that LIFG had no link with al-Qa’ida. I knew making a link would
stop what was happening to me, but I was not going to do it.”[315] Intelligence officers from other European
countries, including France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, also interrogated him
while he was detained in Libya.[316]
The authorities tried Belhadj in
2008 for crimes against the state. Although he had a state-appointed lawyer, he
was never given a chance to meet with him. There were no witnesses at the trial,
and the only evidence taken into consideration was a report from Libyan
security services.[317]
He was sentenced to death.[318]
“I fully expected I would be killed,” he said.[319]
Instead, over time and in conjunction with efforts started by Gaddafi’s
son, Saif Gaddafi, he began to participate in an effort to negotiate a prisoner
release. Several hundred prisoners, including Belhadj, Saadi, and Sharif were released
in early 2010.[320] To
obtain his release, he had to publicly renounce his efforts to overthrow the
government by force.[321] However,
he told Human Rights Watch that he never gave up his desire for regime change.[322]
In February 2011 the uprisings against Gaddafi began and Belhadj played a significant
role, particularly in the capture of Tripoli.[323]
He then became part of the transitional government’s Tripoli Military
Council, but stepped down to take part in elections in Libya on July 7, 2012. Belhadj
ran as a candidate under the Islamist political party Hizb al-Watan which,
although initially popular, did not do as well as expected.[324]
They lost to the liberal National Forces Coalition party headed by Mahmoud
Jibril.[325]
Sami Mostefa
al-Saadi (Saadi)[326] left Libya in
1988. He spent time in Afghanistan, fighting against the Soviet-installed
government. He was, as was Belhadj, a founding member of the LIFG.
Later, rather than go back to Libya, he sought asylum in the United Kingdom,
where he was granted “indefinite leave to remain.” After a series of
incidents made him feel unsafe there, he returned to Afghanistan and
Pakistan. He eventually became the LIFG’s law and religious leader.
After the September 11 attacks, he fled with his family to Iran and then went
to Malaysia where he tried to seek asylum, failed, and traveled on to China,
where he decided to try to return to the United Kingdom via Hong Kong. In
Hong Kong, he and his family were detained and ultimately rendered to Libya,
with apparent direct US and UK involvement, as corroborated by the Tripoli
Documents.
In Libya, Saadi suffered abusive treatment in custody for five years,
during which time he was interrogated by, in addition to Libyan authorities,
persons he believes were US and UK personnel. He was charged, given a
summary trial, and sentenced to death.
Human Rights Watch interviewed Sami Mostefa al-Saadi in Tripoli on
March 14, 2012 as well as Saadi and his daughter Kadija on March 25, 2012.
The following account and quotes are drawn from the former interview unless
otherwise noted.[327]
Departure from Libya
Saadi was born in Tripoli on March 21, 1966. His family had
a lot of property and businesses, all of which he said were
“misappropriated by the state” by the Gaddafi government. He left
Libya in 1988, in his early 20s, because he said the government was interfering
with his ability to practice his religion and because he generally opposed its
oppressive practices. While he was studying engineering at the University of
Tripoli, he became actively involved in a small secret group in Libya (a
precursor to the LIFG) that, at the time, was engaged in planning to resist the
government by force. He later became a founding member of the LIFG and its law
and religious leader.[328] He was
detained once in 1984 for a month for distributing anti-Gaddafi leaflets. When
Saadi left Libya, he went to Afghanistan via Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to
assist in efforts to oppose the Soviet-installed government. “I believed
in the fact that Afghan people were oppressed,” he said. He left two
brothers behind, both of whom were imprisoned for many years for their
anti-Gaddafi activities and both of whom he said died in the Abu Salim prison
massacre of 1996.
After the Afghan government fell in 1992, infighting among
groups in Afghanistan made it hard to stay in the area. He also said it was
very difficult for Arabs to remain. So in 1993 he sought asylum in the United Kingdom.
In 1994, Saadi was granted “indefinite leave to remain.”[329]
At some point, either prior to or during his time in the UK,
he went to Algeria and got married. From 1994 to 1997 Saadi was in the UK,
where he and other LIFG members continued to organize and plan operations
against Gaddafi. By 1997, however, he began to feel unsafe there as well.
Twice, an individual approached him and tried to speak to him in Urdu and
Arabic, asking him questions that showed knowledge about his family and attempting
to get information from him. Then a Libyan associate of his who was opposed to
Gaddafi, Ali Abuseid, was killed in a stabbing in his grocery store in London
in 1996.[330] So
Saadi left with his family and other LIFG members and they began to organize
from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Saadi said he felt “there was no other
place for us to go.”
During his years in Afghanistan, Saadi lived and worked in
Kabul, where the LIFG was active. He said he met Osama bin Laden on two
occasions in Kandahar, in 2000 and in the late summer of 2001. Saadi told Human
Rights Watch that bin Laden had already been making harsh statements against
the United States and it was clear to him that bin Laden was planning violence against
the US. Saadi said he had an argument with Osama bin Laden about this
where he told him that for many reasons, the actions against the US that he was
planning were not legally authorized within Sharia. “We told OBL [bin
Laden] that the consequences of operations against civilians would be negative,
but he was not convinced,” Saadi said.
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Saadi and
several other LIFG members and their families left the area, moving from place
to place to avoid arrest. They first went to Pakistan, but that did not feel
safe there either. They then moved on to Iran. They sent their families there
first. “I asked my wife if she wanted to go to Algeria and be with her
family there, but she preferred to be with me,” Saadi said. But at
the time Saadi himself could not get proper papers for Iran, so he crossed over
borders illegally, only meeting his family there later. They stayed in Iran for
about a year. “The LIFG were all there together in a sort of
community,” he said. But in January 2003, he said they were forced to
leave Iran. By this time, Saadi had four children.
They went to Malaysia, where he hoped to get asylum. He
visited a UN office and was given an appointment for a month later. Before then,
he was arrested by the Malaysian authorities, who detained him and his family for
about 10 days. Saadi asked to be released to go to his UN appointment. The
Malaysian authorities said they would, but if he went back to the UN, he would
find US officials waiting for him. So he asked to be sent to China, where he
had already obtained a visa. “The Chinese visa was so easy for us,”
he said. “The Chinese were receiving people from everywhere at the
time.” The Malaysians then sent him to China.
From China he attempted to get back to the United Kingdom. Saadi’s
friends and family in the UK told him that if he went to the UK embassy in Hong
Kong, someone there would be able to help him.[331]
When he arrived in Hong Kong, a man he assumed was a UK diplomat was waiting
for him when he got off the plane. Instead, he was arrested for purported
passport or immigration violations and detained, most of the time with his
family. The room was monitored with cameras. During this period he said he
overheard two police women arguing: “They were talking in their own
language and I didn’t understand everything, but I did hear
‘CIA’ about four or five times, so I expected that something not
good was about to happen.” After 13 days of detention, the Hong Kong
authorities told him he would be sent back to China.
On or about March 28, 2004, Saadi said he was handcuffed,
his legs zip-tied, and he was taken along with his wife and four children onto
an empty plane with an Egyptian crew. He and his children were taken to the
back of the plane, while his wife, who was screaming and in what he described
as a “terrible psychological condition,” was kept elsewhere. It was
not until five Libyan security personnel—four men and a woman—appeared
on the plane during a stopover in Bangkok that Saadi realized he was being
rendered to Libya. Once he realized it, he lost consciousness. Saadi is
diabetic and his blood sugar had risen. “That’s when I first
realized I was being sent back to Libya. It was a mixture of horrible emotions:
anger, fear, sadness.”
“I felt like we were being kidnapped. I was very
scared. I thought they would execute us all,” Kadija al-Saadi,
Saadi’s oldest child who was 13 years old at the time, said.[332]
Around this time, she came to the area of the plane where her father was. When
she saw many soldiers around him and the needle in his arm while he was still
handcuffed to the chair, “I fainted too,” she said. Later during
the flight, about half an hour before they landed, Libyan security agents came
and told her to come and say goodbye to her father. “I expected that that
was when they would come and execute him,” she said.[333]
The Tripoli Documents corroborate Saadi’s story.
Saadi’s return appears to have been initiated by the MI6, but once the
CIA discovered it was underway, they stepped in to do everything they could to
assist. A March 23, 2004 fax from the CIA to Libyan intelligence, found in the
folder marked “USA,” states that the CIA has “become
aware” that Saadi and his family were being held in detention in Hong
Kong and that the Libyans have been working with the British to “effect
[his] removal to Tripoli” on a Libyan plane that was in the Maldives.[334]
In the fax, the CIA said that it was aware that the Hong Kong special wing had
denied permission for the Libyan airplane to land. It went on to explain,
“However, we believe that the reason for the refusal was based on
international concerns over having a Libyan-registered aircraft land in Hong
Kong. Accordingly, if your government were to charter a foreign aircraft from a
third country, the Hong Kong government may be able to coordinate with you to
render Abu Munthir [Saadi] and his family into your custody.”[335]
The CIA even offered to pay for the non-Libyan-registered charter aircraft.
“If payment of a charter aircraft is an issue, our service would be
willing to assist financially to help underwrite those costs.”[336]
The CIA requested
perfunctory diplomatic assurances that Saadi and his family would not be harmed
if they provided assistance: “Please be advised if we pursue that option
[providing assistance], we must have assurances from your government that Abu
Munthir [Saadi] and his family will be treated humanely and that his human
rights will be respected.”[337]
In the same fax, the CIA also provided suggestions as to how
the Libyans might expedite the process and convince the Hong Kong authorities
to cooperate.[338]
“[W]e believe that you will need to provide significant detail on Abu
Munthir (e.g. his terrorist/criminal acts, why he is wanted, perhaps proof of
citizenship)…. Specifically, the Hong Kong government must have a
stipulation … that he will not be subject to the death penalty.”[339]
The next day, on March 24, 2004, the Libyan authorities sent
a 32-page fax to Hong Kong authorities containing, among other things, a birth
certificate, information on why Saadi was wanted, and details on the
“crimes and the terrorist activities that [Saadi] committed.” They
also promised that the “maximum penalty” for what he had done was
“life imprisonment.”[340] (Though
later, after being in Libyan custody for five years without charge, Saadi was
sentenced to death). The United States also provided the name and
telephone numbers for Hong Kong’s principal secretary for security.[341]
After the Hong Kong authorities received this information,
it appears they agreed to allow the non-Libyan registered charter aircraft to
land. Also in the Tripoli Documents, in the folder marked “USA,” a
fax sent just two days before Saadi arrived in Libya contains a cover page
marked “Hong Kong Landing Requirements” and two pages stamped
“confidential.” It states that in order for the “Non-Scheduled
Flight to land in Hong Kong,” the Libyan government has to comply with “certain
regulations” so that a “Permission to Land” can be issued.[342]
It also confirms, “[i]t is agreed that the subject person will be moved
together with his whole family (a total of six persons) on board of the same
flight” and recommends a “local Aircraft Handling Agent” for
the transaction who needs to be paid in “cash (in US dollars).”[343]
Saadi was transferred around March 28, 2004, just a few days after Tony
Blair’s historic first visit to Libya on March 25. [344]
Treatment in Libya
Three days later, Saadi and his family were put aboard a
private, Egyptian-registered jet and flown to Tripoli. When they landed, Saadi said
he and his wife were both hooded in front of their children. Local authorities
took them to the External Security Office of Amn Kharihi prison in Tajoura,
where they were separated. Saadi’s wife and children were held at the
facility for two months before being released. Saadi was detained for six years
and only saw his family sporadically.[345]
Saadi said that the day after he arrived on March 28, 2004,
Musa Kusa, the head of the Libyan intelligence service, came to his cell and
said, “Before 9/11, you went to countries where we couldn’t reach
you. But now, after 9/11, I can just pick up the phone and call MI6 or the CIA
right away and they will provide us with the most recent or up to date information
on you.” [346]
Saadi said he was held without charge at the Tajoura prison
for approximately three years, much of that time in solitary confinement. Then
on December 15, 2007, he was moved to Abu Salim prison, where he was held until
March 23, 2010.[347] During
his time at Tajoura, Libyan authorities interrogated him sporadically and at
times beat him. The interrogations usually started at 5 a.m. and went until
noon. He said he was not treated badly during the first month in custody and
was even led to believe that he would be released in a matter of days. But
after that, the treatment got worse. He said he was hit with a black wooden
stick that was just over a foot long, whipped with a rope, slapped, kicked,
punched, and administered electric shocks on the neck, chest, and arms. He
estimates that he was shocked 15 times. After about a year and a half at
Tajoura, Saadi noted that the abuses began to lessen. He thought that this
might have been because of increased cooperation with the Americans and a
commitment by the Libyan authorities as part of that cooperation to not use
force. He added, however, that when interrogators got angry, they still seemed
to have a “green light to start” physically abusing him.
Saadi told Human Rights Watch,
The beatings took place outside the cell and outside the
interrogation room—it was a room just for beating and torture.… The
beatings were random, not regular. For example, after an interrogation, if they
weren’t satisfied, I found myself in a different room and the torture and
beating would start. It would be a different group doing that [the beating] but
sometime the interrogators would be there just watching.
During his time at Tajoura, Saadi said, he was interrogated
by Libyan, American, British, and Italian intelligence agencies, as well as
some agents who spoke French, though he did not know if they were French.
The interrogators Saadi believes were American questioned
him twice: once immediately after he arrived in Libya and again four of five
months later. The first team of Americans consisted of two interrogators, a man
named Joe or John, who was short and thin, and a woman in her 40s. He said, “It
seemed that this lady was specialized in Libyan files because she knew everything
about the Libyan guys—their fake names, their true names,
everything.” For the first part of the interrogation, Musa Kusa was
present in the room, but he eventually left the room “angrily” over
Saadi’s denials that he and his group were the same as al Qaeda.
“He was telling them that there was no difference between our group and
al Qaeda and that we are dangerous not only for Libyans but for Westerners
especially.” They questioned Saadi for several hours over one day, asking
him about his time in China and one of the Libyans living in the UK. He said
they did not physically abuse him.
The second group of American interrogators—a team of
five—consisted of the same short thin man, another man, and three women,
including the interpreter. This time the questions were much more specific and
lasted all day, until past midnight.
Sometime between the first and second visit by American
interrogators, a team of two that Saadi believes were from the United Kingdom questioned
him—a man in his 30s with brown hair and a short beard and a woman in her
40s who was thin and blond. He said the British interrogation was short and
focused more on the LIFG’s ideology.
Saadi said the French-speaking agents questioned him about a
year into his imprisonment and that the “nicest” interrogators were
the Italians. “They were so decent with me,” he said. They asked
“for permission” to interrogate him and explained that “it
would be very useful to know” certain things. “They knew I had met
Osama bin Laden and wanted to know more about this. They also asked my opinions
about things like whether or not I thought their presence in Iraq would result
in retaliations against Italy.”
In 2009, Saadi was charged with 14 crimes, including
attempting to overthrow the government and spreading ideology against the
revolution. His trial took place in the prison and he was convicted and
sentenced to death. Saadi was released on March 23, 2010 as part of the same
negotiated release that freed Belhadj, Sharif, and other prisoners (see above).
Yet after the uprisings against Gaddafi began in February 2011, he was arrested
again, along with his son, and held until August 2011, when rebel forces
captured Tripoli.
In October 2011, Saadi filed a lawsuit against the British
government (the security services, the attorney-general, the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, and the Home Office) for their complicity in his transfer
back to Libya.[348] In
January 2012 Saadi, along with Belhaj, also filed a civil suit against
MI6’s former head of counter-terrorism, Sir Mark Allen, accusing him of
complicity in torture, misfeasance in public office, and negligence.[349]
Then on June 17, 2012, Saadi filed a claim against the government of Hong Kong
for its role in his transfer.[350] Saadi
now lives in Tripoli with his family. He is an imam at a local mosque and founded
a political party, al-Umma al-Wasat. He ran, as did Belhadj, as a candidate
during the July 7, 2012 elections. But his party, along with many other smaller
ones, was defeated by the National Forces Coalition party headed by Mahmoud
Jibril.[351]
Muhammed Abu Farsan (Abu Farsan)[352] was a member of the LIFG who left
Libya in 1990. He spent a decade in Libyan opposition training camps in
Afghanistan and Sudan. After the September 11 attacks, Abu Farsan traveled to multiple countries with his family seeking asylum. While in transit in the Netherlands on the way from China to Morocco, he sought asylum in the Netherlands but his asylum claims were ultimately denied. The Netherlands deported Abu Farsan and his family to Sudan, where he
was taken into custody. Abu Farsan said that in
Sudan he was interrogated by Sudanese authorities and by a man who introduced
himself as being with the CIA. After two weeks the Sudanese transferred him
to Libya, where he spent several years in Libyan detention and was subjected
to prolonged solitary confinement and repeated interrogations by Libyan
authorities. Ultimately he was charged and tried for his involvement with the
LIFG, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. He was detained in Libya
until February 16, 2011, as the uprisings against Gaddafi began.
Human
Rights Watch interviewed Muhammed Abu Farsan in Tripoli in March 2012. The
following account and quotes are drawn from this interview unless otherwise
noted.[353]
Departure from Libya
In 1982, when Muhammed Abu Farsan was about 18, he joined
the police department. In 1988, against his will, he was transferred to the
military. During his military service, he said, he came under pressure because
of his religious beliefs. The military was a secular institution and he said
those who were devout Muslims were held in suspicion. At some point during his
military service, he was arrested and detained for a month. In June 1990, he
suspected the security service was looking for him again, so he decided to
leave Libya.
Abu Farsan spent the next decade at Libyan opposition training
camps in Afghanistan and Sudan, with brief visits to Egypt, Malta, Saudi Arabia,
and Syria. He told Human Rights Watch, “Afghanistan was a good place for
the Libyans to train to get new skills to fight Gaddafi. At the time there was
no other country that allowed us to be together and train.” In 1994, he
returned to Libya to visit family and stayed for two years, much of it in
hiding. Then in June 1996, he left again, this time going to Sudan to train
with the LIFG. He spent about five years in Sudan and got a Sudanese passport.
In May 2001, he went to Syria and got married, and then shortly afterwards he went
to Afghanistan.
When he arrived in Afghanistan, Abu Farsan said, everyone at
the various training camps knew that al Qaeda was planning some sort of operation
against the United States. He said there was an open debate about it amongst
all of the various groups. Even many al Qaeda Arabs did not agree with bin
Laden’s methods, he said: “The LIFG did not want anything to do
with it. We did not agree with these actions, but Afghanistan was a refuge for
all wanted people.” After the September 11 attacks, Abu Farsan said he
spent the next several months “running around all over the place trying
to find some safe refuge.”
He went first to Pakistan, then to Syria and Iran. Along the
way, his wife gave birth to a son, so he returned to Sudan to add his son to
his passport. He spent the next few years on the move, moving back and forth among
Syria, Iraq, Malaysia, and China. “I was worried constantly I was going
to get caught any minute,” he said. During this period, he was in contact
with Belhadj and Saadi, who were also in Asia at the time.
In early 2004, he decided to seek asylum in Europe. On
February 19, 2004, travelling with Moroccan passports, Abu Farsan, his
wife, and his infant son boarded a KLM flight bound for Morocco via the
Netherlands. “I thought that if I made it to Holland and asked for
asylum, I would be okay there. My son was less than two years old,” Abu
Farsan said. When he arrived in the Netherlands, the Dutch authorities held him for six months while they entertained his asylum application. The Dutch authorities found his Sudanese passport and were trying to insist he was Sudanese but he told them that he was in fact Libyan but could not get Libyan documentation from the Libyan government. He applied for asylum based on his Libyan nationality saying he could not return to that country. The Dutch authorities appear
to have given his application consideration. He was provided a lawyer and took
part in immigration proceedings. At one point he said he was asked to sign papers
agreeing to be sent to Syria, but he refused. Ultimately, he said his asylum
application was denied.
Among the Tripoli
Documents, in the UK folder, was an April 23, 2004 fax from British
intelligence to the Libyan government thanking them “for the information
which you provided us on Abu Zinad, also known as Muhammad Abu Farsan,”
and requesting more.[354]
They noted in the fax that they understood he was currently
in Dutch custody and indicated their intention to share information with the
Dutch government. British intelligence stated, “We would like to share
the information on Abu Zinad with Dutch liaison in The Hague in case they can
assist us in identifying Abu Zinad if he is there.”[355]
Four months later, on August 9, 2004, Abu Farsan and his family were deported
to Sudan. He knew it was likely that less developed countries would have fewer
qualms than Western governments about sending him back to Libya, so he was very
concerned that if he was sent to a non-Western country he would in fact be returned.
He said he protested strongly. “In the court I asked if they were going
to transfer me to Libya,” he told Human Rights Watch. “I told them,
if you are going to send me anywhere else, I am going to end up in Libya, so
why not just send me to Libya directly?”[356]
The Netherlands sent Abu Farsan to Khartoum around August 7
or 8. His wife and son appear to have been with him. His son was about one year
old at the time. After a night in Nairobi, they arrived in Khartoum on August
9, 2004. Sudanese authorities took him to a detention facility and interrogated
him for three days. On the fourth day, they took him to what he describes as a
“large building with air conditioning,” where two Sudanese officials
and an American—who introduced himself as being from the CIA—interrogated
him. Abu Farsan said the American agent was tall, in his early thirties, had an
athletic build, spoke very good Arabic “in a way I could completely
understand,” and “had a beard like Mohammed.”
Abu Farsan said that the CIA agent interrogated him three
times, asking him about the LIFG and its relationship with al Qaeda. He told
him that the British also had a lot of intelligence on him but Abu Farsan said
he was not interrogated by British agents. At first, the CIA agent was very
polite, but when Abu Farsan did not provide the answers he wanted, the agent
began threatening that he would be sent to Libya. The CIA agent insisted that
Libya would not be any worse than Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Abu
Farsan said the American agent never physically abused him.
In total, Abu Farsan was in Sudanese custody for about two
weeks. He spent much of that time on a hunger strike because the authorities
would not tell him where his wife and son were. Then, on the morning of August
21 or 22, he was told that he would be going back to Libya. He was taken to a
plane with Libyan intelligence agents on board. At some point his family came
on board as well. They were all flown together to Tripoli.
Treatment in Libya
Upon arrival in Tripoli, he was again separated from his
wife and child and taken to the external affairs building at the Tajoura
prison. Abu Farsan said that on the first day, he was brought to see Musa Kusa:
“He told me, we will bring all of you. We have
Belhadj and Saadi. We will get you all and bring you here.”
For 16 months, Libyan authorities held him in isolation in a
dark cell “about the size of a mattress.” He had no idea what had
happened to his family. He was forbidden from speaking to other prisoners, and
the only time he was taken out of his cell was for interrogation. Abu Farsan
said that for the first month, Libyan agents interrogated him constantly, day
and night. After the first month, he was not interrogated again, though he said
sometimes Libyan intelligence agents would show him photographs of people and
ask if he knew anything about them. Foreign intelligence agents never
interrogated him.
On December 23, 2004, Abu Farsan was taken out of Tajoura
prison. For the next year-and-a-half, he was transferred back and forth between
the Sikka and Enzara prisons. During that time, he was told that his wife and
son were in Libya, and he was allowed to see them. He was also during
this period tried and convicted for being a member of the LIFG, possessing fake
documents, participating in the Afghan jihad, and providing material support to
the LIFG. On March 15, 2006, Abu Farsan was sentenced to life in prison.
On June 7, 2006, Abu Farsan was transferred to Abu Salim
prison. At Abu Salim, Abu Farsan said conditions were a little better than at Tajoura.
His cell was slightly bigger and he was allowed to bathe, and the ventilation
was better. But he was still kept in isolation most of the time. He was at Abu
Salim when a riot broke out in October 2008. One of his friends was killed and
five others injured when the government violently suppressed it.
Overall, Abu Farsan said that the conditions of his
detention were better than those experienced by others he knew who had been
detained in earlier years. During his period, he said, the Libyan authorities
were being easier on prisoners as they opened relations with the West and
prepared for Gaddafi’s son, Saif Gaddafi, to come to power. Conditions at
Abu Salim in particular started to improve when Belhadj, Saadi, and Khalid
Sharif began negotiating with the government for the release of prisoners.[357]
Abu Farsan was released on February 16, 2011.
IV. Transfer from Guantanamo Bay: The Case of
Abdusalam Abdulhadi Omar as-Safrani
Abdusalam
Abdulhadi Omar as-Safrani (Safrani)[358] is one of two
Libyans detained by the United States at the military detention facility at
Guantanamo Bay and then returned to Libya by the US.[359]
He asked not to be sent back to Libya, but the United States ignored these
requests.
Human
Rights Watch interviewed Abdusalam Abdulhadi Omar as-Safrani in Benghazi in
March 2012. The following account and quotes are drawn from this interview
unless otherwise noted.[360]
Departure from Libya
Safrani told Human Rights Watch that he left Libya
in 1990 because of the enormous pressure the Gaddafi government was putting on
those committed to Islam. He first went to Saudi Arabia, but without proper papers
it was difficult to remain. He went to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. He said
he was not a member of the LIFG or al Qaedaand
he went to Afghanistan as an immigrant, not to fight against the
Soviet-installed government, as did other Libyans.[361]Others detained with Safrani in Guantanamo
corroborate that Safrani was not a fighter.[362]
Records from Guantanamo also indicate that he had “congenital clubbed
feet.”[363] Abu Zubaydah,
a Saudi currently held at Guantanamo who apparently knew Safrani in
Afghanistan, said that though Safrani was at a training camp, he was just
simply “sitting with the brothers.… [Safrani was a] simple person
who could not make explosives and had bad security.”[364]
After the US
invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks, Safrani fled Afghanistan
to Pakistan, where he was apprehended by Pakistani security forces. He was
first taken to Kohat prison, where he was held for two weeks by the Pakistani
military. There he was interrogated by Americans in civilian clothes who took
pictures of him. After two weeks he was transferred to US custody and taken to
Kandahar in Afghanistan. There, he said, US personnel interrogated him
continually and deprived him of sleep. His cell was in a tent and he was
detained with about 10 to 15 other detainees. He said it was very cold and
there was no heat and not enough food. “This was January,” he told
Human Rights Watch. “They gave us only one blanket for each prisoner and
it wasn’t warm enough.” The Americans held him there for
approximately six weeks and then transferred him to Guantanamo Bay.
Transfer to Guantanamo
He said the 18-hour transit to Guantanamo was
rough. He was transported with a large group. Their heads were shaven and they
were dressed in orange jumpsuits, hooded, and required to wear headphones and
black glasses to block sound and sight. Safrani was only told he was being
taken to a US Navy base but not told where. He only later figured out he was in
Guantanamo. He was given a blanket, toothbrush, and towel and then put in a
cell that was about 2 x 1 meters, where he was held for the next three months.
It had a wooden ceiling, held up by four pipes from each corner of the room,
mesh walls, and a concrete floor. There was no toilet in the cell, just a
bucket.
After about three months, he was moved by bus to
another detention facility at Guantanamo, where he was detained for the next
five years. He described this facility as a hangar, with galvanized steel walls
and a slanted roof. His cell was about the same size as his prior one—the
main difference being the walls were not mesh and the lights were on 24 hours
per day. The Americans also played voices and sounds over a loudspeaker between
7 a.m. and about 1 p.m. and would sometimes bang on the galvanized steel sheets
to make noise. This prevented him from sleeping and occurred almost daily for
the entire five years he was there.
He said US guards beat him on several occasions,
once fracturing his shoulder. Another time guards used “a hose, putting
water on our faces, so you feel like drowning.” The International
Committee of the Red Cross visited him on several occasions, and he heard from
his family by letter for the first time three years into his detention. Safrani
said that when the US personnel deemed him uncooperative, he was put in a room
that was extremely cold. The air conditioning was turned on high and the
Americans interrogated him the entire time. He was in the cell 20 to 30 times,
and the longest time he spent in the room was 30 days.[365]
He said that over time, conditions improved. He
was allowed to participate in sports about two to three times weekly in the
beginning, and then eventually daily. The rule eventually became that detainees
were to get up to 30 minutes of exercise per day, but often he was only allowed
five minutes, which he said was a form of punishment.
Transfer and Treatment
in Libya
When Safrani learned he was being returned to Libya, he
asked his captors for asylum or resettlement in a third country. This request
was denied, and on December 15, 2006, he was transferred to Libya.[366]
He was initially held in Tajoura for six months, then moved to al Nasser bureau
for approximately 45 days, and finally to Abu Salim prison until his release.
He said he was physically abused while detained in Libya. He
said the Libyan authorities used electrical shocks several times on his hands,
legs, and sensitive areas of his body. He was whipped on his back, kicked,
punched, and slapped. He suffered pain from a toothache and was denied pain
relief for one year. After several years of detention, Safrani was charged with
being a member of LIFG and al Qaeda. He was appointed a lawyer and was in court
about three or four times. Ultimately he was convicted and sentenced to life in
prison. He was released on August 24, 2011 after the fall of Gaddafi.
V. The Case ofIbn al-Sheikh al-Libi
Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi,
whose real name is Ali Mohamed al-Fakheri, was a Libyan taken into custody in
the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area in late 2001. He was held in secret CIA
detention for years and subjected to abusive interrogations on numerous
occasions in different locations. During a coercive interrogation by US
personnel in Egypt, al-Libi provided false information about Iraq having agreed
to provide two al Qaeda operatives with chemical or biological weapons
training. Then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell cited this as a key piece of
evidence during his historic speech to the United Nations on February 5, 2003,
when trying to rally international support for an invasion of Iraq. Al-Libi
later recanted these facts, and the CIA itself later deemed them unreliable.
After years in secret CIA custody, al- Libi was subsequently sent back to
Libya. He died in a prison cell in Libya on May 9, 2009. Libyan authorities
claimed he committed suicide.
Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was born in Ajdabiya, Libya in 1963.
He left Libya in 1986, in his early 20s. According to his family, he left
mostly because he wanted to study classical Arabic and travel, not necessarily
because he opposed the Gaddafi government.[367]
“At that time, all Libyans were dissatisfied with the regime,” his
brother, Abdul Aziz al-Fakheri, told Human Rights Watch. “But in
al-Libi’s case opposition to Gaddafi was not the main reason he left
Libya.… He just wanted to see the world, to be a tourist.”[368]
He first went to Mauritania, where there were a number of highly trained and
respected sheikhs specializing in classical Arabic, as well as Islamic studies
and Islamic history.[369]
In Mauritania, while at the Libyan embassy, the consular
officials confiscated his passport.[370] His
family said al-Libi told them the Libyans did this because they assumed that
since he was living abroad, he was opposed to Gaddafi.[371]
Without his passport, travelling became difficult. From Mauritania, for the
next four years, he traveled on foot, according to his brother, to many
different countries in the region including Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, and Algeria.[372]
Eventually he went to Saudi Arabia, where he joined
jihadists fighting the Soviet-installed government in Afghanistan.[373]
He also may have spent some time in Syria studying engineering.[374]
Eventually he became the head of the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan,
which pre-dated al Qaeda and was not known to be aligned with any particular
group.[375]
Various Islamist armed groups trained there, not just al Qaeda. While al-Libi
has been labeled both a senior LIFG member and a senior al Qaeda operative, the
evidence suggests that he was not a member of either armed group.[376]
Some sources said that he strongly disagreed with al Qaeda’s philosophy
and did not like Bin Laden.[377]
“For [al-Libi], his time in Afghanistan was more about a man making his
way in the world, making a living,” said al-Libi’s brother el-Fakhri.
“It wasn’t because he agreed with al Qaeda or their ideological
thoughts … absolutely not.”[378]
In late 2001, Pakistani authorities apprehended al-Libi and
turned him over to US custody, which transferred him to the US-run detention
and interrogation facility at Bagram.[379] At
Bagram he was interrogated by FBI agents, who reportedly developed a rapport
with him to the point where he was asking for asylum in the US and agreeing to
testify in other cases.[380] After
this, however, the CIA, believing they could obtain even more information from
him with harsher interrogation techniques, took control of the interrogation
over FBI objections.[381]
Afterwards, the CIA sent al-Libi to Egypt, where he was subjected to ill-treatment
by Egyptian authorities,[382] which
produced false information linking Saddam Hussein with al Qaeda.[383]
Specifically, the interrogators questioned al-Libi about al
Qaeda’s connections to Iraq, a subject about which al-Libi said he knew
nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story.[384]
His interrogators reportedly did not like his response. Al-Libi said he was
then put in small box, approximately 50 x 50 centimeters (20 by 20 inches—the
depth of the box was not provided), for about 17 hours, “knocked over
with a thrust across the chest,” and then “punched for 15
minutes.”[385] After
this, he came up with a story about Iraq having agreed to provide two al Qaeda
operatives with chemical or biological weapons training.[386]
Then-US President George W. Bush used this information in an
October 2002 speech about Iraq.[387] And
Secretary of State Colin Powell used it as a key piece of evidence during his
historic speech to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, when he tried to
rally international support for an invasion of Iraq.[388]
But over a year earlier, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had already
discredited the information. A February 22, 2002, DIA cable stated,
This is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh [al-Libi] in
which he claims Iraq assisted al-Qa’ida’s CBRN [chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear] efforts.… It is possible he
does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is
intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing
debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers he
knows will retain their interest. Saddam’s regime is intensely secular
and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover Bagdad is unlikely to
provide assistance to a group it cannot control.[389]
Powell later indicated
he regretted using the information during his UN speech.[390]
Although senior Bush administration officials would likely have been aware that
the information was not credible, they did not share this with Powell before
his speech.[391]
Indeed, in January 2004, al-Libi recanted the information, saying he
“lied to the [foreign government service] about future operations to
avoid torture.”[392] No
other credible evidence was ever produced confirming Iraq had trained al Qaeda
in the use of chemical or biological weapons.[393]
For years after US forces initially detained him, al-Libi
was forcibly disappeared. Human Rights Watch and numerous other nongovernmental
organizations called upon the US government to disclose al-Libi’s
location, as well as the location of many other “disappeared”
prisoners in the “global war on terror.”[394]
When President Bush finally admitted the existence of a secret CIA detention
program and transferred 14 formerly secret detainees held by the CIA to
Guantanamo on September 6, 2006, al-Libi was noticeably missing from the list.
In late 2006 and early 2007, Human Rights Watch and several
journalists received reports from Libyans in exile that al-Libi and several
other Libyans who had been in US custody had been rendered to Libya. The exact
date of al-Libi’s transfer is not clear. During a research trip to Libya
in 2009, Human Rights Watch was able to confirm that al-Libi had indeed been
transferred and was being detained at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.[395]
Human Rights Watch saw al-Libi for a few minutes and tried to interview him. He
appeared agitated and angry but he sat down with researchers and listened to a
short introduction about Human Rights Watch. However, before he could be
interviewed, al-Libi got up and said before walking away, “Where were you
when I was being tortured in American jails?”[396]
Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations had strongly condemned
the secret CIA detention program and had been trying for years to get access to
forcibly disappeared prisoners as well as those at Guantanamo, but without
success. Two weeks after Human Rights Watch saw al-Libi at Abu Salim, Libyan
authorities reported that he committed suicide in his cell, a claim that merits
a thorough investigation.[397]
There is limited information available about the US
detention of al-Libi. While researching this report, Human Rights Watch tried
to develop a clearer picture with information from family members and prisoners
with whom he was held. He apparently was taken into custody near the border
between Pakistan and Afghanistan at the end of 2001, though different dates
have been reported.[398]
Adusalam Abdulhadi Omar as-Safrani, another Libyan interviewed for this report
(see above) who was apprehended in the same area around the same time, said he
saw al-Libi in detention in Kohat, Pakistan, in December 2001. He had been
taken there a day or two after the Pakistani army detained him just inside the
Pakistan border. He was not sure of the exact date, but by the time he had
arrived in Kohat, al-Libi was already there.[399] About
300 other prisoners were also being held in the same facility. Al-Libi had been
initially detained by tribes in the area, who then turned him over to Pakistani
authorities.[400]
After Safrani was there for about two weeks, “the
Americans” came. They were in civilian clothes, not military uniforms,
and Safrani believes they were CIA. They interrogated him and later moved him,
al-Libi, and the rest of a big group from Kohat to Kandahar. In Kandahar,
al-Libi was identified as a commander and split from the rest of the group.[401]
That was the last time Safrani saw al-Libi. Safrani was then taken to
Guantanamo, where he was held until December 2006, when the United States
forcibly transferred him back to Libya (see above).[402]
According to al-Libi’s family, after Kandahar, the United
States took him to Kabul (more likely Bagram Air Base)[403]
and then transferred him to Egypt.[404]
Al-Libi’s family said he was in Egypt for 13 months.[405]
He told his family and other detainees with whom he was detained that he was
sent to Egypt “in a coffin.”[406] During
his time in Egypt, he told others that his Egyptian captors beat and abused him
constantly. He showed one fellow prisoner marks he said were from a drill that
was used on him in Egypt and burns on his body that he received there.[407]
He told another fellow prisoner at the time that he was cut with blades on his
skin while there and that he was hung out an open window with no clothes on.[408]
His Egyptian captors also had him lie on his stomach and forced his legs back
towards his shoulder blades.[409]
After Egypt, al-Libi was apparently brought back to US
custody, possibly to a CIA prison at Bagram.[410] This
is where it seems he recanted the information he had provided earlier on links
between Iraq and al Qaeda. On February 4 and 5, 2004, CIA officers sent cables
to headquarters acknowledging that al-Libi’s account from 2002 was not
reliable.[411]
Reports vary as to where al-Libi was detained after his
return to US custody following his time in Egypt. His brother and nephew in
Libya said they mapped out his trajectory using a combination of information
they got from him during family visits they had with him while he was detained
in Libya as well as information from others with whom he was detained.
They believe al-Libi was subsequently taken to a prison in the Panjshir Valley
north of Kabul from June 2003 to October 2003, then Kabul again, Morocco for
about a year, Guantanamo for three to five months, Alaska,[412]
a US air base in Sweden,[413] and
finally to Libya. Prisoners who were held with al-Libi told Human Rights Watch
that he told them he was detained at each of these locations,[414]
except some do not include Guantanamo or Sweden[415]
and others add additional places, like Syria,[416]
a warship,[417] and
Poland or a European country for which they could not remember the name.[418]
The amounts of time they say al-Libi spent in these locations vary, and they
are less certain about this information. Human Rights Watch could not
independently confirm this information.
It is not clear when Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was returned to
Libya, but the first time his family was informed that he was there was in
December 2007.[419] He was
first detained in Tajoura prison and was then moved to Abu Salim, where he
remained until he died.[420] At
some point after being transferred, al-Libi had been sentenced to life in prison.[421]
The last time his brother saw him was in March 2009, 40 days before he died.[422]
It was the fourth time he had been able to visit him in prison. Several other
family members had been able to visit as well.[423]
In his final weeks at Abu Salim, al-Libi was held in a
separate wing of the facility. Some said he was placed there by the prison
administration and others said he had requested the isolation.[424]
The section had about 20 cells in one corridor, with 10 cells on each
side. The corridor began with an open entrance from a courtyard and ended
with a big metal door. Al-Libi was in one of the first two cells near the
entrance by the courtyard.
All of the cells were empty except Libi’s. Two
prisoners, Hazem al-Ajdal and Mohammed al-Kaib, were the prisoners closest to
him physically. They were being detained on the other side of the big metal
door, which they said was always closed. Occasionally, though, they would see
al-Libi in a place known as “the Area,” where prisoners were
sometimes taken for exposure to the sun.[425]
Al-Ajdal said he was being detained in this section of the prison because he
had an operation on the cornea of his eye and needed to share a cell with
someone who could help him. His cellmate, al-Kaib, had hepatitis, as reportedly
did al-Libi.[426] Both
got extra exposure to the sun because of this. Whenever they saw al-Libi they
said he was always alone; the only person near him was a guard.[427]
Wing of Abu Salim prison where
Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was detained, photographed on March 28, 2012. Ibn
al-Sheikh al-Libi’s cell was the first one on the left. A large metal
door at the end of the hall separated al-Libi from all other prisoners at Abu
Salim.
Wing of Abu Salim prison where
Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was detained, photographed on March 28, 2012. Ibn
al-Sheikh al-Libi’s cell was the first one on the left. A large metal
door at the end of the hall separated al-Libi from all other prisoners at Abu
Salim. Right: The entrance to the cell of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi at Abu
Salim prison.
Those with whom Human Rights Watch spoke who knew al-Libi
said he was very religious and cited this as the main reason why they were
surprised by—and disbelieved—the government’s claim that he
had committed suicide. Suicide is strictly prohibited in Islam.[428]
Shoroeiya told Human Rights Watch,
Nobody believed it was suicide. First of all, [al-Libi] was
a very religious man and it is forbidden in our religion to commit suicide, and
second of all, it makes no sense that after all that he had faced he would then
commit suicide. As bad as it was in Libya, it was better than any place he had
been.[429]
Mostafa al-Mehdi (see above) saw al-Libi two weeks before he
died. During Human Rights Watch’s 2009 visit, the Libyan authorities had
gathered all the prisoners that we had requested to see together at the clinic
inside the prison. Mehdi said Abu Salim prison authorities had fixed the clinic
up: “They cleaned it up and put doctors inside and an ambulance out
front.” The authorities suggested to the prisoners during this meeting
that they all tell Human Rights Watch that they did not want to cooperate with
us.[430] Mehdi
said during this meeting, al-Libi “did not seem himself” and
“had completely changed.… He was in very bad condition—both
mentally and physically.… It was so obviously clear.… He
couldn’t talk clearly and was so thin. You could recognize he was not
well because, I knew this guy. His character was so friendly—he used to
welcome everybody and make them laugh. We had known each other for years, since
our time in Peshawar together, but he acted like we never met or knew each
other.”[431]
At the time of
al-Libi’s death, human rights groups called on the Gaddafi government to
open a full investigation.[432] Since the fall of Gaddafi, al-Libi’s
brother and uncle have renewed this request with the new government.[433] Al-Libi’s family showed Human Rights Watch
pictures taken of al-Libi date-stamped the morning of his death. They said they
got the pictures from the prosecutor’s office conducting the inquiry.[434] The photos depict al-Libi in the position in
which guards allegedly found him in his cell on the morning of his death.
In the first picture, al-Libi’s back is up against a
gray brick wall that separated his cell in two sections. The wall was about
seven and a half feet high and about six inches thick. His back is up against
the six inch edge of the wall. A sheet with ends tied together is looped around
the top part of the thin section of the wall and his head rests in the loop
created. His feet are firmly on the ground and his legs slightly bent at the
knee.
The next picture is taken from above him. He is lying on the
ground, his arms are at his side. On the inside of his left arm is a large
bruise that takes up a large portion of his arm. It is dark, black and blue.
His feet are very red and look swollen.
Another picture shows him lying on his stomach, so his back
is visible. He is shirtless. There are two long light scratches that go at an
angle across his back from the middle of his shoulder blades to the middle of
his lower back. There is also a spot, about a centimeter in diameter,that looks
like a small bruise on the top of his back near his shoulder blades. At the
time of this writing, the family was looking into having the photos analyzed by
a forensic specialist. The family informed us that an autopsy was done at the
time of his death and the report is with the prosecutor.
VI. Detainees Rendered From Other African
Countries to Libya
HRW interviewed seven Libyans with an Africa connection. In
addition to Di’iki and Madaghi, who were both initially picked up in
Mauritania, and Abu Farsan (see above), sent by the Netherlands to Sudan, Human
Rights Watch interviewed four other former LIFG members who were picked up in
Africa and forcibly returned directly to Libya. In these cases, there were
fewer allegations of Western government involvement in their renditions to
Libya, although three of the four allege they were interrogated by American and
other Western agents prior to their return.[435] After
a period of detention in Libya—in two cases the detention was accompanied
by physical abuse at the hands of the Libyans—three of the four were
summarily tried and convicted for their involvement with the LIFG and sentenced
to life in prison.
Ismail Omar Gebril al-Lwatty
Human Rights Watch interviewed Osmail Omar Gebril
al-Lwatty (Lwatty) in Tripoli in March 2012. The following account and quotes
are drawn from this interview unless otherwise noted.[436]
Lwatty is from Benghazi and was 22 when he left
Libya in February 1990. He had been working as a technician in the post office.
In 1989 the Libyan government detained him for five days for what he said were
false allegations of being involved with an opposition group. “I was
definitely dissatisfied with Gaddafi, but I wasn’t in any kind of
organized group against him,” he said. “I was afraid because the
detentions were so random and widespread and they were executing people.…
I felt as though I had to leave the country.”
Lwatty first went to Saudi Arabia, then
Afghanistan, where he was part of the LIFG and fought with Afghan rebels
against the Soviet-installed government. In 1993 he moved with the LIFG to
Sudan, where he lived for the next nine years. In Sudan he got married and,
with the LIFG, took part in a number of failed operations against Gaddafi.
On September 12, 2002, the Sudanese arrested him
and found him in possession of a number of weapons that he said were for use in
operations against Gaddafi when the Libyan leader traveled to Sudan. He said
that while in custody, he was interrogated on two separate days by individuals
who identified themselves as American. One was a white, heavyset man, about 45
years old, with partially balding salt-and-pepper hair and green eyes. He described
another as having light brown hair and a medium build, and being about 30 years
old. They had a Lebanese interpreter with them. One interrogation began around
1 p.m. and went until 8 or 9 p.m. The second interrogation ran from midnight to
3 a.m. They wanted to know whether he had any information about al Qaeda
targeting US interests, why he was in possession of the weapons, and whether he
had any connections to the US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.
Lwatty believes he was able to make the US agents understand he was only
interested in Gaddafi.
About a month after his arrest, on October 17,
2002, he was transferred back to Libya. “This is when the nightmares
began. I knew I was never going to see life again,” he told Human Rights
Watch. He asked the Sudanese Foreign Ministry official who informed him of his
transfer why he was being returned. He said he told the official, “You
know what is going to happen to me there.” The official responded,
“I have no control over it. There is an agreement between Gaddafi, Sudan,
and the US.”
He was sent back to Libya on a flight with his family,
including his six-year-old daughter, and was immediately separated from them on
arrival. He did not see or hear from them for another two years. He was successively
held in Tajoura prison for about 45 days, a prison he referred to as
“internal security on Sikka road” for about three and a half
months, Ain Zara prison for about two years, and Abu Salim prison until his
ultimate release on February 16, 2011.[437] After
about two years in detention, he said he was charged with, among other things,
joining an illegal organization—the LIFG—and fighting against a
friendly government—Russia. He was initially charged jointly with about
20 other people. He was appointed a lawyer who he said did little more in court
than “rattle off the names of all the people he represented.” Lwatty
denied all the charges against him. He was convicted and sentenced to
life in prison, which was later reduced to twelve years.
Mafud al-Sadiq Embaya Abdullah
Human Rights Watch interviewed Mafud al-Sadiq Embaya
Abdullah (Embaya) in Benghazi in March 2012. The following account and quotes
are drawn from this interview unless otherwise noted.[438]
Embaya was 26 when he left Libya in 1996. He is the eldest
of six siblings and had been studying at the University of Benghazi. He said he
left the country after some of his neighbors were arrested. “They were
committed to religion, they were afraid, I was afraid,” he said. “We
knew that if someone was arrested they weren’t getting out. They were
being detained for a long time.” He had also heard that people were being
beaten until they gave up the names of other people who would then be arrested
as well.
Embaya initially went to Chad, then to Sudan,
where he was involved in trade. He said he only joined the LIFG in 2000.
After that he went to Afghanistan, where he stayed until late 2001. He
then began moving around constantly, trying to avoid arrest. He was in Iran for
six months, Sudan, Nigeria twice, and finally back to Chad. He said he was
tracked down after the Chadian authorities said they found his name and contact
number on the computer of another LIFG member who had been detained.
He was arrested on November 25, 2004 in
Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, and held until March 17, 2005. During
this time he was held in a cell that had a stone floor with no mattress or
blanket. His hands were handcuffed and his feet shackled day and night. He was
only released to go to the bathroom. He was not beaten but was provided insufficient
food and lost considerable weight.
While
detained, several individuals who told him they were American interrogated him
for a total of about 30 days. The first time was a week after he had been
arrested and the last time was two days before he was sent back to Libya. Of
the first two interrogators, one was an older man who could speak broken
Arabic. He was a white man with gray hair. The other interrogator had darker
skin and reddish-toned hair. Later a female interrogator with an interpreter
came to ask questions; she had pictures of LIFG members in Sudan for him to
identify. He said the interrogators both told him they were American, and from
where he was detained he could see cars as they arrived to the facility. The
car they arrived in had diplomatic plates that Embaya said indicated they were
from the US Embassy. He said he was also interrogated separately by French
intelligence. They spoke French, had an interpreter from the Chadian security
office, and identified themselves as being part of French intelligence. Embaya
said their car had plates indicating they were from the French embassy.
Embaya said the Americans asked him all sorts of
questions about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. They wanted to know, among other
things, where bin Laden was, if he had nuclear weapons, and what sort of
attacks he was planning. He said the Americans offered him a deal: they would
pay him money and not send him back to Libya if he agreed to collect
information for them. He said he did not trust them so did not accept their
offer but also tried not to refuse outright. Two days after his last
interrogation with the Americans he was sent back to Libya. He said he expected
that.
He arrived on March 17, 2005. At first he was
taken to Musa Kusa’s offices in external intelligence, then to the al Nasser
bureau, then Ain Zara prison, and finally to Abu Salim prison, where he was
detained until his release on February 16, 2011. While in Libyan custody, his captors
slapped and kicked him on numerous occasions and threatened to tear out his
fingernails and let dogs attack him. From August 28, 2008 until his release, he
was kept in solitary confinement in small cell, about 1 x 2 meters with just a
bucket for a toilet. They forced him to shave his beard against his religious
beliefs. When he and the other prisoners protested their conditions, they would
receive abusive treatment, sometimes beatings and other times just verbal
insults.
In early 2008 he was charged with being a member
of the LIFG and participating in the war in Afghanistan against the government.
He was taken to court once, when they read all the charges against him and
appointed a lawyer. Others were also charged that day. He never returned to
court but a few months later was informed that he had been convicted and
received a life sentence. “I thought I was going to spend the rest of my
life in jail,” he said.
Abdullah Mohammed Omar al-Tawaty
Human Rights Watch interviewed Abdullah Mohammed Omar
al-Tawaty (Tawaty) in Benghazi in March 2012. The following account and quotes
are drawn from this interview unless otherwise noted.[439]
Tawaty went to a number of countries with the help of the
LIFG, including Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Mauritania, and Mali. In 2000 he got
married and stayed in Mauritania. On November 14, 2004, the internet
café that he was using was raided and he was arrested. The
Mauritanian authorities detained him for about seven weeks. Three days after
his arrest, they took him to a villa that was under intensive guard, where he
was interrogated daily for about two-and-a-half weeks straight. Those who
interrogated him represented themselves as being from “Interpol.”
One man identified himself as Robert from South Africa and another said he was
Diego from Spain. They spoke Arabic with a Palestinian accent.
Tawaty said that for the first six days he was handcuffed
to a very uncomfortable chair and prevented from sleeping. He asked for a
lawyer and to speak to his family, but these requests were refused. He was not
physically abused except once when a Mauritanian officer slapped him across the
face.
His interrogators wanted to know about the LIFG
and other groups in Afghanistan, with whom they were associated, who he knew,
what LIFG members were in other countries, and what sorts of operations they were
planning. He told them that he was part of a group opposed to Gaddafi but that
he was not involved in any military actions. He admitted that others in the
group were but that he was not involved in that part of the organization. They
gave him a polygraph test to see if he was telling the truth. After his questioning
ended, he was taken back to the Mauritanian intelligence department.
Tawaty said he
then escaped from detention. He told Human Rights Watch that the Mauritanian
authorities did not have sophisticated security and it was not difficult to
find a way to break out. Tawaty fled Mauritania for neighboring Mali and
managed to elude arrest until May 14 or 15, 2006, when the authorities arrested
him along with Sheik Othman (see below). They knew who he was and the name he
went by—Abdul Rahman. Three days later he was sent back to Libya. He did not
know where he was going until they arrived at the airplane.
He was initially detained in Tajoura, then subsequently
at the internal security department on Sikka Road, Ain Zara, and finally Abu
Salim, where he was held from December 13, 2007 until February 16, 2011.
Othman Salah (Sheikh Othman)
Human Rights Watch interviewed Othman Salah (Sheikh
Othman) in Tripoli in March 2012. The following account and quotes are drawn
from this interview unless otherwise noted.[441]
Sheikh Othman left Libya in February 1990
“due to the abuses of the Gaddafi regime,” he said. Prior to this
he worked for a manufacturing association. He initially went to Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan, and then Afghanistan, where he fought against the Soviet-installed
government. After 1992, when the government fell, he moved to Africa, first to
Mauritania, where he lived for about two years, then to Sudan where he lived
for about a year-and-a-half, and then back to Mauritania for another four
years. He moved around between these places because the Libyan government was
looking for him, arresting some of his colleagues with the help of the
Mauritanian and Sudanese governments and then sending them back to Libya. Then
in October 2002, he went to Saudi Arabia, where he stayed until January 2005.
Sheikh Othman said his main role within the LIFG
while in Saudi Arabia was to help other LIFG members get documentation and
passports, since they could not get passports issued by the Libyan government.
He left Saudi Arabia when he suspected he would soon be arrested by Saudi
authorities because of these activities. But after Saudi Arabia, he said, “there
was nowhere to go.” He went to Mali. After about three months, the
authorities arrested him on March 14 or 15, 2006, along with another LIFG
member, Abullah Mohammed Omar al Tawaty, and a Mauritanian man.[442]
He believes that monitoring of his communications by
foreign governments had contributed to his arrest. Earlier his wife and family
had flown from Saudi Arabia to Mauritania. He had called his wife twice before
she left Saudi Arabia to help her arrange transportation. After she arrived in
Mauritania, she made it through airport checkpoints, but about 100 kilometers
on the road out of the airport she was stopped, detained, and questioned. From
her they learned about his being in Mali. Shortly thereafter he was arrested.
Sheik Othman was brought to the Mali intelligence
headquarters and placed in a cell by himself. Within 10 minutes, a black 4 x 4
vehicle drove into the complex and two white men, who he believed were
American, got out. One was in military uniform and the other in civilian
clothes. Sheikh Othman said he was then interrogated for five days. High-level
Mali intelligence officers were asking the questions, but he said that others
in a room next door clearly were composing them. The Mali intelligence agent
constantly went to the room next door for clarification and more questions.
Whoever was directing the questions knew everything about Sheik Othman’s
time in Saudi Arabia, with whom he was associated, conversations he had had, and
people he knew. He first denied being Libyan, but they knew his name and much
about him so he said it was useless to deny for very long. He was shown, for
example, his residency photo from Saudi Arabia. Othman said he believed there
was no cooperation between the Mali and Saudi governments at the time. Because
of this—and because he believed neither Mauritania nor the Mali
government had the capacity to monitor communications in the way they did, as
evidenced by his wife’s detention after she arrived in Mauritania—he
believes that the US, UK, or other Western governments with more sophisticated
surveillance technology were involved in his arrest, detention, and
interrogation, and ultimately his transfer back to Libya. He was sent back to
Libya about five days after his arrest, around March 20, 2006.
Sheikh Othman told Human Rights Watch that when he
realized he was being sent back to Libya he felt a sense of dread but also a
sense of relief: “Of course it was not good that I was going back, I was
going to be handed over, to surrender, but I had been living in the unknown for
so long, at least I knew my direction, I was not lost anymore.” Also, he
said, there was some relief in knowing he was not going to Guantanamo or
Afghanistan, where he knew other LIFG members had been sent and treated badly.
“I knew many other Libyans who had been taken to Morocco and Bagram.
Although I was not happy to be going back to Libya, at least I knew I was not
going to any of these other places.”
He was initially detained in Tajoura prison for 10
months, then a prison on Sikka Road for 20 days, then Ain Zara for eight
months, and then Abu Salim prison for the duration of his detention, nearly
four years.
While in Libyan custody, Sheikh Othman said, he
was occasionally kicked and punched. The whole time he was in Tajoura, he
was kept in a solitary cell and not allowed to see or talk to other
prisoners. When he had a serious infection in his abdomen, he was denied
medical treatment. And he did not have contact with his family for two years.
Other than that, he said he was treated “relatively normally,”
which he said “shocked me.” He credited Saif Gaddafi’s
attempts at reform for this better treatment. Several years after he was sent
back to Libya, he was charged with attempting to overthrow the government and
for his role within the LIFG and sentenced to life in prison.
He was released on August 23, 2012, around the
time Tripoli fell to rebel forces. He now works in the offices of the Tripoli
Military Defense Council, where one of his responsibilities is compiling data
on the number of returns of Libyans living abroad by foreign governments during
the Gaddafi government. Before Human Rights Watch’s research mission to
Tripoli in March 2012, Sheikh Othman provided Human Rights Watch with the names
and contact information for 21 former prisoners who he said were returned to
Libya during the Gaddafi era with US, UK, or other foreign government
involvement. We were able to interview 13 of these individuals for this report.
Of the remaining eight, one was no longer alive (Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi); another,
the only other Guantanamo detainee to be returned to Libya besides Abdusalam
Abdulhadi Omar as-Safrani (Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu), refused
to speak with us; and six could not be reached. Thus we were unable to confirm
or deny these other alleged transfers to Libya.
VII. International
Legal Standards
The treatment of the individuals interviewed in this report violated
fundamental human rights under international law. These included the
prohibitions against arbitrary arrest and detention; torture and cruel, inhuman,
or degrading treatment; and enforced disappearance.[443]
Those apprehended in the context of an armed conflict would also have been
protected from torture and other ill-treatment under international humanitarian
law, or the laws of war.
The subsequent rendition (transfer) of these individuals to
Libya violated the prohibition against refoulement—forcible return to a
country where they were in danger of being tortured, ill-treated, or
persecuted. The principle of non-refoulement is grounded in both the
prohibition against torture and international refugee law and is protected by both
treaty and customary international law.[444]
The prohibition against torture, as well as cruel, inhuman,
or degrading treatment or punishment (referred to as
“ill-treatment”) is absolute.[445] No
state, even in times of armed conflict or emergency, may “opt out”
of this obligation.[446]Specifically, under the Convention against
Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
(Convention against Torture), a state violates the treaty not only when it
directly inflicts torture upon a detainee, but also when it sends a person to a
country where there are substantial grounds for believing that they may be
subjected to torture.[447] The
danger must be assessed for both the initial receiving state and for subsequent
states to which the person may be expelled, returned, or extradited.[448]
The assessment of the risk must take into account the existence of a consistent
pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.[449]
The individual must be given an opportunity to contest the expulsion before an
effective, independent, and impartial body before he can be transferred.[450]
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) also mandates that a state may not expose an individual to the danger
of torture or ill-treatment by way of “extradition, expulsion or
refoulement.”[451]
Further—though not an absolute prohibition, as some exceptions
apply—the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951
Refugee Convention) and its 1967 Protocol protect against refoulementto
places where a refugee’s “life or freedom would be threatened on
account of race, religion, nationality, social group, or political
opinion.”[452] The
Third Geneva Convention of 1949, applicable during international armed
conflicts, requires that prisoners of war only be transferred to states that
are parties to the Convention who appear willing and able to apply its protections.
The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 provides similar protection for civilians.[453]
The United States and United Kingdom are both parties to the
Convention against Torture and the ICCPR, as are Libya and Pakistan, also
implicated in abuses against persons in custody.[454]
Other countries that may have some role in unlawful renditions to Libya are the
Netherlands, Chad, Mauritania, Mali, Morocco, Malaysia, and China.[455]
The United States violated its international legal
obligations by detaining individuals without charge or trial for as long as two
years, subjecting them to torture and other ill-treatment, depriving them of
access to lawyers and family members, and then returning them to Libya in
violation of their right to non-refoulement. Other countries also held
detainees without charge or trial and subjected them to torture or ill-treatment.
Governments had sufficient information to determine that LIFG members sent back
to Libya faced torture—most suffered serious abuses and violations of
their due process rights. The Netherlands gave Muhammad Abu Farsan an asylum
hearing before deporting him to Sudan. However, an investigation into the role
that intelligence from MI6 or the CIA may have played in the transfer, and
whether Dutch authorities adequately assessed the risk of ultimate transfer to
Libya, should be undertaken.[456]
A number of detainees in US and later Libyan custody faced
long periods of solitary confinement. The UN Commission on Human Rights noted in
an April 2003 resolution that “prolonged incommunicado detention may
facilitate the perpetration of torture and can itself constitute a form of
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture.”[457]
The UN Human Rights Committee stated that “prolonged solitary confinement
of the detained or imprisoned person may amount to acts prohibited by article
7” of the ICCPR on torture and ill-treatment.[458]
The UN special rapporteur on torture stated in an August 2011 report that
“social isolation and sensory deprivation [in solitary confinement] that
is imposed by some States does, in some circumstances, amount to cruel, inhuman
and degrading treatment and even torture.”[459]
The United States in
particular sought to get around the prohibition on rendition to torture through
the use of “diplomatic assurances”—promises obtained from the
receiving government that the transferee would not be ill-treated. Requests for
these promises appear in some of the Tripoli Documents. One document from the
CIA to Libya’s Musa Kusa shows the CIA trying to help the Libyans
“assume control” of senior LIFG member Saadi in Hong Kong. Aware
that Hong Kong was worried about “international concerns” over
having a Libyan-registered aircraft land in Hong Kong, the CIA offered to pay
for a third party charter flight for Saadi. “If payment of a charter
aircraft is an issue, our service would be willing to assist financially to
help underwrite those costs,” the document reads. It goes on to say,
“Please be advised that if we pursue that option, we must have assurances
… that [Saadi] and his family will be treated humanely and that his human
rights will be respected.”[460]
Though it is unclear if the United States ever received such
assurances from Libya and, if so, in what form, diplomatic assurances are
insufficient to protect against the risk of torture or ill-treatment.[461]
The United Kingdom entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Libya
in October 2005 in which Tripoli promised not to torture terrorism suspects
sent from the UK. In 2007, however, British courts blocked returns of people to
Libya under the MOU on the grounds that the suspects remained at real risk of
being tortured if sent back to Libya, despite the MOU.[462]
One former CIA officer said that diplomatic assurances were
made with the knowledge that they would be ignored. “Each time a decision
to do a rendition was made, we reminded the lawyers and policy makers that
Egypt was Egypt, and that Jimmy Stewart never starred in a movie called ‘Mr.
Smith Goes to Cairo,” said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer who
claims to have initiated renditions to other countries during the Clinton
administration. “[The lawyers] usually listened, nodded, and then
inserted a legal nicety by insisting that each country to which the agency delivered
a detainee would have to pledge it would treat him according to the rules of
its own legal system.”[463]
In the rare case in which diplomatic assurances have been
found to satisfy obligations, they were much more robust than those the United
States requested in the Tripoli Documents, including, among other things,
post-return monitoring plans through ostensibly independent third parties.[464]
But even these monitoring plans failed to adequately protect the individuals
from the risk of torture in countries where the level of abuse is such that
they would face a real risk of torture there.[465]
Many forms of torture—such as sexual violence, prolonged solitary
confinement, waterboarding and other mock executions, and sleep deprivation—leave
no visible marks and can therefore be hidden. Detainees are also often afraid
to report abuse to outside monitors for fear of reprisal.
Governments have an obligation under international law to
investigate and prosecute those responsible for human rights violations and to
provide redress for victims of abuse.[466] The
Convention against Torture requires states to ensure that all acts of torture
are criminalized under the state’s domestic law. The United States has
done so in its federal anti-torture statute, the War Crimes Act, and through
individual state criminal codes.[467] The
Convention against Torture and the ICCPR obligate states to ensure that their domestic
legal systems include an effective remedy for redress and an enforceable right
to fair and adequate compensation, and that such remedies are enforced.[468]
However, despite overwhelming evidence that senior officials
in the Bush administration were responsible for policies that led to torture
and abuse against numerous individuals in US custody, there has been no
criminal investigation into these alleged crimes.[469]
Additionally, since the September 11 attacks, no federal court has granted a
judicial remedy to victims of alleged US torture or rendition to torture.[470]
In the United Kingdom, more efforts have been undertaken to
examine the government’s role in torture and to compensate for abuse. The
Tripoli Documents exposed MI6’s role in the torture and rendition of two
Libyans discussed in this report—Abdul Hakim Belhadj and Sami al-Saadi.
The documents have, appropriately, led to a criminal inquiry.[471]
Two earlier criminal investigations into alleged complicity in torture by MI5
and MI6 were concluded without anyone being charged.
In June 2010, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced
a broader inquiry into policy failures that led to UK complicity in abuse,
known as the “Gibson Inquiry” (after the retired judge who chaired
it, Sir Peter Gibson). Human Rights Watch, which had called for such an
inquiry, hoped that it would be capable of uncovering a full and accurate
picture of UK involvement in overseas abuse. But when the terms of reference
for the inquiry were published in July 2011, it became clear that the inquiry
lacked the necessary independence and transparency to achieve this. As a
result, Human Rights Watch and other nongovernmental organizations decided not
to participate in the inquiry.[472]
The British government had always intended that the inquiry
would only start work after the conclusion of any criminal cases. In January
2012, when the criminal investigations into the cases of Belhadj and Saadi were
announced, the UK government stated it was shelving the Gibson Inquiry and
would hold a second judge-led inquiry at a later date once the Libya criminal
cases were resolved.[473]
Regarding the right to redress, the United Kingdom settled
the cases of fifteen former and one current Guantanamo detainees, who sued over
UK complicity in their rendition and torture. The government initially fought
the case but later settled, after a high court ruling that confidential
documents would have to be released in the court proceedings.[474]
The government admitted no liability along with the settlement.
The Belhadj and Saadi cases are also the subject of civil
suits against former UK government officials and the UK government itself. But
a draft law introduced by the government in May 2011, known as the Justice and
Security bill, seeks to widen the use of secret hearings in civil courts when
national security grounds are invoked. This would mean that applicants and
their lawyers of choice would be excluded. Their interests would instead by
represented by a security-cleared lawyer who is barred from communicating with
the applicant about the secret evidence. Parliament is considering the bill at
this writing.[475]
Recommendations
To the United States
Government
Consistent with obligations under the Convention against Torture,
investigate credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment since September
11, 2001 and implement a system of compensation to ensure all victims can
obtain redress.
Acknowledge past abuses and provide a full accounting of every
person that the CIA has held in its custody pursuant to its counterterrorism
authority since 2001, including names, dates they left US custody, locations to
which they were transferred, and their last known whereabouts.
Ensure that any person subject to rendition abroad has the right,
prior to transfer, to challenge its legality before an independent tribunal,
including any diplomatic assurances made; to legal counsel; and to appeal a transfer
before it is carried out.
Prohibit reliance upon diplomatic assurances against torture and
ill-treatment (and make public the procedures used to ensure compliance) if
there is any credible evidence the person subject to transfer faces a risk of
torture or other ill-treatment.
Include in required periodic reports to the Committee against
Torture, the Human Rights Committee, and other relevant international and
regional monitoring bodies detailed information about all cases in which requests
for diplomatic assurances against the risk of torture or other ill-treatment have
been sought or secured in respect to a person subject to transfer.
To the President of the United
States
Direct the attorney general to begin a criminal investigation
into US government detention practices and interrogation methods since
September 11, 2001, including the CIA detention program. The investigation
should examine the role of US officials, no matter their position or rank, who
participated in, authorized, ordered, or had command responsibility for torture
or ill-treatment and other unlawful detention practices, including enforced
disappearance and rendition to torture or other ill-treatment.
Make publicly available the August 2009 report of the Special
Task Force on Interrogation and Transfers (an inter-agency task force set up by
the Obama administration in January 2009).
To the US Congress
Create an independent, nonpartisan commission to investigate the
mistreatment of detainees in US custody anywhere in the world since September
11, 2001, including torture, enforced disappearance, and rendition to torture.
Such a commission should hold hearings, have full subpoena power, compel the
production of evidence, and be empowered to recommend the creation of a special
prosecutor to investigate possible criminal offenses, if the attorney general
has not commenced such an investigation.
To the Government of the
United Kingdom
Set up a new, judge-led inquiry into the United Kingdom’s
involvement in detainee abuse and renditions to torture with full independence
from the government and authority to allow it to establish the truth, including
a presumption in favor of publication of information and evidence, with final
decisions on such publication to be made by the inquiry. This inquiry should be
set up immediately, without any requirement to wait for criminal investigations
or warranted criminal prosecutions of UK officials.
Where the United Kingdom is involved in the transfer of a person
outside British territory and British control, condition continued UK
involvement on guarantees that the person has the opportunity to challenge the
lawfulness of the transfer in an independent court prior to the transfer,
including on the grounds of torture or other ill-treatment.
End efforts to pass the Security and Justice bill, which would
widen the use of secret hearings whenever national security grounds are invoked
in civil court proceedings, excluding the person affected and their lawyer from
the courtroom and preventing disclosure of material showing UK involvement in
wrongdoing by other countries.
Provide a full accounting of the involvement of British security
services in the detention or transfer of individuals to other countries without
process since September 11, 2001, including the names of the victims, dates,
level of involvement, locations to which they were transferred, and last known
whereabouts.
Publish without delay current and past guidance to the
intelligence services on interrogation of suspects overseas.
Legislate to revise the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the
Intelligence Act 1994 to clarify that superior orders or acting under “lawful
authority” can never be a defense to complicity or participation in
torture abroad.
Revise or abolish section 135 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988,
which permits the attorney general to prevent a prosecution on torture-related
charges. In the meantime, the attorney general should announce that he will not
intervene in any prosecution for crimes connected with torture, but will defer
all decisions on prosecutions to the director of public prosecutions.
To the Government of Libya
Cooperate with parties conducting investigations into the
rendition of individuals to Libya since 2001.
Promptly investigate all allegations of torture and ill-treatment
in detention facilities run by the state and armed groups in a thorough and impartial
way.
Hold accountable all those responsible for using torture or
ill-treatment against persons in custody.
Ensure that national laws provide safeguards against abuse by law
enforcement officials during arrest and detention activities, as well as safeguards
to ensure full due process rights.
Ensure that confessions and other forms of evidence obtained by
means of torture are not admissible in a court of law.
Sign and ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
To the Government of Pakistan
Take all necessary measures to end the use of torture and other
ill-treatment by Pakistani military intelligence agencies and civilian law
enforcement agencies.
Impartially investigate allegations of torture and other ill-treatment
of terrorism suspects and, where sufficient evidence of wrongdoing exists,
prosecute those responsible, regardless of position or rank.
Ensure that all Pakistani military intelligence and law
enforcement personnel at every level have received appropriate training in
human rights law and its application in all cases, including with respect to
terrorism suspects.
To the Government of the
Netherlands
The Netherlands was the only government implicated in this report
that does appear to have provided one of those profiled here with a hearing
prior to sending him to another country. However it should still conduct an
investigation into the transfer of Muhammad Abu Farsan from the Netherlands to Sudan,
leading to his rendition to Libya. The investigation should determine whether
authorities properly upheld their obligations to assess the risk of abuse or
persecution of Abu Farsan, not only in the initial receiving state to which
they sent him, but also in the subsequent states to which he might be—and
in fact was—expelled, returned, or extradited.
As a part of the investigation into the transfer of Muhammad Abu
Farsan, examine and disclose publicly the role that intelligence from the CIA or
MI6 may have played in the Dutch government’s decision to transfer him to
a country that did not offer sufficient protection against onward transfer to
Libya.
To the Governments of China,
Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand
Conduct an investigation into the transfers of Sami Mostefa
al-Saadi and Abdul Hakim Belhadj to Libya, where there was clear risk of
torture or ill-treatment upon return, and whether authorities properly upheld
their obligations to protect individuals against these abuses.
As a part of the investigation into the transfers of Saadi and
Belhadj, examine and disclose publicly the role that intelligence from the CIA or
MI6 may have played in each government’s decision not to prevent onward
transfers to countries where they feared torture or other forms of persecution.
To the Governments of Chad,
Mauritania, Mali, Morocco, and Sudan
Conduct an investigation into the transfers of Muhammed Abu
Farsan, Ismail Omar Gebril al-Lwatty, Saleh Hadiyah Abu Abdullah Di’iki,
Mustafa Salim Ali el-Madaghi, Mafud al-Sadiq Embaya Abdullah, Abdullah Mohammed
Omar al-Tawaty, and Othman Salah to countries where they feared torture or
other forms of persecution, and whether authorities properly upheld their
obligations to protect individuals against return to torture or other ill-treatment.
As a part of the investigation into the transfers of Abu Farsan,
Lwatty, Di’iki, Madaghi, Abdullah, Tawaty, and Salah, examine and
disclose publicly the role that intelligence from the CIA or MI6 may have played
in each government’s decision not to prevent transfers to Libya.
Acknowledgments
This report was written by Laura Pitter, counterterrorism
advisor at Human Rights Watch. It is based on research conducted in Tripoli
primarily by Pitter but also by Sidney Kwiram, former emergencies consultant
for Human Rights Watch, and further phone interview research from New York by
Pitter and Hanan Salah, Libya and Mauritania researcher. It is also based on
documents found by Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director, in Tripoli in August
2011, as well as independent research on unlawful rendition and secret
detention by the United States and other governments over the past decade.
Stacy Sullivan, consultant to Human Rights Watch, drafted early parts of the
Background and Detention in Asia sections of the report. Mohammed al-Bahry, Wagde
Bargig, and Basem Tulti facilitated interviews and provided translation for the
report.
The report was substantively reviewed and edited by James
Ross, legal and policy director, Alison Parker, US program director, Maria
McFarland, US program deputy director, Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism
counsel and advocate, and Joseph Saunders, program director. Fred Abrahams,
special advisor to Human Rights Watch’s program office, John Sifton, Asia
advocacy director, Heba Morayef, researcher in the Middle East and North Africa
division, Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch’s refugee program, Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director, and
Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director, provided additional edits and
substantive guidance.
Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor for the legal and policy
office, Ben Ward, deputy director for the Europe and Central Asia division, Ali
Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director, Eric Goldstein, deputy director of the Middle
East and North Africa division, and Corrine Dufka, senior researcher in the
Africa division, provided specialist review. Dinah PoKempner, general counsel
of Human Rights Watch, provided legal review. Sana Ahmed, Klatsky Fellow,
provided additional research, as did interns Kimberly Colabro and Jason
Tauches.
Adam Lewis, US program associate for terrorism and
counterterrorism, provided production assistance, as did Elena Vanko and
Samantha Reiser, both US program associates, Grace Choi, publications director,
Enrique Piraces, senior online strategist, Anna Lopriore, photography
specialist, Jessie Graham, senior multimedia producer, Amanda Baily, multimedia
specialist, Pierre Bairin, media director, and Fitzroy Hepkins, production
manager.
Human Rights Watch is enormously grateful to the victims and
families who shared their stories and who had the wherewithal to endure hours,
sometimes days, of questioning by researchers for this report. We are also
grateful to the many journalists, human rights reporters, and non-governmental
organizations committed to reporting about these issues. We are particularly
indebted to the American Civil Liberty Union for its freedom of information act
litigation that has led to the declassification of many important documents
revealing US abuses against individuals in the name of counterterrorism. We are
also especially indebted to the New York University Center for Human Rights and
Global Justice for putting together the 182-page declaration of Mohammed Farag Ahmad
Bashmilah, and Amnesty International for documenting the case of Khaled
al-Maqtari, both containing key corroborating information cited as evidence in
this report.