The US runs a network of AT LEAST 20 secret prisons

Originally posted by Grock
Not too many things are antithetical to constitutional and moral principles than secret prisons. Keeping prisoners incommunicato in remote, sometimes undisclosed facilities with no meaningful oversight brings to mind medieval dungeons. Yet, 21st century America has set up at LEAST 20 such shadowy dungeons. Some are officially admitted to exist, although we have next to no idea of what goes on inside, but authorities won't even concede the existence of some of the others. Both George W. Bush and State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Cofer Black have stated that at least 3,000 detainees have entered this subterranean network of Off-the-book prisons.

The most well-known no-man's-land is at the Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Originally, detainees were held in the outdoor Camp X-Ray; then they were moved to Camp Delta, built by Halliburton for an average cost of $47,550 for each 6-by-8-foot cell. The number of people held at this Caribbean gulag is usually given as somewhere around 600.

The other dark hole with the highest visibility is the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, which dominated world headlines for weeks after '60 minutes' quit obeying the Pentagon and mustered the courage to broadcast photos of prisoners being beaten, abused, and sexually humiliated by giddy US military personnel.

The final facility with a somewhat high profile is the Collection Center located at the US Air Force Base in Bagram, Afghanistan, which is said to be the primary detention center in that country. (The CIA has its own off-the-record hellhole in Bagram, plus another one - called The Pit - in Kabul.) Then there's the holding pen at Kandahar, supposedly just a way station for those headed to Bagram to enjoy the Air Force's hospitality. US Central Command has said that Afghanistan has many more facilities, as many as 20, that are just temporary stops on the road to Bagram, eaither directly or via Kandahar. The number of detainees is reprtedly 300-something.

Iraq is home to a bare minimum of twelve detainment facilities run by the US military or the so-called Coalition. In addition to Abu Ghraib, the two big facilities are Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca, with smaller ones scattered about.

The only known Constitution-free detention center on US soil is the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina. It's home to two US citizens - Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi - who were held without legal recourse for two years before the Supreme Court half-heartedly stepped into the vicious battle over their fates. The brig also holds Qatar citizen Ali Kahlah al-Marri, who was originally indicted on fraud and vague terrorism charges through the normal justice process; just before trial, though, Bush declared him an enemy combatant, and he was whisked into the brig.

Numerous news articles focus on detention centers in Pakistan, but US authorities refuse to comment. The neather-confirm-nor-deny approach also hold for a reported CIA vacation spot in Jordan, the Al Jafr prison. On the other hand, the Pentagon specifically denies continued reports of captives being held at the US Naval Base on the supremely remote island of Diego Garcia.

Human RIghts First, the first group to tally all of these secret prisons, also notes that small numbers of detainees - including "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh - have been held for short periods abourd US warships...

The group points out the Grand Canyon-size gulf between words and deeds: "In Its Country Reports on human rights conditions abroad, the US Department of State has consistantly criticized the practice of holding individuals incommunicado in secret facilities."

Grock

I don't believe any of this. But for the sake of argument, let's suppose it is true. When in previous wars have civil rights ever been given to enemy combatants?

If the Bush Administration is as evil as you think, then aren't you afraid they will track you down for treason?

In response to ignorant apes, I will quote from the OP (yes my studious peers, everything you need for your own research - dont take just MY word for it, find out for yourself - is right there before your very eyes to see.)

the question was (basicly) how do I know that there are more than the four secret prisons I focused on...

Answer (and I quote, again):
US Central Command has said that Afghanistan has many more facilities, as many as 20, that are just temporary stops on the road to Bagram, eaither directly or via Kandahar.

Iraq is home to a bare minimum of twelve detainment facilities run by the US military or the so-called Coalition.

these alone btw add up to 32. I didnt say that they exist, The US Central Command said they exist. I just presented to you what they have publicly declaired to all of us.... its just highly likely that most of us are uninformed as to what was said.

Id much rather focus on the topic and its ramifications than the "you made this stuff up" type of drivel (that one can easily find for oneself given the presented material).

And if you still think that I am making this up, go into a public place and declare yourself a terrorist (I wont advocate the actions necessary for such a declaration) and you will quickly find out for yourself that what I say is true... Im willing to bet that no one who knows you will ever hear from you again, and will have no idea where you are...

They just found more in Romania the other day, or so I hear...

you dont have to believe it for it to be real...

heres some debate on this oh so very real subject in the washington post.

www.washingtonpost.com...

Here are some interesting websites that add to this thread...

at least 14,000 held in secret prisons - www.truthout.org...

secret world of us jails - www.guardian.co.uk...

us concentration camps - www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.lilith-ezine.com...

*allegations of secret prisons in europe* - www.voanews.com...

secret prisons in africa - www.msnbc.msn.com...

secret prisons on ships - towerofdabble.wordpress.com...

a secret prisons timeline - dkosopedia.com...

well that should satisfy your lust for further information for now, until next time, sleep well america

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

www.washingtonpost.com...

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release - without charge - last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

Defenders of the system, which has only grown since soldiers' photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it's an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.

Every U.S. detainee in Iraq "is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.

But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.

www.truthout.org...