Amnesty International has collected chilling testimony from some victims of the U.S. program of rendition; the stories of three men are reprinted here.
Muhammad Abdullah Salah al-Assad
In Dec. 2003, Tanzanian officers arrested al-Assad, a Yemeni national, at his home in Tanzania. He was taken to a waiting airplane and turned over to US custody. After about two weeks in an unknown detention facility, he was flown to a second detention facility, where he stayed for about two weeks, and was then taken by car to a third place, where he stayed about three months. His last secret transfer probably took place in April 2004. In Jan. 2006 he was still detained in Yemen.
Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah
In Oct. 2003, Bashmilah, a Yemeni national living in Indonesia, was arrested in Jordan. He says he was tortured during his four days of detention in Jordan. He was then taken onto a small plane and transferred to a secret location, where he stayed for the next six months, interrogated by US officials. He was then transferred to a second secret place of detention, run by US officials, where he was kept in a cell for over a year in solitary confinement. In May 2005, he was transferred back to Yemen, where he was still detained in Jan. 2006.
Maher Arar
In 1987, Arar went to Canada from Syria, where he was born. He became a Canadian citizen in 1991. In Sept. 2002, he was changing planes in New York on his way home from a family holiday in Tunisia. He was taken into custody by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and was then held incommunicado in detention in New York for 13 days before being told he would be deported to Syria. He was taken, in chains, to a small private jet, which flew him to Jordan, where he was interrogated and beaten before being taken overland to Syria. In Syria, he says he was severely beaten with electrical cable during six days of interrogation, and threatened with electric shocks. He says he was held alone in a tiny, basement cell without light, which he called "the grave," for more than 10 months.
He was finally released without charge one year later, in Oct. 2003.
In Feb. 2004, the Canadian authorities established a Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar. Professor Stephen Toope was appointed "fact finder" by the Commission. In his Oct. 2005 report, Toope noted: "...as the beatings became less intense, it was the daily horror of living in the tiny, dark and damp cell all alone and with no reading material (except later, the Koran) that came to be the most disturbing aspect of the detention. Whereas at first the cell was a refuge from the infliction of physical pain, later it became a ‘torture’ in its own right. … He remained in this cell for ten months and ten days, and saw almost no sunlight except for when he was transferred for consular visits… Mr. Arar describes the cell as ‘a grave’ and as a ‘slow death’."
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