From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity: Dozens of 'Ghost Prisoners' Not Publicly Accounted For

[ProSense]

From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity

Dozens of 'Ghost Prisoners' Not Publicly Accounted For

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 27, 2007; Page A01

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- On Sept. 6, 2006, President Bush announced that the CIA's overseas secret prisons had been temporarily emptied and 14 al-Qaeda leaders taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But since then, there has been no official accounting of what happened to about 30 other "ghost prisoners" who spent extended time in the custody of the CIA.

Some have been secretly transferred to their home countries, where they remain in detention and out of public view, according to interviews in Pakistan and Europe with government officials, human rights groups and lawyers for the detainees. Others have disappeared without a trace and may or may not still be under CIA control.

The bulk of the ghost prisoners were captured in Pakistan, where they scattered after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Among them is Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a dual citizen of Syria and Spain and an influential al-Qaeda ideologue who was last seen two years ago. On Oct. 31, 2005, the red-bearded radical with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head arrived in the Pakistani border city of Quetta, unaware he was being followed.

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Jane Mayer's indispensable story on the CIA black sites and the unlawful torture...

[bridgit]

1. k&r'd...

:kick:

[Richard Steele]

2. Grrrecommended.

[ProSense]

3. Post about Guantanamo detainee

at Daily Kos: Urgent: An Innocent Man is Dying