Bashmilah: Innocent Yet Disappeared, Held Captive, Tortured

Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah was disappeared by the U.S., held captive for 19 months, and tortured. He writes a chilling tale about it in an article on the Huffington Post.

Bashmilah

According to the short bio there, he is “…a citizen of Yemen, is a client of the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law, which represents him in his quest for truth and justice.” He starts his article with these words:

“From October 2003 until May 2005, I was illegally detained by the U.S. government and held in CIA-run “black sites” with no contact with the outside world. On May 5, 2005, without explanation, my American captors removed me from my cell and cuffed, hooded, and bundled me onto a plane that delivered me to Sana’a, Yemen. I was transferred into the custody of my own government, which held me — apparently at the behest of the United States — until March 27, 2006, when I was finally released, never once having faced any terrorism-related charges. Since my release, the U.S. government has never explained why I was detained and has blocked all attempts to find out more about my detention.”

I encourage you to read the rest of the post. This program of capturing people who may or may not be terrorists and renditioning them…disappearing them…to another country where they are then tortured was practiced secretly by President Bush. Surprisingly to me, according to the HuffPo article, this practice has been going on for decades and was alledgedly practiced by President Clinton 80 times. The difference, according to Panetta, is whether the prisoner is sent to another country for prosecution or torture.

Bush sent detainees to other countries for torture. He wanted them off U.S. soil so illegal torture could be done to them outside our country’s watch. Senator Patrick Leahy is calling for a commission to investigate abuses during the Bush/Cheney administration. I urge you to sign the petition to urge Congress to create this commission by going to http://www.bushtruthcommission.com.

Renditions and Torture: Outlawed

A powerful 26 minute film that every American should watch. Go to this link to see it: http://hub.witness.org/node/8109. A description from the website is included below:

Human rights groups and several public inquiries in Europe have found the U.S. government, with the complicity of numerous governments worldwide, to be engaged in the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture. The U.S. government-sponsored program of renditions is an unlawful practice in which numerous persons have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional human rights abuses including torture and enforced disappearance. No one knows the exact number of persons affected, due to the secrecy under which the operations are carried out.

Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror’ corroborates these findings through the harrowing stories of Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed, two men who have suffered as a result of the U.S. government’s disregard of the international legal instruments dealing with respect for fundamental rights. The film features commentary from Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael Scheuer, the chief architect of the rendition program and former head of the Osama Bin Laden unit at the CIA, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. President George W. Bush.

OUTLAWED is a 27-minute WITNESS production in association with 14 production and distribution partners worldwide, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); Amnesty International; Breakthrough (US/India); the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Center for Human Rights & Global Justice at New York University School of Law; Freedom House; Human Rights First; Human Rights Watch; the International Commission of Jurists (Switzerland); Liberty (UK); the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA; Redress (UK); and Reprieve (UK).