“Brother, what is your name, what village are you from?” It was distinctive YemeniArabic that greeted Muhammad al-Assad as he stumbled, still hooded and shackled,from the plane at Sana’a. For the first time in nearly 18 months he knew what countryhe was in. He heard the question repeated twice more, as Salah Nasser Salim ‘Ali andMuhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah emerged onto the hot tarmac. He still could notsee them, and had not known they were on the plane with him, but he could hear oneof them shouting over and over again: “I am Bashmilah, I am Bashmilah, I am fromAden”.The three, all Yemeni nationals, had “disappeared” in 2003, and had been kept incomplete isolation – even from each other – in a series of secret detention centresapparently run by US agents. Senior Yemeni officials have told Amnesty Internationalthat they first heard of the men in May 2005, when the US Embassy in Yemeninformed them that the three would be flown to Sana’a and transferred to Yemenicustody the following day. No further information or evidence against the men wasprovided, but the Yemenis say they were instructed by the US to keep them incustody. All three continue to be held in a kind of extralegal limbo; they have notbeen charged with any offence, given any sentence, or brought before any court orjudge. The only improvement in their situation, they say, is that their families nowknow that they are alive.Muhammad al-Assad’s odyssey began on the night of 26 December 2003, in Dar-esSalaam, Tanzania, where he had lived since 1985. As he told Amnesty International,he had just sat down to dinner with his Tanzanian wife, Zahra Salloum, and herbrother and uncle. An immigration officer and two men from the state security forcescame to the door, and ordered Muhammad al-Assad to surrender his passport andmobile phone. As he crossed over to his office to get the passport, he was grabbedfrom behind, a hood was forced over his head, and his hands were cuffed behind his

back. He was thrown into the back of a car, which sped away. “I was veryfrightened,” he said, “very frightened, and kept asking what was happening to me.”His captors did not reply. They took him to a flat, and questioned him for some fourhours about his passport. He was then taken directly to a waiting airplane. Stillhooded, he could see nothing, but heard the roar of the engines. As he was pushed upthe stairs he asked where he was going. The guard told him: “we don’t know, we arejust following orders, there are high-ranking ones who are responsible”.Muhammad al-Assad thought it was probably a small plane, his head was pusheddown as he went through the door. He told Amnesty International he was toofrightened to ask any further questions, instead he prayed to have patience, until theauthorities discovered their mistake and let him go home. He is still waiting.Muhammad al-Assad calculates that he is about 45 years old. He has a short beard,and a perpetually anxious expression. His father described him as a “very gentle man,who is always laughing”. When Amnesty International interviewed him, in his cell atthe political security prison in al-Ghaydah, in the governate of al-Mahra in easternYemen, he was solemn, and so soft-spoken in his replies that he was sometimes hardto hear, but there was never even the ghost of a smile on his face.Tanzanian immigration authorities initially told Zahra Salloum that her husband hadbeen deported to Yemen because his passport was not valid, and this story wasrepeated in the local media.1When she phoned Muhammad al-Assad’s 75-year-oldfather, Abdullah al-Assad, in Yemen, he traveled the 1,300 km from al-Ghaydah tothe capital, Sana’a, to find his son. The Yemeni government gave him writtenassurances, which Amnesty International has seen, that his son had never entered thecountry. He carried on to Dar es Salaam, where he filed ahabeas corpuspetition withthe Tanzanian courts. He was eventually told by Tanzanian officials that his son hadbeen turned over to US custody, and that no one knew where he was.Two months earlier, in October 2003, Salah ‘Ali Nasser Salim ‘Ali and MuhammadFaraj Ahmed Bashmilah had been arrested in Jordan2, and held there briefly beforethey too were turned over to US custody. Their cases were first documented byAmnesty International in a report released in August 2005.3‘Dar deports 2,367 aliens’, Daily News (Tanzania), 30 December 2003; ‘Yemeni, Italians expelled’, TheGuardian (Tanzania), 30 December 2003.2Both were initially detained in Indonesia, see below.3USA/Jordan/Yemen: Torture and secret detention: Testimony of the “disappeared” in the “war on terror”, AIIndex: AMR 51/108/20051

Illegal detentions, rendition and reverse renditionAll three had entered the USA’s network of illegal detentions, secret transfers andunacknowledged prisons, where suspects are arbitrarily shuttled in and out of UScustody, in what journalist Stephen Grey called “a worldwide traffic in prisoners”.4According to a former senior US intelligence official, the rules of this game weresimple: “Grab whom you must. Do what you want.”5The goal of the network is not just to hold terrorist suspects and their supporters, butto collect intelligence through long-term interrogation, free from any legal restrictionsor judicial oversight. The bulk of the work is carried out at facilities under USmilitary control in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and Iraq, which togetherhold at least 11,000 people.6Most of them were detained in Afghanistan, Pakistanand Iraq, but others were transferred from countries including Albania, Bosnia,Croatia, Gambia, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Pakistan, Macedonia,Malaysia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia.7Long before Guantánamo opened its gates to “war on terror” detainees, however, theUSA had been secretly transferring terror suspects into the custody of other states,states where physical and psychological brutality feature prominently ininterrogations. Known to the US Administration as “extraordinary rendition,” and toits critics as the “outsourcing of torture”, the program has expanded considerably,reportedly under a classified directive signed by President Bush in late September2001.8It has been estimated that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), oftenStephen Grey, ‘United States: trade in torture’,Le Monde Diplomatique,April 2005Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command : The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, Harper Perennial, August 2005, p. 51.

6

Figures from the Second Periodic Report of the United States of America to the Committee Against Torture,Submitted by the United States of America to the Committee Against Torture, May 6, 2005. See also Dana Priestand Joe Stephens, ‘Secret World of U.S. Interrogation: Long History of Tactics in Overseas Prisons Is Coming toLight’, Washington Post, May 11, 2004, Page A0154

See pages 107-116 of USA: Human dignity denied,USA: Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability inthe ‘war on terror’,AMR 51/145/2004, 27 October 2004. "Extraordinary rendition" is proving increasinglycontroversial even within the US Congress. Congressman Edward Markey argued in an editorial in the BostonGlobe (12/03/2005) that: "Sending prisoners overseas to extract information through water torture, removal oftoenails and fingernails, beatings, and electrocution at the request of US officials is inhumane and must bestopped." However, bills in the House and Senate which would curtail the practice of obtaining perfunctorydiplomatic assurances from countries with an established record of torture stalled this year. AlthoughCongressman Markey was successful in attaching a number of spending restrictions on various bills to prohibit thefunds distributed by the spending bills from being spent on renditions, neither the House nor the Senate hasaddressed the substantive issue of diplomatic assurances. On 5 October 2005, by a vote of 90 to 9, the US Senate

using covert airplanes leased by fictional front companies,9has flown hundreds ofwar on terror suspects to countries including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar,Saudi Arabia, and Syria.10In another variation, sometimes called “reverse rendition”, US agents have abductedsuspects on foreign soil, or assumed custody of detainees from other countries, intransfers that completely bypass any legal process or human rights protections. Someof the victims of reverse rendition have later turned up in Guantánamo, but the mostsinister and least well-documented cases are those of the detainees who have simply“disappeared” after being detained by the USA or turned over to US custody.It has been widely reported that the US is holding a small coterie of some two to threedozen “high-value” detainees at secret CIA-run facilities outside the USA.11The USadmits that these men are in custody, but no one knows for sure where the likes ofalleged al-Qa’ida leaders Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and AbuZubaida are being held. The locations are deemed to be too sensitive even to berevealed to the leaders of the US House and Senate intelligence committees.12The cases of the three “disappeared” Yemenis documented in this report, however,suggest that the network of clandestine interrogation centres is not reserved solely forhigh-value detainees, but may be larger, more comprehensive and better organizedthan previously suspected.These three men were kept in at least four different secret facilities, which were likelyto have been in different countries, judging by the length of their connecting flights.There have been persistent reports that the USA operates secret detention centres inAfghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Thailand, Uzbekistan and other locationsin Eastern Europe13, as well as on the British Indian Ocean territory of DiegoGarcia14. The UK government has denied that there is a detention centre on Diegopassed an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, requiring humane treatment of detainees in US custodyor control. However, even if the amendment is agreed by the House and the Senate, President Bush has threatenedto veto the bill.Dana Priest and Joe Stephens, ‘Secret World of U.S. Interrogation: Long History of Tactics in Overseas PrisonsIs Coming to Light’, Washington Post, May 11, 2004, Page A0110119

Garcia, while the USA has been more equivocal. In a Defense Department Briefing inJuly 2004, Lawrence Di Rita, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense forPublic Affairs, was questioned about the existence of US detention centres hiddenfrom the ICRC. DiRita said categorically that “the ICRC has access “to all detaineeoperations under our [Department of Defense] control. And beyond that, I'm just notprepared to discuss it.” Pressed on whether detainees were held in secret on DiegoGarcia by other US agencies, he replied: “I don't know. I simply don't know.” TheUS State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the CIA have alldeclined to comment on these reports.As pressures mount on the US Administration to close Guantánamo, reform AbuGhraib prison in Iraq, and turn detention centres in Afghanistan over to the Afghangovernment, there is a risk that the pervasive disregard for human rights protections atthe heart of current detention policy will lead to more frequent recourse to secretmeasures, which can only lead to further grave violations of human rights.The pattern of illegal arrests, covert transfers and secret and incommunicado detentiondescribed in this report violates the most fundamental rights of detainees: the right notto be arbitrarily arrested, the right of access to lawyers, families, doctors, the right tohave families informed of arrest or place of detention, the right to be promptlybrought before a judge or other judicial official, the right to challenge the lawfulnessof detention and the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degradingtreatment, as guaranteed by a battery of international human rights standards, as wellas the US Constitution.Detention by proxy: arrests in Indonesia, Jordan and TanzaniaThe process by which the three men were screened for transfer into secret detentionsuggests that US agencies are placing considerable reliance on foreign security andintelligence services, most of which have been roundly criticized for their methods inthe US State Department’s own Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Eachone of the men – Muhammad al-Assad in Tanzania, and Salah ‘Ali and MuhammadBashmilah in Indonesia – was initially detained and questioned by immigrationofficials. A retired intelligence official has told Amnesty International that this is acommon investigative tactic, even within the USA. It is often the case, he said, thatforeign nationals have some visa irregularity that can justify questioning, andimmigration regulations in most countries are so arcane and confusing that even thosewith legitimate visas and passports can be made to think there might be some problemwith their status. Moreover, he added, “it’s a good opportunity to check the passport,both to try and confirm the identity and to give you a chance to see where they’ve

been. It also helps if you can have a look at their cellphones and see who they’ve beentalking to.”15In the case of Muhammad al-Assad, the connection that seems to have led to his longdetention was a tenuous link to a blacklisted charity. Muhammad al-Assad ran a smallbusiness in Dar es Salaam importing diesel engine parts, and renting out offices in asmall building he owned. Some six years before his arrest, he had leased space to theAl-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Saudi Arabian charity identified by the USA after9/11 as a possible link in terrorist funding. Muhammad al-Assad also signed aguarantee for the charity’s registration in Tanzania, but said that his only contact withthem after that was to collect the rent.16In the summer of 2003, he was in Dubai on business when his brother-in-law called totell him that the authorities had been asking questions about the charity. Muhammadal-Assad returned to Tanzania, but was not contacted by the police. In October, theimmigration authorities summoned him to their offices, telling him to bring hisTanzanian passport and mobile phone. They did not question him about hisimmigration status, only asked him about a man with a red car, who had recentlyvisited the Al-Haramain offices. Muhammad al-Assad said he had not seen him, andthey asked him to leave his passport, and return for it the following day. This he did,and heard nothing more until he was arrested in December.The detentions of Salah ‘Ali and Muhammad Bashmilah seem to have beenautomatically triggered when they admitted to having visited Afghanistan. Salah ‘Aliwas first taken into custody by Indonesian immigration officials in Jakarta in August2003, ostensibly for questioning about his visa, although he was initially detained inan intelligence services centre. He remained chained to the wall in a cell there,without food, for three days. His wife Aisha tried three times to visit him, but wasrefused access. He knew she was trying to call him, he told Amnesty International,because his mobile had been left outside his cell, just out of reach, and it rangincessantly until the batteries went dead.

Salah ‘Ali was transferred to a deportation centre, where he was held for three weeks,then given a ticket to Yemen via Thailand and Jordan. Aisha, an Indonesian national,was in her last month of pregnancy and could not travel with him. In Jordan, he wastaken off the plane, and questioned by the General Intelligence Department,Da’iratal-Mukhabarat al-‘Ammah(GID), who asked him right away if he had ever been inAfghanistan. He answered yes (there was already a stamp was in his passport, he toldus), and was taken into custody and interrogated for 10 days about “jihad inAfghanistan”. He told Amnesty International that the questions made no sense to him,because they didn’t relate to the same period he had spent there, so “I was torturedhorribly. It was very bad.”Salah ‘Ali described being suspended from the ceiling and having the soles of his feetbeaten so badly that when they took him down from the hooks he had to crawl back tohis cell.17He was stripped and beaten by a ring of masked soldiers with sticks. “Whenone got tired of hitting me, they would replace him,” he told Amnesty International.“They tried to force me to walk like an animal, on my hands and feet, and I refused,so they stretched me out on the floor and walked on me and put their shoes in mymouth”. Another time, he said, a guard noticed he had a bad foot, and forced him tostand on it throughout the night while they interrogated him: sometimes duringinterrogation they held plates of food near his face while they ate, although he was notfed; sometimes they put cigarettes out on his arm.After about 10 days the Jordanian guards hooded and shackled him, and stuffed foaminto his ears before driving him to an airstrip. He was taken onto a plane and laid outon his back on the floor or a stretcher, his arms chained to the floor. He flew for aboutthree or four hours, he says, and when he arrived, he was taken to see an English-speaking doctor, and then by English-speaking guards to his cell.Muhammad Bashmilah had first been arrested in Indonesia in August 2003, as he andhis wife stepped off a train in Surabaya; in his case too, his captors identifiedthemselves as immigration officials. Zahra, his Indonesian wife, was allowed to go,while Muhammad Bashmilah was moved to Jakarta to be questioned about hispassport and identity card, and more extensively about his movements since leavingYemen in 1999, including his three-month visit to Afghanistan in 2000.He was released in September, and he and his wife travelled to Jordan to meet hismother, who had gone to Amman to have a heart operation. On arrival in Jordan, hispassport was taken and he was told to report to the GID to collect it. He went severaltimes, but did not get his passport back. On his fourth visit, on 19 October 2003, hewas asked if he had ever been to Afghanistan; as soon as he said yes, he washandcuffed and taken to the intelligence detention centre.17

Muhammad Bashmilah is a small, vibrant man, about 38 years old, who speaksopenly, if caustically, about most aspects of his detention. On both occasions he hasbeen interviewed by Amnesty International, however, he has broken down in tears inthe attempt to describe his treatment in the GID’s cells in Jordan. A prison official inYemen told Amnesty International that he believed Muhammad Bashmilah had beentortured even more severely than Salah ‘Ali.After three days in custody, Muhammad Bashmilah said that he was allowed to seehis mother for 10 minutes. She later told him that she had returned the following dayonly to be told “your son is a terrorist”, and that he had been removed to Saudi Arabiaor Iraq.In fact, he says, he had been taken in the early hours of the morning from his cell to anairstrip about 30 minutes away. Already hooded, his clothes were cut “very harshly”from his body and replaced with blue clothing, and he was shackled and cuffed. Hesays he felt completely disoriented, still in shock over his treatment in Jordan, andvery frightened for his wife and mother.Although Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah ‘Ali were friends from Aden andIndonesia, they had not been held together in Jordan, and neither knew that the otherwas in custody.Amnesty International first raised the case of Muhammad Bashmilah’s“disappearance” in a letter to the Jordanian authorities in April of 2005, before he hadre-appeared in Yemen. There was no response, and no acknowledgement that he hadever been in Jordanian custody. Following the release of Amnesty International’sreport in August 2005, which included accounts from both Salah ‘Ali and MuhammadBashmilah of their detention in Jordan, the Jordanian GID claimed: “…the recentallegations on torturing Yemeni citizens (Saleh Naser Salm Ali and Mohammad FarajBashmela) highlighted the size of false allegations targeting Jordan, noting that theabovementioned Yemenis were NEVER detained at the GID detention center,however, they were merely deported for exceeding their residence permit, and left toIraq.”18As subsequent events make clear, however, neither of the men was deportedfrom Jordan, although both were transferred from Jordanian custody.

Transferred to US custodyThe men do not know where they were taken. They may well have been transferredout on the same plane, as they left at about the same time, both describe a small planewith US guards, and both say they travelled some three to four hours. From Ammanthey could have reached Iraq in that time, although they could just as easily haveended up in Sudan, Turkey or parts of Eastern Europe. In any case, it is clear thatthey arrived in the same place, on or about the same day. In separate interviews withAmnesty International, they both described a windowless, underground facility. Eachwas kept in isolation, in a cell measuring about 1.5 x 2m, containing a bucket for atoilet, a foam mattress and a Qur’an.During the six months they spent there, they left their cells only to be interrogated.They were asked over and over again about their activities in Afghanistan andIndonesia, and were shown dozens of photos, including of each other.If they found anyone they recognised in the photos, they were brought back for morequestioning, otherwise, they remained alone in their empty cells. MuhammadBashmilah says that he was once shown a photo of Taysir Alluni, the al-Jazeerajournalist, and told that if he said he knew him, his situation would improve19. “I didknow him,” he told Amnesty International with a grin, “but they found out it was onlyfrom the television, and there were no favours for me.” Neither one ever saw anyother detainee, although both believe that others were held there. MuhammadBashmilah said there were several interrogators, both men and women: all of themwere white, wore Western clothing, and spoke English with US accents. There werealso a number of different interpreters, some of them native Arabic speakers. “Theywere not all there for us”, he said.The third man, Muhammad al Assad, estimates that his initial flight from Dar esSalaam took about two to three hours. He recalls that they landed in a hot place, andhe thinks that one of the jailers who took him to the interrogation room spoke Arabicwith a Somali or Ethiopian accent, and that the bread he was given was typical of EastAfrica. But of his arrival, less than 12 hours after being dragged from his home, heremembers only fear and confusion. The guards brought him from the plane, and lefthim, still hooded and shackled, in what turned out to be his cell. “I was so afraid that Icouldn’t move,” he said, “so I stood very still there for a very long time until finallysomeone looked in and shouted in Arabic: ‘sit down’.”19

When they removed his cuffs and hood, he found he was in a large, dirty room, bareexcept for a foam mattress and some matting on the floor. He saw two small windowsup near the ceiling, about 20cm square, and there was a little hole in the door for hisfood to be handed through. He would be there for about two weeks. In what was tobecome a familiar pattern, no one spoke a word to him but his interrogator andtranslator.His interrogator at this location was a white, English-speaking woman, her translator awhite Western man; both appeared to be in their 30s and were dressed in civilianclothes. Muhammad al-Assad speaks a little English, and thinks both were from theUS.Muhammad al-Assad had three or four interrogation sessions with them, and said theinterrogator herself never threatened him, although the translator told him, when hecould not respond to a question: “you have to understand that your children will beorphans.” The translator was fluent in Arabic, although it was clearly not his nativetongue. Muhammad al-Assad said he once complimented him on his Arabic, and thetranslator retorted with a familiar Arabic saying: “the one who learns the other’slanguage avoids their tricks”.They quizzed him about al-Haramain and its employees, mostly concentrating on twomen, the current and former directors. They wanted to know all about the men’smovements, their friends and contacts, and relationship to Muhammad al-Assad. Theyalso asked many questions about al-Haramain’s activities. He says he told themeverything he knew, which wasn’t much, and they said they would be sending him toanother country. He took this to mean they would send him back to Tanzania.After about two weeks, however, he was given a Western-style shirt and trousers in aheavier fabric, and taken back to the airfield. This plane, he felt, was large, and he wasmade to lie on the floor or a bench. He remained hooded and cuffed, and hadsomething wrapped around his ears. He thinks the plane flew for a long time, perhapseight hours, then touched down for about an hour, then flew again for about threehours.When he was taken off the plane, he felt that the weather was much colder. His newcell was a bit larger, although completely windowless and empty, except for mattingon the floor. He did not have any blanket and was very cold. There was a toiletoutside his cell and he was taken there three times a day.After about nine days alone in his cell, the interrogation started. This time theinterrogator and translator were both white men, perhaps in their 40s, but thequestions remained exactly the same. He talked to no one else; the guards, who werealso English-speaking, came to bring him food and take him to the toilet, but neverspoke to him or answered any of his questions.Amnesty InternationalAI Index: AMR 51/177/2005

He stayed there for about two weeks, and was then taken by car to a place about 20minutes away. There he was put in a cell that was smaller and older, but otherwisevery similar, and he stayed there about three months. He was brought irregularly tothe same interrogator who had questioned him at the previous place, otherwise he didnot leave the room.“Black site” detentionThe last of Muhammad al-Assad’s secret transfers took place in what he estimates tobe late April 2004. The flight lasted some five or six hours; when the plane landed, hewas transferred to a helicopter, where he was thrown roughly to the floor. He says hefelt the presence of others on the floor with him. It is indeed possible that the othersincluded Salah ‘Ali and Muhammad Bashmilah, who were also transferred to theirfinal secret destination at about this time, and who also describe a flight landingfollowed by transfer in a helicopter. Salah ‘Ali now jokes about it, and calls it the lastleg of his world tour. Muhammad Bashmilah says this flight took place between 22and 24 April.Descriptions of the new facility and its detention regime were given to AmnestyInternational separately by the three men; Muhammad al-Assad has never met orspoken to Salah ‘Ali and Muhammad Bashmilah. Their accounts are cohesive andconsistent; whether or not they arrived on the same day, they were clearly held in thesame place.It was no makeshift military camp but a purpose-built facility, or at least one that hadbeen extensively refurbished in an effort to make it as anonymous as possible. Therewere no pictures or ornaments on the walls, no floor coverings, no windows, nonatural light. The only clue to its construction, according to Salah ‘Ali, was that itwas not Arab-built, as the toilets faced the direction of Mecca. The description of thefacility tallies with a Washington Post report of the covert prison system run by theCIA, in which secret detention facilities in some eight countries are referred to as“black sites”.20Once again, the men were held in complete isolation, and never spoke a word toanyone except their interrogators. In a bizarre twist, the silent guards were covered inblack from head to toe – Muhammad Bashmilah described them as “ninjas” – andcommunicated only by hand gestures. It is a description that would seem like pure

fantasy if it had not been corroborated by other detainees who have spent time insecret US detention.21Inside their cells, there was a constant low-level hum of white noise from theloudspeakers, which sometimes played western music and, towards the end of theirstay, occasional verses from the Qur’an. With artificial light kept on 24 hours a day,morning, noon and night were marked only by the kinds of meals served, or because itwas time to pray.There was nothing haphazard or makeshift about the detention regime, it wascarefully designed to induce maximum disorientation, dependence and stress in thedetainees. The men were subjected to extreme sensory deprivation; for over a yearthey did not know what country they were in, whether it was night or day, whether itwas raining or sunny. They spoke to no one but their interrogators, throughtranslators, and no one spoke to them. For the first six to eight months, they spentnearly every waking hour staring at the four blank walls of their cells, leaving only togo to interrogation, and once a week, to the showers.The men were all given a Qur’an, a watch, a prayer mat and prayer schedules, andtold the direction of Mecca. Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah ‘Ali both said that thewatch and schedule were manipulated by a few minutes each month to make sure thetimes didn’t correspond exactly to their actual location.By the last four to six months of their stay, even the interrogators had run out ofquestions, and formal interrogation sessions stopped almost completely. There weretimes when they spoke to no one at all for weeks on end. Muhammad al-Assad saysthat one of the interrogators visited him in his cell a few times, to ask if he neededanything. He always asked why he was there, and the interrogator always replied:“God brought you here and only God can bring you out”.None of the men ever saw each other, or any other detainee, although Muhammad al-Assad remembers that once the electricity went off, and he heard different voicesshouting in Arabic. In any case, the system they describe could not have beenmaintained solely for the purpose of interrogating three low-level detainees. In theirdaily routines, the men began to pick up some indications of the capacity of thefacility. All three have told Amnesty International that during the final months of their21

stay, they were given a multi-page list of books, from which they could chooseseveral to keep in their cells. Muhammad al-Assad thinks the list contained some 600titles, in different languages, including the three he recognizes (Arabic, English andSwahili). It’s a generous reading list by any standards. Although videos were not onthe list, Salah ‘Ali was told that there were some available, so he asked for a film onthe life of the prophet, called “The Message”. He was taken to a small room to see ita few days later, again suggesting that the facility had the capacity to maintain asignificant stock of books and videos.The men were taken to shower every Friday. Muhammad Bashmilah says they weregiven two cotton ear swabs each week, and each week he counted the number ofswabs left in the bin, eventually concluding that there could be up to 20 others usinghis shower room. He also said that loud music was played during the 15 minutes or soeach detainee spent in the shower room, and that counting the musical interludes alsoled him to conclude that about 20 people were held in his section. He has no idea,however, whether the facility may have contained more than one section.During the last four months of his captivity, Muhammad al-Assad says, he was finallyallowed to take some exercise. He was given a ball and taken to a small hall to playfootball on his own for half an hour three times a week. At about the same time, hemet the new Prison Director. “He said he had come from the US, for the sake of theprisoners to see who is innocent and who is guilty,” Muhammad al-Assad said. “Hewas quite harsh at our first meeting, but the next time he was kinder, I think he readmy file. He said that I was at the top of the list to be released.”Salah ‘Ali describes a similar regime, although he was convinced that the prison wasunderground. He was interrogated only for the first six weeks, and throughout thistime, he said, he remained in shackles, day and night. Sometimes, he told AmnestyInternational, even when he was taking his weekly shower, the guards would cuff oneof his arms up over his head, and force him to wash using one hand. He says he wenton hunger strike for 29 days to force the authorities “to recognize I was there and toget some improvements”. He was eventually taken to another cell, where a tube wasput up his nose and he was force fed. Afterwards, he says, he was given a blanket andhis leg irons were removed.

Torture, ill-treatment and “disappearance”: violations of international lawNone of the men has alleged that they were beaten at this facility, but that does notmake the regime they endured benign or humane. Torture and ill-treatment take manyforms. Prolonged isolation has been shown to cause depression, paranoia, aggression,hallucinations and suicide. The psychological trauma can last a lifetime.22Where thedetainee has been “disappeared”, the effects of enforced solitude are compounded bya pervasive sense of uncertainty and anxiety about the future, which can be similarlydestructive.23Incommunicado detention has been condemned by human rights bodies, and by theUnited Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, as a human rights violation that alsofacilitates other violations such as torture or ill-treatment. Related practices, such ashooding, cuffing and shackling, isolation and “white noise” impair the sight, thehearing and the sense of smell of the individual who is subjected to it, lead todisorientation and an increased sense of vulnerability, and cause mental and physicalsuffering.Secret detention is prohibited under international human rights standards. Principle 6of the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal,Arbitrary and Summary Executions states that "governments shall ensure that personsdeprived of their liberty are held in officially recognized places of custody, and thataccurate information on their custody and whereabouts, including transfers, is madepromptly available to their relatives and lawyers or other persons of confidence."24The Human Rights Committee, in an authoritative statement on the prohibition ontorture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, has stated that "to guarantee theeffective protection of detained persons, provisions should be made for detainees to beheld in places officially recognized as places of detention and for their names andIn 2004, a group of psychologists and psychiatrists examined eight people being detained under anti-terroristlegislation in the UK. They found “that serious damage to the health of all the detainees they have examined hasoccurred and is inevitable under a regime which consists of indefinite detention.” All of the detainees “now sufferfrom significant levels of depression and anxiety. The symptoms are of clinical severity and have shown adeterioration over time.” Most of the detainees had suicidal thoughts, some had attempted to hang themselves, andseveral developed significant psychotic symptoms. The study also concluded that: “Deterioration in mood state isclearly linked to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness which is an integral aspect of indefinite detention.” SeeProfessor Ian Robbins, Dr James MacKeith, Professor Michael Kopelman, Dr Clive Meux, Dr Sumi Ratnam, DrRichard Taylor, Dr Sophie Davison and Dr David Somekh,The Psychiatric Problems of Detainees under the 2001Antiterrorism Crime and Security Act,13 October 2004,http://www.statewatch.org/news/2004/nov/belmarsh-mh.pdf,accessed 5 January 2005. The report was endorsed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.23Combating torture: a manual for action, Amnesty International, 2003. See also Human Rights First, Behind theWire: An Update toEnding Secret Detentions, March 2005, p 30.http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/PDF/behind-the-wire-033005.pdf24Recommended by the UN Economic and Social Council resolution 1989/65 of 24 May 1989.22

places of detention… to be kept in registers readily available and accessible to thoseconcerned, including relatives and friends".25The UN Special Rapporteur on torture has also said that "the maintenance of secretplaces of detention should be abolished under law. It should be a punishable offencefor any official to hold a person in a secret and/or unofficial place of detention."26“Disappearances” are crimes under international law, involving multiple human rightsviolations. In certain circumstances they are crimes against humanity, and can beprosecuted in international criminal proceedings. The defining characteristic of a“disappearance” is that it puts the victim beyond the protection of the law, while at thesame time concealing the violations from outside scrutiny, making them harder toexpose and condemn, and allowing governments to avoid accountability. The UnitedNations General Assembly has said that enforced disappearance “constitutes anoffence to human dignity, a grave and flagrant violation of human rights andfundamental freedoms ...”27The ICRC has said of “disappearances”, that “no one hasthe right to keep that person's fate or whereabouts secret or to deny that he or she isbeing detained. This practice runs counter to the basic tenets of internationalhumanitarian law and human rights law.”28The UN, “Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from EnforcedDisappearances” of 1992 states that "any act of enforced disappearance is an offenceto human dignity", which "placesthe persons subjected thereto outside the protectionof the law and inflicts severe suffering on them and their families. It constitutes aviolation of the rules of international law guaranteeing, inter alia, the right torecognition as a person before the law, the right to liberty and security of the personand the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degradingtreatment or punishment. It also violates or constitutes a grave threat to the right tolife".25

Human Rights Committee, General Comment 20, Article 7 (Forty-fourth session, 1992), Compilation of GeneralComments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, UN Doc. HRI\GEN\1\Rev.1at 30 (1994), para. 11. Accurate and detailed registers of detainees are required under international law andstandards, including the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and the UN Body ofPrinciples for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, the GenevaConvention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of 12 August 1949 (Third Geneva Convention), Articles122 to 125 and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (FourthGeneva Convention), Articles 136 to 141.26UN Doc. E/CN.4/2002/76, 27 December 2001, Annex 1.27

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines the crime againsthumanity of “enforced disappearance of persons” as “thearrest, detention orabduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or acquiescence of, a Stateor a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation offreedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with theintention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period oftime.”29The UN Committee Against Torture has determined that the uncertainty regarding thecircumstances surrounding their loved ones’ fate “causes the families of disappearedpersons serious and continuous suffering”.30This is certainly the case for the families of these three men. They have finallydiscovered that the men are alive, but are still suffering the emotional and economicimpact of their “disappearance” and continued detention. When Muhammad al-Assadwas transferred to Yemen, his wife Zahra Salloum and their five children came fromtheir home in Dar es Salaam to the remote and dusty town of al-Ghaydah. He hadnever seen his youngest daughter, born after his arrest; the family named her Sabra,meaning “patient one”. They all live in the house of Muhammad al-Assad’s father,with his three wives and 10 of their children. Zahra Salloum speaks no Arabic, andnone of the women in the family speak Swahili. She prepares meals for Muhammadal-Assad every day, but is only able to visit him in the prison once or twice a week.The Indonesian wives of Salah ‘Ali and Muhammad Bashmilah are even lessfortunate. Salah ‘Ali’s wife, Aisha, had a baby girl after he was detained, and he hasyet to even see her, although he has now been permitted a couple of telephoneconversations with his wife. The family does not have enough money to travel toYemen, and without him, they have no means of support in Indonesia. They aredestitute, he says, “sometimes they cannot afford milk for the little girl”.Zahra, Muhammad Bashmilah’s wife in Indonesia, has also been unable to travel toYemen, and he has not seen her for more than two years. His father died in September2004, without ever finding out what had happened to his son, and his mother remainsextremely ill. She did not go ahead with her heart operation because of his arrest and“disappearance” in Jordan, and now also suffers what appears to be a thyroid ailment.29

Despite her frailty, she insists on making the trek to the Central Prison in Aden, nearlyevery day, in the intense midday heat, to see her son. He has asked her to stop, but sherefuses. “She suffers a lot to see me”, he admits, and says he is consumed withworries over her health.Arbitrary detention in Yemen under US directionThe three men were sent to Yemen on 5 May 2005. Rajih Hunaish, theUndersecretary of the Central Organ for Political Security, told Amnesty Internationalthat the Yemeni government was notified of the return only 24 hours before the planelanded at Sana’a. It is not clear whether the Yemeni government knows the origin ofthe flight, when asked for a flight plan Rajih Hunaish said it would indeed be normalfor a flight plan to be filed, but that they had no information about this specific flight,and his office would have to check into it further. Amnesty International has not yetreceived any response.The men were held in the political security prison at Sana’a for about two weeksbefore Muhammad al-Assad was transferred to al-Ghaydah; he has still never metSalah ‘Ali and Muhammad Bashmilah, who were sent to Aden. A number of Yemeniofficials, including the Chairman of the Central Organ for Political Security, Ghalibal-Qamish, have told Amnesty International that US officials had given them explicitinstructions on the continued detention of the three men, and that they are “awaitingfiles” from the US, so that they can try them. When asked if the men would bereleased if the US requested it, Rajih Hunaish said, without hesitation, “yes”. He toldAmnesty International that notification of the transfer in May, and further instructionson the detention of the three men, came from the US Embassy in Sana’a.Amnesty International met US Embassy officials in Sana’a, and submitted additionalquestions to the Embassy in writing. In his reply, the Chief, Political/Economic andCommercial Section noted: “The U.S. Government relinquishes all custody andcontrol over detainees transferred from Guantanamo Bay to the exclusive control ofanother government. There are no conditions attached.” However, when asked if thismeant that the US was confirming that the men had been released from Guantánamo,the official replied: “As a matter of policy, I am not permitted to talk about the detailsof any particular case; I can only share information on general policies.”31Amnesty International does not accept the assertion that the men were held inGuantánamo, a claim which continues to be repeated in the Yemeni press and by31

some Yemeni authorities, and which the US Embassy now appears to be promoting.However, the men could not have come from Guantánamo, the USA did not transferany Guantánamo detainees to Yemen in May 2005, in fact, there were no detaineetransfers at all on record between 28 April and 20 July. There was no ICRCnotification of their detention, and they were never given access to ICRC officials.Although the ICRC is mandated to follow up on all cases of detainees transferredfrom Guantánamo to third countries, they have not contacted these three men sincetheir arrival in Yemen.32The men’s own description of the facilities, climate,detention regime, and length of their return flight, all indicate they were never inGuantánamoAmnesty International first spoke to Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah ‘Ali on 20June 2005. In a report issued six weeks later, Amnesty International revealed thatYemeni officials had confirmed that their continued detention in Yemen, and that of athird man, Walid al Qadasi, who was returned from Guantánamo in April 2004, waswithout legal basis, and at the request of the US authorities.33In late July, MuhammadBashmilah says, they were suddenly moved from the Central Prison in Aden to thePolitical Security Prison in Sana’a. He was told they were going there to be released,so he gave his few belongings to other prisoners, only to find that they had only beentaken to Sana’a for questioning. (Walid al Qadasi, the third case in AmnestyInternational’s August report, was also brought to Sana’a, although Muhammad al-Assad, who had not at that time been interviewed by Amnesty International, was not.)Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah ‘Ali were interrogated in Sana’a about thecircumstances of their arrest and the reasons for their transfer back to Yemen, thenreturned to Aden, where Muhammad Bashmilah was put into solitary confinement forfive days. Since then, he and Salah ‘Ali have been held separately. He believes thesudden trip to Sana’a was aimed at intimidating them, “and if we go on talking to younow”, he added dryly, “we might be here for life”.In September 2005, Minister of the Interior Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi announcedthat the men had been accused of belonging to an international terror group and thattheir trial would begin “once the United States had sent through their files”. Officialsof the Political Security have also repeatedly told Amnesty International that they areawaiting files from the US before bringing any charges against the men.

Muhammad Bashmilah says he finds this all confusing. “If we were guilty,” he saidsimply, “the Americans would never have released us.” He says that US officials hadgiven him the choice of being handed over to Yemen or to another country, and hehad insisted on Yemen because he was sure that he would be helped and welcomed athome. “More than four months have passed,” he said, “and we are still detained, butwe hear that others who have been returned to European countries have been releasedand that things have been done to facilitate their return, and this is the opposite towhat we have here.”There have been no investigations into any accusations against the men, no chargeshave been made, none of the men have seen a lawyer or been brought before a judge.Anxiety and uncertainty over their futures, and the fear that their fate may remainunresolved, continue to torment the men and their families. All of them wouldwelcome the prospect of trial. “If I am guilty of anything, try me and I will spend therest of my life in jail,” said Muhammad al-Assad, “only give me a trial”.“If there really are any charges,” said Muhammad Bashmilah, “we are ready to defendourselves… The Interior Minister says he is waiting for an American decision on ourcases. But we are Yemenis in Yemen, why is he waiting for the Americans todecide?”

TortureThe US and Jordanian authorities should:¶Immediately end all acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degradingtreatment of punishment, and make it clear to all officials involved in thetreatment or interrogation of detainees and prisoners that such acts areprohibited absolutely and will not be tolerated;¶Investigate all allegations of torture and other ill-treatment of MuhammadAbdullah Salah al-Assad, Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah and SalahNasser Salim ‘Ali and ensure that anyone found responsible is brought tojustice;Prohibit the return or transfer of persons to places where they are at risk oftorture or other ill-treatment;Provide full reparation including restitution, compensation and rehabilitation,and satisfaction.The Yemeni authorities should:Ensure that no statement coerced as a result of torture or other ill-treatment,including long-term indefinite detention without trial, or any other informationor evidence obtained directly or indirectly as the result of torture or ill-treatment, is admitted as evidence against any defendant, except theperpetrator of the human rights violation in question;Ensure that the men have access to, and the means to obtain, full reparationincluding restitution, compensation and rehabilitation, and satisfaction.

Charge or trialThe US authorities should:Clarify the current legal status of former secret detainees MuhammadAbdullah Salah al-Assad, Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah and SalahNasser Salim ‘Ali. If US policy is to relinquish all custody and control overdetainees transferred to the control of another government, it should stateclearly that this is the case with regard to these three men, and emphasise thatthere are no US conditions attached to their release;State clearly that there are no conditions attached to the release of WalidMuhammad Shahir Muhammad al-Qadasi, who was released fromGuantánamo in April 2004, and who remains in detention in Yemen withoutcharge or trial;Withdraw all requests or demands to the Yemeni government for thecontinued detention of persons, unless it is with a view to prompt prosecutionfor internationally recognizable criminal offences and in accordance withinternational standards for fair trial;Release all detainees in US custody at undisclosed locations unless they are tobe charged with internationally recognizable criminal offences and brought totrial promptly and fairly, in full accordance with relevant internationalstandards, and without recourse to the death penalty.