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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: "We'll make you see death" A harrowing account from a man the CIA handed over to Jordan -- smuggled from prison on tiny paper -- exposes U.S. complicity in torture. A message written by Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi, smuggled from prison, describing Sharqawi's torture by Jordanian intelligence. April 10, 2008 | On a recent trip to Amman, Jordan, during a visit to the home of someone who had been detained by the Jordanian intelligence service in 2002, I was given two very thin strips of paper covered with Arabic writing and marked with a thumbprint. Curled up into a tight spiral, they were no bigger than the cap of a pen. My contact, who had smuggled the papers out of intelligence detention a few years previously, told me that the message therein had been written by a prisoner who had been detained with him. He said it gave a detailed account of that person's experiences. That evening, in my hotel room, an Egyptian colleague translated the text, word for word. Stunned by its contents, I transcribed the message into electronic form and sent it into cyberspace for safekeeping. The message's author was a Yemeni terrorism suspect named Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi, who was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002. Though the message was undated, it was clear from the narrative that it had been written in October 2002. Sharqawi said that he had been delivered to Jordan by the CIA. Unknown to the outside world, he was held as a secret prisoner by the Jordanian intelligence service: unregistered, cut off from all communication and hidden during visits by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the note, which he managed to slip to my contact without his captors noticing, he gave what he called a "short summary of my sufferings." "They beat me up in a way that does not know mercy," Sharqawi wrote, referring to his Jordanian captors, "and they're still beating me. They threatened me with electricity, with snakes and dogs ... [They said] we'll make you see death." Sharqawi described his interrogations, explaining that the Jordanians were feeding his responses back to the CIA. "Every time that the interrogator asks me about a certain piece of information, and I talk," Sharqawi said, "he asks me if I told this to the Americans. And if I say no he jumps for joy, and he leaves me and goes to report it to his superiors, and they rejoice." I didn't dare leave Sharqawi's note in my hotel room, so I carried it in my purse for the two weeks that I remained in Jordan. During that time, I interviewed several Jordanians who had been held with Sharqawi and other prisoners who had been handed over to Jordan by the CIA. Former detainees spoke of a period, in 2002-2003, when the third floor of the intelligence service's detention facility was "full" of foreign prisoners who had been delivered by the CIA. Although the prisoners had been held in solitary confinement, they had managed to communicate by knocking on cell walls and speaking surreptitiously through cell windows. How did it come to pass that these men -- non-Jordanians all -- had been brought to Jordan? The practice of extraordinary rendition, or turning over terrorist suspects abroad, goes back to the Clinton administration, when the CIA transferred several Egyptian terrorist suspects from countries such as Albania and Croatia to Egypt. After Sept. 11, 2001, however, the CIA's rendition practices changed. Rather than returning people to their home countries to face "justice" (albeit justice that included physical abuse and grossly unfair trials), the CIA began handing people over to third-party countries to be detained and interrogated -- countries known to use torture. Jordan is not the only country to which the CIA has sent prisoners for proxy detention. Egypt has held several such prisoners, and Morocco is believed to have held some. Yet the Jordanian intelligence service has long had an exceptionally close and cooperative relationship with the CIA, so the CIA relied heavily on Jordan for holding prisoners outside of the protection of the laws. Largely through my interviews in Jordan -- piecing together accounts by former and current prisoners -- I was able to identify 13 other non-Jordanians who, like Sharqawi, were apparently rendered to Jordan from American custody in the years that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. In all likelihood, the actual number of rendered suspects was higher, given the secrecy of the detentions and the enormous difficulties that detainees faced in communicating. None of the detainees whom I learned of had been held after 2004 -- though, again, the secrecy means that a full and comprehensive picture of the detainees and timeline will take time to emerge. There could be many more about whom we do not already know.
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#1. To: Ada, *WAR CRIMES* (#0)
'Individuals should not take responsibility for their own defense. That’s what the police are for. ... If I oppose individuals defending themselves, I have to support police defending them. I have to support a police state.”' Alan Dershowitz
bttt
1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
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