Home > Rumsfeld issued order to hide Iraq detainee - report
Rumsfeld issued order to hide Iraq detainee - report
by Open-Publishing - Friday 18 June 20041 comment
U S Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered at least one inmate of an Iraqi detention center to be kept off the prison’s rolls, The New York Times reported today effectively making the prisoner a so-called ’’ghost detainee’’.
Quoting senior Pentagon and intelligence officials, the paper said the prisoner, suspected of being a high-value terrorist, was hidden along with other ’’ghost detainees’’, largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment and conditions.
The Times said Rumsfeld’s order last November came at the request of George Tenet, the CIA director who resigned this month. The prisoner, a reputed senior officer of Ansar al-Islam who has not been named, was held at Camp Cropper, on the outskirts of Baghdad International Airport, officials said.
Washington has linked Ansar al-Islam to al Qaeda and blames the group for some attacks in Iraq.
In March, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, the Army officer who investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criticized the practice of allowing ghost detainees as ’’deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law’’.
Pentagon and intelligence officials told the Times the decision to hold the detainee without registering him — at least initially — was in keeping with the administration’s legal opinion about the status of those viewed as an active threat in wartime.
’’Once he was placed in military custody, people lost track of him,’’ a senior intelligence official told the Times. ’’The normal review processes that would keep track of him didn’t.’’ The detainee was described by the official as someone ’’who was actively planning operations specifically targeting U.S. forces and interests both inside and outside of Iraq.’’ The man is still in prison but has only been questioned once while in detention.
The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told the paper that officials at Camp Cropper questioned their superiors several times in recent months about what to do with the suspect.
The Times said that only in the last two weeks had a senior Rumsfeld aide asked the CIA to deal with the suspect.
A senior intelligence official said ’’the matter is currently under discussion’’.
NEW YORK (Reuters)
Forum posts
18 June 2004, 23:29
If and should we have " Ghost Detainees " , why then did the U.S. government not then detain O’Sama Bin Ladens’ wife and children in New York immeadiatly after the attacks on 9-11 instead of having them secretly gathered together and flown out of the country ? Would (it) not have been a unique situation to have kept them here as a power play against the terrorist "angst " and to literally hold them as pawns , and to then indict the family as possible witnesses in the horrors commited that day ? ..........and the wife and daughters of Sadham Hussein should to be turned over to the United States government as potential witnesses and as possible conspirators as well , they did gain , as individuals , from all the corruptions and crimes committed by Sadham and his sons.............not unlike the wives and family members of Mafia members here in our country when they are held accountable for when one of those spouses are arrested and brought to trial for crimes . Ghost Detainees may exist , but we must wonder why some of the most notable beneficieries to world crimes are allowed to go free , the families of criminals should too be accountable for their " takes " of such ............if I were an embezeler and convicted of such , my family would loose all the properties and items purchased with said monies , and possibly stand trial too as known accompliances . END