Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Prison Ships ?



An article that came across my news feed:

The United States has been secretly detaining terrorism suspects aboard floating "prison ships," a British legal charity charged on Monday, but the Pentagon described the report as inaccurate.

The charity Reprieve, citing sources including U.S. military officials, parliamentary bodies and former prisoners, said it believed the U.S. government had operated as many as 17 shipboard prisons, particularly in the Indian Ocean region.

"Prisoners have been interrogated under tortuous conditions before being rendered to other, often undisclosed locations," Reprieve said, adding that it would issue a detailed report later this year.

Department of Defense spokesman J.D. Gordon called the report "inaccurate and misleading."

"We do not operate detention facilities on board Navy ships. DoD detention facilities are in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo," he said.

The United States has denied torturing terrorism suspects, but a Justice Department report last month cited FBI agents as warning that some CIA questioning techniques were "borderline torture."

The military has acknowledged holding John Walker Lindh, a U.S. citizen accused of being a Taliban and al Qaeda supporter, on ships after his capture in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Lindh was held on two ships, the Bataan and Peleliu. The government says he was given medical treatment and was not tortured. Gordon said the ships were a considered safe place to question Lindh away from the battlefield.

Reprieve named three others, including Australian David Hicks, as suspects believed to have once been held on U.S. "prison ships." It cited a former prisoner held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as saying about 50 others were held on the Bataan.

Gordon said fewer than 10 terrorism suspects were held, on the Bataan and Peleliu, in late 2001 and early 2002. He also dismissed Reprieve's count of up to 17 ships as misleading

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My thought. We really have no clue what might be going on and what is not going on.

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