Human Rights Group Alleges US Military Using Ships as Offshore Prisons in War on Terror
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The human rights group Reprieve has accused the United States government of using military ships as offshore prisons, to hold an unknown number of individuals detained in the war on terror (ranging from Africa to south and central Asia, and possibly southeast Asia). It names two specific vessels as likely involved, and suspects as many as 17 have been used in this way. The group has called on the US administration of Pres. George W. Bush to name all individuals held, their location, condition, reason for detention and to permit a normal criminal defense.
The group has also alleged at least 200 new cases of “extraordinary rendition”, in one form or another, since 2006, when Pres. Bush announced that the procedure had been abandoned. Pressure is mounting in Europe and in North America for inquiries into the exact number and status of all those detained, and an accounting for what processes have been used to jail, transfer, interrogate and/or try them.
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The emergence of allegations regarding “floating prisons” brings US detention and interrogation back into question, and has raised concern about the involvement of British facilities in the Indian Ocean, in the wake of denials about such involvement. According to the Guardian newspaper:
Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.
Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.
The group reportedly links the rendition process to “abductions” carried out by local security force, and that were said to be widespread in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, during the time in which the ships were alleged to have been in use as extrajurisdictional prisons. The legal director for Reprieve, Clive Stafford Smith, is quoted as having said:
“By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.”
A spokesman for the US Navy has said Naval vessels are not being used as prisons, but has acknowledged “for a few days” when the detention system in the “war on terror” was getting underway. No legal justification for those detentions —where there was no due process, no charges, legal counsel or hearings— is available, though the Bush administration has defended its right to detain “enemy combatants”, by standards that bear little resemblance to American Constitutional provisions.
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