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WORLD> America
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US holds terror suspects on prison ships
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-02 22:31 LONDON - The United States is operating "floating prisons" to detain those arrested in its war on terror, The Guardian reported Monday. Information about the operation of prison ships was revealed through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the European Council and related parliamentary bodies, as well as testimonies of prisoners, the report said. Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. On Sunday, the US government was urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained. According to the report, an analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organization Reprieve, claims that there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when US President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped. According to a research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001, and detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations. The Reprieve research includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantanamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantanamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantanamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantanamo." Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said "they choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights." |
