Secret prisons
Goodman, a law professor at NYU, who served as special counsel to the Defence Department until last year. “These reports are hauntingly familiar and potentially devastating in their legal and policy implications.”
The UAE is part of a Saudi-led, USbacked coalition meant to help Yemen’s Government fight Shia rebels known as Houthis, who overran the north of the country. At the same time, the coalition is helping the US target al-Qaeda’s local branch, one of the most dangerous in the world, as well as Isis (Islamic State) militants.
That is not what the families and lawyers in Yemen say. More than 400 men have vanished after being arrested in Mukalla. In Aden, an estimated 1500 have been detained, according to rights lawyers who believe most are still in custody.
The AP interviewed 10 former prisoners, a dozen officials in the Government, military and security services and nearly 20 relatives of detainees. The chief of Riyan prison, who is well known as Emirati, did not reply to requests for comment.
A small contingent of American forces routinely moves in and out of Yemen, the Pentagon says, operating largely along the southern coast. Under the Trump Administration, the US has escalated drone strikes in the country to more than 80 so far this year, up from around 21 in 2016, the US military said. At least two commando raids were ordered against alQaeda, including one in which a Navy SEAL was killed along with at least 25 civilians.
A US role in questioning detainees in Yemen has not been previously acknowledged.
A Yemeni officer who said he was deployed for a time on a ship off the coast said he saw at least two detainees brought to the vessel for questioning. The detainees were taken below deck, where he was told American “polygraph experts” and “psychological experts” conducted interrogations. He did not have access to the lower decks. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.
Senior US defence officials denied the military conducts any interrogations of Yemenis on ships.
The Yemeni officer did not specify if the “Americans on ships” were US military or intelligence personnel, private contractors, or some other group.
Two senior Yemen officials, one in Hadi’s Interior Ministry and another in the 1st Military District, based in Hadramawt province where Mukalla is located, also said Americans were conducting interrogations at sea, as did a former senior security official in Hadramawt.
Former detainees and one Yemen official provided the AP with the names of five suspects held at black sites who were interrogated by Americans.
One detainee, who was not questioned by US personnel, said he was subject to constant beatings by his Yemeni handlers but was interrogated only once.
“I would die and go to hell rather than go back to this prison,” he said. “They wouldn’t treat animals this way. If it was bin Laden, they wouldn’t do this.”
The UAE was one of the countries involved in the CIA’s torture and rendition programme. These reports are hauntingly familiar and potentially devastating in their legal and policy implications. Ryan Goodman