US ‘interrogating prisoners at secret jails in Yemen’

THE US may be in breach of international law after it emerged its forces are interrogating detainees at secret jails in Yemen which are rife with claims of torture.

Hundreds of men swept up in the hunt for al-qaeda militants have disappeared into a network of black sites in southern Yemen, where abuse is routine and torture extreme, an Associated Press investigation found.

Senior American defence officials acknowledged that US forces had been involved in interrogations of prisoners in Yemen but denied any participation in or knowledge of human rights abuses.

The AP documented at least 18 clandestine lockups across southern Yemen run by the United Arab Emirates or by Yemeni forces created and trained by the Gulf nation, drawing on accounts from former detainees, families of prisoners, civil rights lawyers and Yemeni military officials.

All are either hidden or off limits to Yemen’s government, which has received Emirati help in its civil war with rebels. The secret prisons are inside military bases, ports, an airport, private villas and even a nightclub. Some detainees have been flown to an Emirati base across the Red Sea in Eritrea.

At one detention complex at Riyan airport in the city of Mukalla, former inmates described being crammed into shipping containers smeared with faeces and blindfolded for weeks on end.

They said they were beaten, trussed up on a “grill,” in which the victim is tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire, and sexually assaulted.

Several US defence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that American forces did participate in interrogations of detainees at locations in Yemen, provide questions for others to ask, and receive transcripts of interrogations from Emirati allies.

None of the dozens of people interviewed by AP said American interrogators were involved in the actual abuses.

Nevertheless, obtaining intelligence that may have been extracted by torture inflicted by another party would violate the International Convention Against Torture and could qualify as war crimes, said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who served as special counsel to the Defence Department until last year.