‘Walking dead’: Inside Yemen secret prisons
U.S. confirms role in interrogations but denies knowledge of human rights abuses
MUKALLA, Yemen — They call it the “grill”: The victim is tied to a spit like a roast and spun furiously within a circle of fire. It is just one of the terrors inflicted by interrogators on detainees in Yemen who are routinely beaten with wires and were kept in filthy shipping containers, blindfolded for months — all by one of America’s closest counterterrorism allies. ¶ Abuse and torture are rife in a network of secret prisons across southern Yemen where hundreds are detained in the hunt for al-Qaida militants, former detainees told The Associated Press. The network is run by the United Arab Emirates and by Yemeni forces it created, with at least 18 lockups hidden away in military bases, air and seaports, in the basements of private villas and even in a nightclub, according to accounts from former detainees, families of prisoners, civil rights lawyers and Yemeni military officials. defense officials confirmed guards against all the detainees, the last week that U.S. forces AP found. He also said he was have interrogated some detainees inside a metal shipping container in Yemen but denied any participation when the guards lit a fire underneath in or knowledge of human to fill it with smoke. rights abuses. The American officials One fellow inmate tried to slit his confirmed that the U.S. provides own throat; another tried to hang questions to the Emiratis and himself, he said. t receives transcripts of their interrogations. He and the other former detainees A Yemeni witness of spoke on condition of anonymity American interrogations also told for fear of being arrested again. the AP that no torture took place They said that when they were during those sessions where he was released, Emirati officers forced present. them to sign a document not to talk
Still, the American role raises publicly about what they had concerns about violations of international endured. law. Obtaining intelligence “When I left the container, it was that may have been extracted by like escaping death,” he said. torture inflicted by another party Lawyers and families estimate would violate the International nearly 2,000 men have disappeared Convention Against Torture, which into the system. The AP interviewed prohibits complicity, said Ryan 10 former prisoners, as well Goodman, a law professor at New as a dozen officials in the Yemeni York University who served as government, military and security special counsel to the Defense services and nearly 20 relatives of Department until last year. detainees.
Pressure mounted on the Defense Ali Awad Habib, a businessman Department on Friday after who was detained in the city of multiple U.S. senators called for Aden, described how he was given investigations into reports that U.S. electrical shocks on his neck, back, military interrogators worked with chin and “sensitive parts” of his forces from the UAE who are body, after being imprisoned by the accused of torturing detainees in Security Belt, another Yemeni force Yemen. created by the UAE.
John McCain, Republican chairman His father, arrested with him in of the Senate Armed Services April 2016, was sent to an Emirati Committee, and the ranking Democrat, base across the Red Sea in the Horn Jack Reed, called the AP of Africa nation of Eritrea. Yemeni reports “deeply disturbing.” Interior Minister Hussein Arab
McCain and Reed said they have confirmed that a number of detainees written a letter to Defense Secretary have been sent to the base in the Jim Mattis asking him to port of Assab. conduct a review of the reported Chief Pentagon spokeswoman abuse and what U.S. forces knew. Dana White said the Defense Department has “found no credible evidence to substantiate that the U.S. is participating in any abuse.”
“We always adhere to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct,” she said when presented with AP’s findings.
However, several U.S. defense officials said senior military leaders are aware of the allegations of torture at the prisons in Yemen and have looked into them. In the end, they were satisfied that there has not been any abuse when U.S. forces are present, the officials said. They weren’t authorized to speak publicly on military operations and requested anonymity.
The officials said members of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command or other military intelligence experts participate in interrogations of detainees at locations in Yemen. They said JSOC troops are trained to look for signs of abuses and are required to report it.
‘Little Sparta’
Washington has long relied on allies to help it gain intelligence in the fight against al-Qaida. The UAE has been so key that Mattis praised it as “Little Sparta” for its outsized role in fighting the militants. The UAE government in a statement to the AP denied that any secret prisons exist or that torture takes place.
At one main detention complex at Riyan airport in the southern Yemeni city of Mukalla, however, former inmates described being crammed into shipping containers smeared with feces and blindfolded for weeks on end. They said they were beaten, rotated on a spit and sexually assaulted, among other abuse. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one member of the Hadramawt Elite, a Yemeni security force set up by the UAE, said American forces were at times only yards away.
“We could hear the screams,” said a former detainee held for six months at Riyan. “The entire place is gripped by fear. Almost everyone is sick, the rest are near death. Anyone who complains heads directly to the torture chamber.”
He was flogged with wires, part of the frequent beatings inflicted by
The network of Emirati prisons echoes the so-called “black sites,” secret detention facilities set up by the CIA to interrogate terrorism suspects in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In 2009, then-President Barack Obama disbanded the sites. The UAE network in war-torn Yemen was set up during the Obama administration and continAmerican ues operating.
Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel at Human Rights Watch, said the abuses allegedly committed by the UAE “show that the U.S. hasn’t learned the lesson that cooperating with forces that are torturing detainees and ripping families apart is not an effective way to fight extremist groups.” Human Rights Watch issued a report last week documenting torture and forced disappearances at the UAE-run prisons and calling on the Emirates to protect detainees’ rights.
Amnesty International called for a U.N.-led investigation into allegations the U.S. interrogated detainees or received information possibly obtained from torture.
“It would be a stretch to believe the U.S. did not know or could not have known that there was a real risk of torture,” said Amnesty’s director of research in the Middle East, Lynn Maalouf.
The UAE is part of a Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition fighting in support of Yemen’s government against Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who overran the north of the country. The 2-year-old civil war has pushed the already impoverished nation into near famine in some areas.
The coalition is also fighting al-Qaida’s branch in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as Islamic State militants in Yemen. The Pentagon has said it sent a small contingent of U.S. forces in Mukalla last year, in an intelligence sharing role, and that forces move in and out routinely.
Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has escalated drone strikes to more than 80 this year, up from 21 in 2016, according to U.S. Central Command.
At the same time, the UAE has carved out its own state-within-astate in southern Yemen. It has set up an extensive security apparatus, created its own Yemeni militias and runs military bases. The result has undermined the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. UAE-trained and financed forces like the Hadramawt Elite and Security Belt are under Hadi’s government, but Hadi’s officials often complain that those forces answer only to the Emiratis.
“There are no secret detention centers and no torture of prisoners is done during interrogations,” the UAE government said.
It said all prisons are administered by Yemeni security forces under the Hadi’s government.
But multiple former detainees who described months of torments in black sites where they had no hope of being found said their biggest terror was the Emirati interrogators — like the one known only as “the Doctor.”
Grilled on a spit
The guards would bang on the metal doors of the shipping containers, shouting that “the Doctor”
The ships
Several inmates said guards frequently threatened prisoners by saying they would “take them to the ships.”
Senior U.S. defense officials flatly denied the U.S. military conducts any interrogations of Yemenis on any ships.
“We have no comment on these specific claims,” said Jonathan Liu, a CIA spokesman, adding that any allegations of abuse are taken seriously.
But a Yemeni officer told AP he had worked on a vessel off the coast where he saw at least two detainees brought for questioning.
He said 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 and thus had no first-hand information about what happened there.
But he said he saw other Americans in uniforms on the ship. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation for discussing the operations.
A second Yemeni officer said he was involved in moving detainees to a ship, where he said he saw foreigners though he didn’t know their nationality.
“They say these are the important ones. Why are they important? I have no idea,” he said of the detainees.
A top official in Hadi’s Interior Ministry and a senior military official in the 1st Military District, based in Hadramawt, also said that Americans were conducting interrogations at sea, as did a former senior security official in Hadramawt. The three men spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share military information.
The accusations of an American role raises the prospect of potential violations of U.S. and international law. Article 4 of the U.N. Convention against Torture bans any act that “constitutes complicity” in torture.
In the aftermath of publicized abuses of prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and the use of waterboarding, thenpresident Obama shut down the “black site” prisons used by the CIA in 2009 and outlawed the use of torture during interrogations of anyone “in the custody or under the effective control of ” the U.S.
Trump has voiced his belief that torture works, and his administration initially indicated it could review Obama’s black site ban, but it has not done so.
“The U.S. has a positive obligation under international law to prevent torture instead of acquiescing in it,” said Amrit Singh, a senior legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. “It would therefore be unlawful for the U.S. to receive and/or rely on intelligence where the U.S. knows or should know that there was a real risk of the intelligence being obtained from torture.”