code name
A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial ...
s of an isolated clandestine
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...
prison and
interrogation
Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful inf ...
center outside Bagram Air Base in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...
. It is located north of
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into #Districts, 22 municipal dist ...
and was the location of a brick factory prior to the
Afghanistan War
War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to:
* Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC)
* Muslim conquests of Afghanistan (637–709)
*Conquest of Afghanistan by the Mongol Empire (13th century), see a ...
. The CIA adapted it for extrajudicial detention.
In the winter of 2005, the Salt Pit became known to the general public because of two incidents. In 2011, the ''
Miami Herald
The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a city in western Miami-Dade County and the Miami metropolitan area, several miles west of Downtown Miami.—a fact subsequently confirmed in the CIA torture report.
Beginning in April 2021, until the final
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan The United States has conducted two withdrawals of United States troops from Afghanistan:
*Withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan (2011–2016), draw down of United States Armed Forces in the Afghanistan war
*Withdrawal of United State ...
, large sections of the Salt Pit were demolished by the departing personnel before the Taliban gained control of the site.
Description
Although the initial plan called for the Afghan government to operate the site, it actually was overseen by the CIA from the start. The CIA authorized more than $200,000 for the construction of the prison in June 2002; the site became operational with the incarceration of Redha al-Najar in September 2002, although the first formal guidelines for interrogation and confinement at the site were signed by the Director of Central Intelligence
George Tenet
George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Pr ...
only in late January 2003. Ultimately, the prison housed, at one point or another, nearly half of the 119 detainees identified by the
Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture
The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program is a report compiled by the bipartisan United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Detent ...
.
The CIA used many different techniques and tactics to break down the detainees' minds and souls, making them more willing to comply and admit to their wrongdoings.The prison was dark at all times, with curtains and painted exterior windows. Loud music was played constantly. The prisoners were kept in total darkness and isolation, with only a bucket for human waste and without sufficient heat in winter months. Nude prisoners were kept in a central area and walked around as a form of humiliation. The detainees were hosed down with water while shackled naked and placed in cold cells. They were subject to
sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation, also known as sleep insufficiency or sleeplessness, is the condition of not having adequate duration and/or quality of sleep to support decent alertness, performance, and health. It can be either chronic or acute and may vary ...
, shackled to bars with their hands above their heads. Four of 20 cells of the prison had bars across the cell to facilitate this.
One senior interrogator said that his team found a detainee who had been chained in a standing position for 17 days, "as far as we could determine." A senior CIA debriefer told the CIA Inspector General that she heard stories of detainees hung for days on end with their toes barely touching the ground, choked, being deprived of food, and made the subject of a mock execution. There are almost no detailed records of the detentions and interrogations during the earliest days of the site's existence.
Throughout interviews conducted in 2003 with the CIA Office of Inspector General, top CIA leadership and attorneys claimed they had little knowledge of the site operations. Both the Director of Central Intelligence
George Tenet
George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Pr ...
and CIA General Counsel Scott Muller have claimed they were "not very familiar" with the detention site. In August 2003, Muller said that he believed the site was merely a holding facility. The Inspector General review also found that there were no guidelines for "
enhanced interrogation techniques
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for the program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Ar ...
" at the site, and that some interrogators were "left to their own devices" with prisoners.
The Dark Prison
The dark prison is the informal name used by some Guantanamo Bay detainees for a secret prison in which they claim they were detained near
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into #Districts, 22 municipal dist ...
,
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...
. This is now identified with the Salt Pit. According to an article distributed by
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was est ...
, eight Guantanamo detainees have described the conditions they were held under in "the dark prison".
Detainees claimed that they were detained in complete darkness for weeks on end. They were chained to bars in small, tight places, and were forced to stay in the same uncomfortable position. They described being deprived of food and water and being fed filthy food and water when they were fed.
The prisoners' details have been consistent, saying that the guards did not wear military uniforms—prompting
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...
to suggest it was run as a
black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...
by the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
. One prisoner reported being threatened with rape. In 2011, ''
The Miami Herald
The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a city in western Miami-Dade County and the Miami metropolitan area, several miles west of Downtown Miami. Two Afghan captives died there in 2005 and a Department of Defense investigation finally concluded they had been murdered, as some detainees had claimed.
Detainees who claimed to have been detained in the dark prison
Death in custody
Gul Rahman is the only publicly known death from the Salt Pit. He was arrested and tortured because he was thought to be an Afghan militant. The recently assigned CIA case officer in charge of the prison directed the Afghan guards to strip
Gul Rahman
Gul Rahman ( ps, ګل رحمان; died November 20, 2002) was an Afghan man, suspected by the United States of being a militant, who was a victim of torture. He died in a secret CIA prison, or black site, located in northern Kabul, Afghanistan k ...
naked from the waist down, chain him to the floor of his unheated cell, and leave him overnight, according to the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. new ...
. Rahman was captured in
Islamabad
Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...
on 29 October 2002. On the morning of 20 November 2002, he was found dead in his cell. A post-mortem examination determined that he had frozen to death. ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' described the CIA camp commandant as "newly minted", on his first assignment.
ABC News
ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast '' ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include morning news-talk show '' Good Morning America'', '' ...
called the CIA camp commandant "a young, untrained junior officer". The ''Washington Post''s sources noted that the CIA camp commandant had subsequently been promoted. The commandant was later identified as Matthew Zirbel. The
Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture
The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program is a report compiled by the bipartisan United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Detent ...
revealed that no CIA employees were disciplined as a result of his death. After further investigation, there have been many more cases where CIA has not taken responsibility or faced repercussions for their actions.
Rahman was buried in an unmarked grave, and his friends and family were never told of what happened to him. They learned of his fate in 2010 after an AP story revealed Rahman had died at Salt Pit.
Khalid El-Masri
Khalid El-Masri
Khaled El-Masri (also Khalid El-Masri and Khaled Masri, Levantine Arabic pronunciation: , ar, خالد المصري) (born 29 June 1963) is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed ov ...
, a
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
citizen, was kidnapped from the
Republic of Macedonia
North Macedonia, ; sq, Maqedonia e Veriut, (Macedonia before February 2019), officially the Republic of North Macedonia,, is a country in Southeast Europe. It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Yugoslavia. It ...
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...
. El-Masri's name was similar to that of Khalid al-Masri, a terror suspect; the Macedonian authorities thought he might be traveling on a
forged
Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localized compressive forces. The blows are delivered with a hammer (often a power hammer) or a die. Forging is often classified according to the temperature at which it ...
passport, and notified the regional CIA station. A team of American CIA officials were dispatched to the Republic of Macedonia, where they kidnapped El-Masri after he was released by the Macedonian officers, but without regard to his legal rights under Macedonian law. It took over two months for the CIA official who ordered his arrest to assess whether El-Masri's passport was legitimate. El-Masri described being beaten and injected with drugs as part of his interrogation.
On 18 May 2006 U.S. Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis, III of the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed a lawsuit El-Masri filed against the CIA and three private companies allegedly involved with his transport, stating that a
public trial
Public trial or open trial is a trial that is open to the public, as opposed to a secret trial. It should not be confused with a show trial.
United States
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes the right of the accus ...
would "present a grave risk of injury to national security." A Court of Appeals also dismissed the case.
On 9 October 2007 the U.S Supreme Court declined to hear El-Masri's appeal of the lower courts, without comment.
Bureau of Prisons inspection
On 21 November 2016, CBS News reported that an inspection of the Salt Pit, from officials from the
United States Bureau of Prisons
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice that is responsible for the care, custody, and control of incarcerated individuals who have committed federal crimes; that i ...
(BOP), had been confirmed through
Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request:
* Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act
* ...
(FOIA) lawsuits. The Bureau of Prison inspection first became public knowledge when the
United States Senate Intelligence Committee
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (sometimes referred to as the Intelligence Committee or SSCI) is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of ...
published its 600-page unclassified summary of its (then- classified) 6,700 page report on the CIA's use of torture. The Bureau of Prison denied sending inspectors. The
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
then filed FOIA requests for information about the inspections. When the Bureau of Prisons declined to honor the requests, the ACLU took the matter to court.
According to CBS News: "The admission came Thursday in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, which sued in April after the Bureau of Prisons denied having any record of involvement with the detention site." In the November filing, the Bureau of Prisons acknowledged that two officials had visited the prison in 2002, but said that they had not technically lied when they denied having any record of the visit, because the CIA had instructed the BOP not to keep any record of the visit to be maintained.
The CBS News report quoted extensively from the Senate report's coverage of the visit. Their report stated that although Gul Rahman died during the BOP inspection, the CIA's records stated that the BOP inspectors "determined the site was not inhumane". Furthermore, they described the detainees as "dogs that had been kenneled" since they scurried away in fear when their cell doors opened.
Captives cowered when their cell doors were opened for the BOP inspectors.
CBS News first covered the suggestion the BOP inspected the prison in June 2015. One of the documents the BOP published in response to the FOIA request was an email, in which an official (whose name was redacted) forwarded a link to the CBS article together with the comment, "They just won't let it go."
See also
*
List of prisons in Afghanistan
There are approximately 77 prisons and detention facilities in Afghanistan, and at least one maximum security prison primarily for enemy combatants. The following is an incomplete list of prisons in Afghanistan:
See also
* Black jail
* Do ...
*
Black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...