Prison Ships
Breathless UK Guardian article parrots a Brit advocacy group’s claim that United States has a fleet of prison ships, and has the US holding “at least 26,000 without trial in secret prisons.” 100 people “disappeared” from Somalia.Â
The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.
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. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.
Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.
The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.
It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.
According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.
Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.
Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.
At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were “disappeared” to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.
Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.
The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate’s story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. “One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo … 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 Guantánamo.”
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.
“By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.”
Twenty-six thousand? That’s a big prison fleet! Hang on, I think they might be talking about something else.
There are a couple of structural problems with the article. What are purported to be facts are frontloaded without a lot of context, like the fact that there are either vast unreported Crusader gulags out there, or the vast majority of those 26,000 are the terrorism and insurgency suspects being held in Iraq and Afghanistan by US and local forces, “by its (US) own admission.”  The article obligingly mentions that there is a global war on terrorism underway, but neglects to mention that United Nations mandates and the Geneva Conventions give lawful authorities … the United States, for example … the authority to hold terrorism suspects and unlawful combatants without charge and without trial, and that US courts have magnanimously granted military tribunals to some of these terrorists. Meanwhile, it sounds like 80,000 have been freed, unless they’re in a mass grave somewhere. That would make a heck of an advocacy group report, but sadly, there must not be even any isolated incidents or unsubstantiated rumors to support that.
It’s all fascinating. You have to read between the lines to figure out that this prison ship thing appears to be a means of holding small numbers of suspects in transit from remote al Qaeda areas of operation such as Somalia. Toward the end, the people allegedly running this Gulag fleet are given their obligatory opportunity to defend themselves:
A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: “There are no detention facilities on US navy ships.” However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships “for a few days” during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as “prison ships”.
So is there a fleet of prison ships floating off Diego Garcia, packed with desperate souls who have been disappeared?
Could be. This sounds a little more like other reports we have seen, such as this one on the abuse of children, that take a couple of isolated cases, and amplify and distort them in the interest of the greater truth, which is that there are only 8 fundraising months left till the end of Bush-Cheney/U.S. military war criminal enterprise. Â
I’m guessing that explains why none of these groups ever get worked up about al Qaeda and various other organizations holding people in chains, torturing them … you know, actual torture that involves power drills, that kind of thing … sawing their heads off on TV, etc. Because there’s no money in it.Â
Topics: GWOT, do-goodism, hated Crusaders
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:15 am on Monday, June 2, 2008
9 Responses to “Prison Ships”
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June 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 am
Larry Johnson vouches for the story, so it must be true.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:21 am
Web Reconnaissance for 06/02/2008
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
When I was in the USMC, I served on three “floating prisons.” The first was the USS Dubuque, the second the USS Mt Vernon, and the third for special ship-to-shore Zodiac testing, the USS Kamehameha.
I only hope that the salafist nutjobs have a better time than I did.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:59 am
Psst. - Don’t tell anybody…….. but I heard that they converted Tom Clancy’s Red October submarine into a secret prison that is undetectable. No really, it’s true - just ask anybody along Tom McCall park in downtown Portland, OR
June 2nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
America is housing 26,000 terrorist suspects on ships? What gives? Don’t we have any torpedoes?
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
The Guardian is a worthless Leftist rag that makes the Boston Globe and NY Times look like bastions of journalistic integrity by comparison. Only utter moonbats would take hearsay testimony from a former Gitmo detainee seriously.
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Tralfaz, start a rumor about the sub being sent upstream on the Columbia to Canada for rendition of the prisoners! Someone will believe it, even though the sub wouldn’t fit in the locks.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
The Real JeffS, good idea. I can even picture the protesters at Cascade Locks or Multnomah Falls. All the red protest banners would be ironic seeing as how the Red October being a (fictional) communist submarine.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
Hey, you keep those prison subMarines out of my backyard. Property prices are bad enough, I don’t need protesters moving in and raising them further.