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Obama’s active continuation of US practice of Extraordinary Rendition

by Courtesy

Obama’s Alleged Link to Secret Prisons and Extraordinary Rendition
Africa, Security and Human Rights, Torture, USA | Posted by: Tom Parker, July 14, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Following hard on the heels of the revelation that the Obama administration had held Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame in secret detention on a US naval vessel patrolling off the coast of Somalia for over two months, comes a startling new claim from The Nation magazine that the Obama administration is back in the extraordinary rendition business.

Writing in the latest edition of The Nation, journalist Jeremy Scahill alleges that since early 2009 the United States has maintained a secret prison located on a compound within the perimeter of Mogadishu Airport and that in July 2009 the United States was involved in the extraordinary rendition of Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan from Kenya to Somalia.

Without further independent investigation it is difficult to make a definitive judgment about Scahill’s claims but it is worth noting that he is the author of the well-regarded study “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” and has extensive contacts in the intelligence, special forces, and private military contractor communities.

Hassan’s plight has been taken up by the UK-based human rights organization Reprieve and by the Kenyan human rights lawyer Mbugua Mureithi. Together they have obtained the following testimony from Hassan about his detention relayed by a former fellow prisoner:

“They put a bag on my head, Guantánamo style. They tied my hands behind my back and put me on a plane. In the early hours we landed in Mogadishu… I have been here for one year, seven months. I have been interrogated so many times. Interrogated by Somali men and white men. Every day. New faces show up. They have nothing on me. I have never seen a lawyer, never seen an outsider. Only other prisoners, interrogators, guards.”

The Warsame case has raised the possibility for the first time that the Obama administration might actually be holding other prisoners in secret detention facilities hidden around the world. Ahmed Hassan may be one such prisoner. …more