The Bureau Recommends: ‘Secret CIA prisons in Somalia’
The CIA is conducting extra-judicial interrogations at secret prisons in Somalia, an investigation by The Nation magazine reports.
Suspected Islamic militants are seized from parts of east Africa and taken to underground cells in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where they are held without charge and interrogated by the CIA and Somali agents who are in their pay, the US weekly reports.
The article says: “Former prisoners described the cells as windowless and the air thick, moist and disgusting. Prisoners, they said, are not allowed outside.
“Some have been detained for a year or more. According to one former prisoner, inmates who had been there for long periods would pace around constantly, while others leaned against walls rocking.”
The Nation reports that the prisons are part of an “expanding counterterrorism programme in Somalia” which includes a training intended to develop an indigenous force to combat Islamic militants in the region.
The article comes just weeks after the Bureau reported that seven people were killed in the first confirmed hostile US drone attack in Somalia.
A follow-up story by CNN featured an unnamed CIA official who said detainees were held by Somali forces and the CIA only supported interrogations in recent months.
“He described the number of times the CIA was present as ‘very small,’ adding that he would only say it was ‘one or two times’,” CNN reports.
