secret prisons news stories on Newser

CIA Kept Secret Prison in Bucharest Neighborhood

Kevin Spak — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:51:59 CST

The CIA's secret "black site" prison in Romania wasn't in some remote region of the country, but smack dab in the middle of a busy residential neighborhood near the center of Bucharest, the AP has discovered in a joint investigation with German public television. Sources say the prison was located...

A Prisoner, a Call, a Courier: How They Found bin Laden

Kevin Spak — Tue, 03 May 2011 07:54:42 CDT

It wasn’t long after 9/11 when a detainee in one of the CIA’s secret prisons first mentioned the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. That name—plus years of intelligence work—would eventually lead America to Osama bin Laden, the AP reports. The first break came in 2004, when an operative captured...

US Still Holding Terror Suspects in Secret Jails

Kevin Spak — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:39:05 CDT

The US military is still detaining terror suspects in a network of around 20 secret prisons spread throughout Afghanistan, interrogating them without charge for weeks at a time, sources tell the AP . For a long time the Pentagon denied the existence of such facilities, even in the face of descriptions...

Secret CIA Interrogation Tapes Found Under Desk

Kevin Spak — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:37:40 CDT

The CIA has tapes of confessed 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh’s interrogation in a secret prison in Morocco, even though it has twice told the government that such tapes do not exist. The tapes, two video and one audio, were found in a box under a desk at the agency, and...

Prisoners Raped, Tortured in Secret Baghdad Prison

Kevin Spak — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:07:00 CDT

They were hung by their feet and whipped, suffocated with plastic bags. If they passed out, they were revived with electrical shocks to the genitals. That's just a taste of the horrors prisoners describe in Human Rights Watch's report on the recently revealed Iraqi-run secret prison in Baghdad, where suspected...

Maybe Bagram Will Be the New Gitmo

Emily Rauhala — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:14:27 CDT

President Obama's security team is for the first time writing guidelines on how to handle captured terror suspects—specifically on whether any will be allowed to be detained indefinitely without trial, the Los Angeles Times reports. Draft guidelines predict that will be necessary for a small number of detainees, with...

CIA Refuses to Hand Over Interrogation Records

Rob Quinn — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:22:30 CDT

The CIA has refused to hand over any more documents relating to its Bush-era interrogation and detention programs, the New York Times reports. The agency told a federal judge that dozens of documents, including communications from secret prisons and agency assessments of the programs' legality, must remain secret in the...

Agents Say Waterboarding Turned Around Terrorist

Harry Kimball — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:20:59 CDT

After being waterboarded 183 times and deprived of sleep for a week, self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Kalid Sheikh Mohammed transformed from an avowed enemy of the US into a sort of CIA guest lecturer, the Washington Post reports. Two anonymous sources, looking to build the case that harsh interrogation worked, say...

CIA Manipulated Every Detail of Interrogation Sessions

Nick McMaster — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:41:07 CDT

As the CIA discloses internal reports concerning “enhanced” interrogation techniques on detainees at secret prisons, the ugliest details—threats of execution and harm with a power drill—have grabbed headlines. But the documents also reveal an intriguing level of control that the CIA and Department of Justice maintained over every...