Conditions in these jails, referred to as “black sites,” are hellish. Prisoners are, according to the Post, kept in “dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being.” The existence of these prisons has been known to only a handful of officials in the US, and generally to only the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

It is illegal to hold anyone in covert prisons in the US, which is why the CIA operates these facilities overseas, far from courts, lawyers and any semblance of basic rights. None of those being held have been charged or convicted of any crime. They have been imprisoned entirely on the say-so of the CIA, notorious for its criminality and hostility to democratic practices.

The practice is also illegal in most of the countries concerned. The Post, in a craven act, agreed not to name the Eastern European nations that are permitting the CIA prisons to operate on their soil.

The Russian, Bulgarian, Slovak and Hungarian governments quickly denied that they hosted such facilities. The Czech interior minister, Frantisek Bubian, told a news outlet that the Czech Republic had recently rejected a request to set up a detention center on its territory. “The negotiations took place around a month ago,” he said. The Americans “made an effort to install something of the sort here, but they did not succeed.”

The Post estimates that 100 terrorist suspects have been sent into the gulag and 30 “high-level” figures remain under CIA jurisdiction. Since US officials claim they have arrested more than 3,000 Al Qaeda militants since September 11, and only several hundred are still housed in Guantánamo, the estimates given in the Post article beg the question: Where are the others?

Unnamed US officials told the Washington Post that the 70 non-“high-level” prisoners have been handed over to Egyptian, Jordanian, Moroccan, Afghan and other intelligence services.

What goes on inside the CIA facilities, closer to medieval dungeons than modern prisons, can only be guessed at. Sadistic practices at US military facilities in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq provide clues. The CIA has organized its prison system specifically to avoid even the minimal oversight that exists in the military-run locations.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/cia-n04.shtml