Friday, 14 August 2009

Details of secret CIA prisons released

Details of three secret prisons, built by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks, have been released.

 

Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, a senior CIA officer who is currently in jail for corruption has told The New York Times how he oversaw the construction of three identical prisons from his base in Frankfurt where he ran the spy agency's main European supply base.

Mr Foggo rose to become number three in the CIA, but pleaded guilty to fraud last year and now is serving time in a Kentucky jail.

The detention centres he built for "high value" terrorist detainees were in three different countries. They were virtually identical in order to disorientate senior al Qa'eda members and get them to talk.

The prisons were designed to facilitate harsh interrogation and torture and sometimes held as few as four detainees.

One prison was in a renovated building on a busy street in Bucharest, Romania. Another was in Morocco. A third was on the outskirts of another former Eastern bloc city.

The prisoners were moved back and forth and they were kept in isolated cells, often in freezing conditions, he said.

There were non slip floors and wooden walls which detainees were slammed against. They also used the waterboarding torture technique.

Mr Foggo claimed his prisons became so busy that he used a small private company owned by a friend to supply toilets, plumbing, music centres, bedding, night vision goggles, earplugs and the CIA's trademark wraparound sunglasses. Mr Foggo was rewarded with expensive holidays.

The Agency eventually had access to eight detention centres, including one in the Middle-East, Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.