New Revelations About The Torture and Alleged Suicide Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi
Posted: 19 Jun 2009 07:41 AM PDT
By Andy Worthington
Editor's note: In a world exclusive, Andy Worthington, author of the groundbreaking book The Guantánamo Files, reveals new information, from a source in Libya, about Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the former US "ghost prisoner" who died in a Libyan jail last month, focusing, in particular, on the prisons in which he was held, and the ways in which torture was used by his interrogators. This investigative report was originally published on Mr. Worthington's website and has been republished here with the author's permission.
Since the story first emerged last month that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (whose real name was Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri) had died in a Libyan prison, speculation has been rife that the Libyan newspaper Oea, which claimed that he had died by committing suicide, was covering up the fact that he had actually been murdered.
Once the Bush administration's most famous "ghost prisoner," al-Libi had been the emir of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, but his notoriety stemmed not from his own activities, but from the fact that, after his capture in December 2001, he was rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where, under torture, he made a false confession that two al-Qaeda operatives had been receiving information from Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical and biological weapons, which was subsequently used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
The death of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi
There were several signs to indicate that the story of al-Libi's death was suspicious. Oea is owned by one of Colonel Gaddafi's sons, and, as Hafed al-Ghwell, a Libyan-American and a prominent critic of the Gaddafi regime, explained to Newsweek, "This idea of committing suicide in your prison cell is an old story in Libya." He added that, throughout Gaddafi's 40-year rule, there had been several instances in which political prisoners were reported to have committed suicide, but that "then the families get the bodies back and discover the prisoners had been shot in the back or tortured to death."
In addition, two Human Rights Watch researchers had briefly met al-Libi in the courtyard of Tripoli's Abu Salim prison just two weeks before his death, and, although he refused to talk to them, they said that he "looked well," and it was also revealed in the days after his death that lawyers for Abu Zubaydah, another former "ghost prisoner," who was sent to Guantánamo in September 2006, had been attempting to make contact with al-Libi as a possible witness in any forthcoming trial involving their client.
A week after the death, Newsweek reported that US officials "are skeptical about the supposed suicide," and that the Obama administration "is pressing the Libyan government to explain" al-Libi's death. Speaking anonymously, an administration official "familiar with the case" told Newsweek, "We want answers. We want to know what really happened here."
The Newsweek article also explained that US officials feared that al-Libi's death "could reopen questions about the [CIA]'s `extraordinary rendition' program and further complicate the president's plans to shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention center." I have no idea how al-Libi's death could possibly impact on President Obama's plans to close Guantánamo, but when it comes to asking uncomfortable questions about the Bush administration's program of "extraordinary rendition" and torture, involving secret prisons run by the CIA, and other prisons in third countries, the Newsweek article was certainly accurate.
New revelations about al-Libi's torture
Following al-Libi's death, disturbing details of his detention in at least seven different locations around the world have emerged in statements made by a source inside Libya. This source, who wishes to remain anonymous for his own safety and for the safety of his family, has stated that he met al-Libi at the prison before his death, and that al-Libi explained to him what had happened to him in the four years and three months between his capture and his rendition to Libya in the spring of 2006.
The story that al-Libi told to this source in Abu Salim prison was related to me by former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes, who was just a teenager when he arrived in the UK in the 1980s from Libya, where his father, a lawyer and trade union activist, had been murdered by the Gaddafi regime. I cannot, of course, verify the details of the story Deghayes told me via the source in Libya, as al-Libi's death brought to an end any possibility that he would one day be able to explain what happened to him at the hands of US forces, the Libyan authorities and others involved in his rendition and torture, but so many of the details correspond with facts that have already been established through other research, that it seems certain to me that the story is true.
According to Deghayes, the Libyan source explained that al-Libi told him that, after his capture, when he was held briefly in Afghanistan (in the US prison at Kandahar airport, and on the USS Bataan, according to a previous report - PDF), he was rendered to Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Jordan, and was then rendered back to Afghanistan, where he was held in three separate prisons run by, or under the control of the CIA. He also explained that he was subjected to torture in all these locations, and provided disturbing details of how he was manipulated by his interrogators.
Torture in Egypt and Mauritania
These countries have all been mentioned in previous reports, but some of the details are new. Al-Libi's time in Egypt, of course, is where the notorious lie about al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was extracted, which, incidentally, should be hurled in the face of former Vice President Cheney, every time he is invited onto a TV show to repeat his claims that torture saved the US from further terrorist attacks -- and to ignore the crucial role he played in actually using torture to launch an illegal war.
From Egypt, according to the Libyan source, al-Libi was rendered to a prison in Mauritania. This too has been mentioned before, in an article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh in June 2007, which followed revelations in the Washington Post in November 2005 that the CIA had used a secret prison in Poland to hold "high-value detainees" (and, apparently, another in Rumania for "lower-level prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq"). In December 2005, ABC News reported that eleven "high-value detainees" -- including al-Libi -- had been held in Poland (a list is here), and in the New Yorker Hersh explained how he had been told that Mauritania was chosen as a new location when the existence of the Polish prison was revealed:
I was told by the former senior intelligence official and a government consultant that after the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe was revealed, in the Washington Post, in late 2005, the Administration responded with a new detainee center in Mauritania. After a new government friendly to the US took power, in a bloodless coup d'état in August 2005, they said, it was much easier for the intelligence community to mask secret flights there.
The problem with this story for the chronology that al-Libi told the Libyan source is that he did not mention being held in Poland at all, and indicated that he had been moved to Mauritania after being held in Egypt, presumably sometime in 2002 or 2003. It may be that the source was mistaken, although it is also possible that the US administration arranged a deal at this time, as officials were working closely with the Mauritanian government after the 9/11 attacks. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national who lived in Germany and had been in contact with the 9/11 attackers, was handed over to US agents in November 2001, prompting him to state, in his tribunal at Guantánamo, "My country turned me over, shortcutting all kinds of due process of law, like a candy bar to the United States." Slahi also stated that US agents had interrogated him in Mauritania a month before, when one of them threatened to bring in "black people" to torture him.
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In 2007, after Abu Zubaydah and 13 other "high-value detainees" had been transferred to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons, Zubaydah was finally allowed to speak in his tribunal, when he explained that he was tortured by the CIA to admit that he worked with Osama bin Laden, but insisted, "I'm not his partner and I'm not a member of al-Qaeda." He also explained that his only role was to operate a guest house used by those who were training at Khaldan, and confirmed al-Hubayshi's analysis of his relationship with bin Laden, saying, "Bin Laden wanted al-Qaeda to have control of Khaldan, but we refused since we had different ideas."
His comments took on even more significance this week, when the ACLU, having managed, through a Freedom of Information lawsuit, to force the CIA to review passages in his testimony that had been censored in 2007, released a new version of the tribunal transcript (PDF), which included Zubaydah stating that, after CIA operatives tortured him to admit that he was bin Laden's partner and the number three in al-Qaeda, "They told me sorry we discover that you are not number three, not a partner even not a fighter."
Moreover, Abu Zubaydah explained that he opposed attacks on civilian targets, which brought him into conflict with bin Laden, and although he admitted that he had been an enemy of the United States since childhood, because of its support for Israel, pointed out that his enmity was towards the government and the military, and not the American people. The same may have been true of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose motivation appears to have focused more on providing training for Muslims to overcome oppression in their homelands, and in countries where Muslims were being oppressed, than on signing up for bin Laden's global jihad against the United States. However, unless documents ever come to light providing details of his interrogations, his death last month -- in circumstances that seem to have benefited both the Libyan and American governments, as the US flag was raised over the American embassy in Tripoli for the first time in 30 years, just three days after his death -- means that we will never know for certain.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon) published in March 2009.