DemocracyNow!: Interview of Yemeni rendition victim
 
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:50:32 -0600 (CST)

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/18/exclusive_yemeni_man_imprisoned_at_cia

DemocracyNow! December 18, 2007

Yemeni Man Imprisoned at CIA "Black Sites" Tells His Story of Kidnapping 
and Torture

Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a victim of the CIA rendition 
program--kidnapped, held in secret jails, and tortured--speaks out in his 
first broadcast interview.  In the fall of 2003, Bashmilah was detained in 
Jordan and turned over to the CIA. He was eventually flown to a secret 
prison he later found out was in Kabul, Afghanistan. In CIA custody, 
Mohamed says he was held in a freezing-cold cell, interrogated, shackled, 
force-fed and subjected to sleep deprivation and loud music for days. He 
attempted suicide at least three times. He talks about his interrogators 
and the American psychiatrists or psychologists who also played a role. 
Bashmilah has brought a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing 
subsidiary, accused of abetting his kidnapping. In an in-depth and 
detailed interview from his home in Yemen, Bashmilah tell us his harrowing 
story.

GUESTS:
 	Meg Satterthwaite, Director of the International Human Rights 
Clinic at the New York University Law school. She is Mohamed Bashmilah's 
attorney. Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a Yemeni man imprisoned in 
several CIA black sites.  He was held for over a year and a half and was 
never charged. He is translated by Fuad Yahya. 
_________________________________________________________________

AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive. A victim of the 
CIA rendition program--kidnapped, held in secret jails and 
tortured--speaks out in his own words. His name is Mohamed Farag Ahmad 
Bashmilah, one of hundreds of men to have passed through the CIA's 
so-called "black sites." Today, he tells his story. A citizen of Yemen, 
Mohamed came to Jordan with his wife in the fall of 2003 to arrange 
surgery for his ailing mother. He was living in Indonesia at the time. 
Jordanian authorities took him into custody shortly after seizing his 
passport. There, he says he was tortured, threatened and forced to sign a 
false confession. He was turned over to the CIA within days and flown to a 
secret prison he later found out was in Kabul, Afghanistan. In CIA 
custody, Mohamed says he was held in a freezing-cold cell, interrogated, 
shackled, force-fed, subjected to sleep deprivation and loud music for 
days.  He attempted suicide at least three times. He talks about his 
interrogators and the American psychiatrists or psychologists who also 
played a role. Mohamed has brought a lawsuit against a Boeing subsidiary 
accused of abetting his kidnapping. The American Civil Liberties Union is 
suing Jeppesen Dataplan on behalf of Mohamed and four other victims of CIA 
kidnapping and torture.  The lawsuit accuses Jeppesen of providing direct 
logistical support for the CIA flights. Yesterday, I spoke to Mohamed 
Bashmilah on the phone from his home in Yemen, in his first broadcast 
interview. We're going to play that interview in a moment, but first I 
want to turn to Meg Satterthwaite. She is director of the International 
Human Rights Clinic at New York University Law School. She's Mohamed 
Bashmilah's attorney, joining us from Washington, D.C. Welcome to 
Democracy Now!, Meg Satterthwaite.

MEG SATTERTHWAITE: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN:  Talk about the significance of what Mohamed Bashmilah 
describes happened to him.

MEG SATTERTHWAITE:  So, one of the reasons that Mohamed Bashmilah's story 
is so important is that he is one of a very small number of individuals to 
have actually come out of the so-called "high-value detainee"  program. 
This is a program that targeted individuals who were suspected of being 
quote/unquote "high-level al-Qaeda" members or had associations with such 
members. Mohamed is one of very few people who was later released from 
that program, rather than being sent to Guantanamo.  And for that reason, 
he is able to tell about some of the black sites that, really, we haven't 
heard much about from any perspective outside of the US government 
perspective.

AMY GOODMAN: He was never charged and then ultimately released, after 
being--

MEG SATTERTHWAITE: That's correct.

AMY GOODMAN: --held in--the last jail was in Yemen for ten months, he 
says, at the behest of the Americans.

MEG SATTERTHWAITE: Right. So he was never charged by the Americans in any 
way. In fact, he still doesn't know to this day why the Americans picked 
him up and why they requested his transfer from Jordan. He was charged 
finally by the Yemeni government. When he was transferred to Yemen, the 
Yemeni government has said that they were told to hold him on behalf of 
the US government. They later received a file from the US government, and 
essentially they felt that they didn't have any evidence that he was a 
terrorist, so they interviewed him and they found that he admitted to 
using a false identity document at one point when he was in Indonesia, and 
they charged him with forgery. They then sentenced him to time served, and 
they counted the time that he spent in secret prisons abroad.

AMY GOODMAN: Meg Satterthwaite, why is he and the other men who you're 
representing suing this Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen?

MEG SATTERTHWAITE:  So the Jeppesen suit, which was brought by the 
American Civil Liberties Union, is a suit that challenges corporate 
complicity in the rendition and secret detention program. And the point 
here is to show and to try to stop the complicity of regular corporations 
in the secret detention and forced disappearance program.

AMY GOODMAN:  We're talking to Meg Satterthwaite, director of 
International Human Rights Clinic at New York University Law School. And 
what is the Boeing subsidiary's response--Jeppesen?

MEG SATTERTHWAITE:  Well, we actually haven't had a response from the 
defendant, Jeppesen, in this case. What has happened instead is that the 
US government has made a motion to intervene, and they've also at the same 
time made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit or to get a summary judgment 
granted in their favor on the basis of the state secrets doctrine.  So the 
idea is the US government needs to come in and say, "Wait, we can't 
forward with this case. We can't even go forward to have a response from 
the defendant, because the issues in the case are so linked to national 
security that the entire case must be dismissed on the basis of state 
secrets."

AMY GOODMAN:  Meg Satterthwaite, we'd like you to stay with us. We're 
going to turn now to the interview that I did with Mohamed Bashmilah. Fuad 
Yahya provided the translation. I spoke to Mohamed at his home in Yemen. 
He began by talking about his initial capture in Jordan before he was 
turned over to the CIA.

<MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] It was approximately six 
days, but what I endured there is worth years. They took me there, and in 
the evening they started their interrogations process. They started 
putting some psychological pressure on me. They wanted me to confess to 
having some connections to some individuals of al-Qaeda. They tried 
several times to get me to confess, and every time I said no, I would get 
either a kick, a slap or a curse. Then they said that if I did not 
confess, they will bring my wife and rape her in front of me. And out of 
fear for what would happen to my family, I screamed and I fainted. After I 
came to, I told them that, "Please, don't do anything to my family. I 
would cooperate with you in any way you want.">

AMY GOODMAN:  CIA torture and rendition victim, Mohamed Farag Ahmad 
Bashmilah.  He was speaking to me yesterday from his home in Yemen. We'll 
come back to this interview in a moment. ....... I spoke to him at his 
home in Yemen late yesterday and asked him to talk about his transfer to 
CIA custody after his detention in Jordan.

#####

<<MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] They took me at 1:30 in the 
morning out of the detention facility. I was told that I was being 
released.  I was cautiously optimistic, because how could someone be 
released at 1:30 in the morning? They took me to the room where I 
deposited my belongings. And my belongings consisted of my passport, $200, 
an ID card and my wedding ring.  I signed receipt of these items, but they 
were not given to me. They were put inside an envelope. In addition, they 
put also the paper that I had signed, the confession, which was 
essentially a false confession. While we were walking out, I asked one of 
the guards where I was being taken and where is my family? At that time, 
my heart was in distress. I felt there was something wrong, there was some 
kind of a conspiracy regarding my fate. At that time, the guard lifted the 
blindfold partially so that I would speak to the interrogator, and I saw 
another man who had a Western look.  He was white and somewhat overweight 
and had dark glasses on.  I realized then that they were probably handing 
me over to some other agency, because during the interrogations I had with 
the Jordanians, one of the threats was that if I did not confess, they 
will hand me over to American intelligence. At that time, I did not take 
that threat seriously, because they had threatened me before that they 
would rape my wife, so I thought this was just psychological pressure. 
But at this moment, I realized I was being handed over to some other 
parties. When we left the building and we got into the vehicle and the 
vehicle started to move, so I realized if the vehicle turned left and then 
turned right, that would mean that I was being taken to the airport, and 
that could mean that I would be handed over to some other parties. On the 
other hand, if the vehicle turned left and then turned left again, then 
that would mean that we were going to the city center, and that could mean 
that I was being released.  I could not see or hear, but I could feel the 
movement, and the vehicle went into the direction toward the airport. I 
became increasingly afraid, increasingly worried, because I was being 
handed over to some other parties, and I didn't understand why. When we 
arrived at the airport, they took me to a hall. And without any 
precautions or anything, I felt that I was being pulled violently by some 
other people. They took me to another room. They started tearing down my 
clothes, from above all the way down.  And I was being stripped completely 
naked. They started taking pictures from all directions. And they also 
started to beat me on my sides and also my feet.  And then they put me in 
a position similar to the position of prostration in Muslim prayer, which 
is similar to the fetal position. And in that position, one of them 
inserted his finger in my anus very violently. I was in terrible pain, and 
I started to scream. When they started taking pictures, I could see that 
they were people who were masked. They were dressed in black from head to 
toe, and they were also wearing surgical gloves. And then, they started in 
the process of preparing me for travel, and that consisted of putting a 
diaper on me. And then they put pants, which went down to below the knee, 
and a top with the sleeve to the middle of the forearm. And then, they 
also put some gauze on my eyes. And then they put what looked like 
headphones on my ears--sorry, these were not headphones; they were like 
little plugs inside the ears, plastic. And then they put gauze on that, on 
the ears.  And then they taped that with very strong adhesive tape.  And 
then they put a hood over my head. And then, on top of that, they put a 
headphone. This is as far as the top of my body was.  And then they 
handcuffed me with a chain, and also they chained my ankles. Then they put 
a belt above the pants, and then they tied the hands and the ankles to 
that belt. This was after being slapped and kicked until I almost fainted. 
And then they took me into an aircraft, and they had me lie down on the 
floor of the airplane. Then they strapped my legs at my chest so that I 
wouldn't move right or left. The aircraft flew for about two-and-a-half to 
three hours. And I was in such a terrible psychological state, only God 
could determine. There was a lot of physical pain because of what I had 
endured, and also all the thoughts regarding what might happen to my wife 
and my mother. This is knowing that my mother was seriously ill, and my 
wife could not speak Arabic very well so she could be of much help to my 
mother. And so, throughout this flight, I was in some kind of a coma, and 
I would come to and I would faint and come to. And so, during those times 
when I was thinking of my wife and mother, I would be distracted from the 
pain, and then the pain would distract me from the thoughts to my wife and 
mother. About three hours later, we landed somewhere.  And then some 
[inaudible], and they handled me very roughly. They took me to a detention 
center.  I was in a very poor psychological state. Then they took me to a 
room where they took my weight, and they examined my eyes and my ears. 
Then they put me in a solitary cell.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you beaten in this place?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] In this place, I was not 
beaten. They did not seem to have anything that indicated that I should be 
treated that way. In addition to that, they could see that I was in a 
terrible psychological state. It did not make any sense to pressure me in 
interrogations.
 	I was terribly agitated, and I was crying inconsolably, thinking 
of my mother and my wife. Also, I was thinking what they were 
thinking--why would they take me from one detention center to another? 
And I remained in this cell for three months, during which I had no relief 
at all, despite the fact that they brought a number of psychiatrists, in 
addition to the general practice physician there.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohamed, who were you being held by here?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] Based on what the Jordanians 
had told me, that they would hand me to American intelligence, in addition 
to the interrogators in this place who came to see me with interpreters, I 
realized quite certainly that I was being held by American intelligence.

AMY GOODMAN: What clues did you have? Why did you think American?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] Some of the interrogators 
would come to me and interrogate me in the interrogation room, and they 
would tell me, "You should calm down and be comforted, because we'll send 
all this information to Washington."  And they would say that in 
Washington, they will determine whether my answers are truthful or not.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, speaking to us from Yemen, CIA 
torture and rendition victim. We'll come back to this conversation with 
him in a minute. .... In the previous excerpt, he described his ordeal 
while he was sent to the secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.  I asked him to 
talk about the conditions at that prison.

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] In the beginning, it was 
totally dark.  It was as if you were inside a tomb. Then, after that, they 
would turn a light on. Above the door, there was a camera. And there was 
constant loud music.

AMY GOODMAN: What kind of music?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] It was loud Western music, and 
it was very noisy.

AMY GOODMAN: In English?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] After a while, they switched 
to Arabic music.

AMY GOODMAN: How loud was it?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] It was loud enough so that you 
could not hear what happens in the other cells when the doors opened and 
closed.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you hear other prisoners?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] Yes, I heard other people 
very clearly, because sometimes there would be power outage, and during 
that time the music would stop and you could hear the other people.

AMY GOODMAN: What did you hear?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] Sometimes I would hear a call 
for prayer, and sometimes I hear them conversing about this new person who 
has just arrived, and that's me, because I didn't talk. So I would hear 
them once in a while.

AMY GOODMAN: What language were your guards and the interrogators 
speaking?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] The guards would not speak a 
single word, but the interrogators spoke in English, and they had 
interpreters with them.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you try to hurt yourself in this cell?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] During these three months in 
this cell, I tried hurting myself three times, because I could not take it 
in that place, because I had not done nothing wrong. The first time, I 
tried to pull some thread from the blanket, trying to fashion a rope to 
hang myself. I tied it to the window that was opposite to the door, where 
the sound of music would come.  I think they saw me through the camera, so 
the guards came and stopped me. After a while, I collected some of the 
medicine that they were giving to me every day.  I kept a number of these 
pills, about twenty, and then I dissolved them in a cup of water. But it 
just happened that at that time, the guards came, and it was just the 
wrong time. And the third time was, I tried to slash my veins with a piece 
of metal that I had. But this piece of metal was not sharp enough, so I 
injured myself, but the wound was not deep enough. Because of the 
recurrence of these incidents, then they started having the psychiatrists 
see me. And what these psychiatrists did was just give me the opportunity 
to speak and express myself. And the therapy mainly consisted of trying to 
look at my thoughts and try to interpret them for me, and in addition to 
some tranquilizers whenever they thought I needed some. There was one time 
also when I started beating my head against wall.  And then what happened 
was, they brought me a helmet, similar to what people wear when they play 
golf. So all of my attempts were unsuccessful.

AMY GOODMAN:  Mohamed, why did you try to commit suicide three times?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] The main thing was that I had 
not done anything that would call for being transferred from one prison to 
another and to endure such suffering. In addition to that, knowing that my 
mother was seriously ill, and she and my wife were in a foreign 
country--imagine any mother having her son snatched away from her and 
taken away, even for just one week. Imagine what this person would suffer 
and how the mother would suffer also. This made me want to have nothing to 
do with life anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: How long were you held in Yemen?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] Ten months.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you tortured there?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] I was not tortured. I was 
questioned about the places where I had been detained, which, of course, I 
didn't know. There was no need to torture me or even ask me about anything 
else in terms of violations of the law or anything.  My detention in 
Yemen, as far as I could determine from what was written in the press, was 
at the behest of the Americans.

AMY GOODMAN:  Can you describe finally being released to your family?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] My joy was indescribable.  I 
could not believe that I was going to be released. As much as I was happy 
to be released and to be reunited with my wife and mother, I was also 
worried about what my wife and mother had endured during my absence. I did 
not tell them what I had suffered in Jordan or elsewhere.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you have a message for the American people?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] I believe that the American 
people are helpless during the administration of George Bush. When I was 
in detention, I would speak to the interrogators, and I told them that the 
policies of George Bush was wrong, especially sending American people to 
areas where they don't belong. And I told them that it seems that the 
policy consisted of addressing wrongs with wrongs. I didn't know that one 
day when I would be released, I would find out that there are American 
victims of this policy, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohamed, did they ever charged you with anything?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] I was not charged with 
anything.  This is what I have found. I was handed to Yemen, and they 
asked them to detain me.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you have any communication with your family?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] And there were no charges 
against me.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you have any communication with your family from Jordan 
to the time you were released?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] I could not contact my family 
or any human rights organization or the Red Cross or any agency, other 
than my interrogators, the doctors and the psychiatrists.

AMY GOODMAN: Did the Red Cross ever visit you?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] They never did. I wished they 
did.

AMY GOODMAN:  So you did not speak to your family, even when you were ten 
months in Yemen in jail?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] After a month and a half of 
being in Yemen, I was able to communicate with my family.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did the Yemen authorities hold you?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] They said this was at the 
behest of the US authorities.

AMY GOODMAN:  Do you have any message for other prisoners who are held at 
places like Guantanamo or the same prisons you were held in, who remain 
there?

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH:  [translated] I want to tell all prisoners 
in all places that one day truth and justice will prevail.  They want to 
be released, but their jailers want to keep them, and God has a plan for 
them.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohamed, I want to thank you for taking this time to tell us 
your story.

MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: [translated] You're welcome. It is my duty 
to sit here and express what has happened to me and also to hope that no 
one else will endure the same. >>

###

AMY GOODMAN:  Mohamed Bashmilah, he was a victim of CIA rendition, 
imprisoned at black sites run by the CIA. I spoke to him at his home in 
Yemen, telling his story for the first time in a broadcast interview. He 
was translated by Fuad Yahya.

Mohamed Bashmilah's lawyer, Meg Satterthwaite, is still with us from 
Washington, D.C.  You have brought a suit on his behalf. You are not, 
though, suing the US government. You are suing Jeppesen for being part of 
extraordinary rendition, is that right, Meg?

MEG SATTERTHWAITE: That's right. First, I'd just like to clarify that the 
suit was actually brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, and I'm 
co-counsel in the case, representing Mohamed Bashmilah. The case is 
against Jeppesen Dataplan for its complicity and essentially for enabling 
some of the flights that were used to take individuals into the rendition 
and secret detention program. This is a program that could not exist 
without corporate complicity. Jeppesen is a crucial example here.  The CIA 
used purportedly civilian planes to avoid certain procedures that they 
normally would need to use if they used, for example, military planes or 
official government planes. So the corporate complicity is actually a 
crucial part of the CIA program.

AMY GOODMAN:  And why not the US government, as well, a suit against the 
government?

MEG SATTERTHWAITE:  There has been, of course, several suits against the 
government for the rendition and secret detention program. The most recent 
one that viewers and listeners may be familiar with is the case of Khaled 
el-Masri, also a suit brought by the ACLU. In that suit, the suit was 
dismissed on the basis of the state secrets doctrine, essentially for the 
reason that--the CIA and the US government was able to forward the 
argument that the case was so sensitive it should be dismissed, because it 
had to do with state secrets.

The point in this case is to say the government has already acknowledged 
the program's existence, the President and other high officials have given 
lots of details about the program when it suited them, so it can't be that 
the very basis and fact of the program is still a state secret. It cannot 
be that that is enough to get rid of a lawsuit about basic human rights 
and the violation of those basic human rights.

AMY GOODMAN:  Meg Satterthwaite, were the interrogations of Mohamed 
videotaped?

MEG SATTERTHWAITE:  We don't know. What we do know is that there were 
video cameras in his cells and also in interrogation rooms. I would like 
to know, of course, if my client was videotaped. We have filed a Freedom 
of Information Act request seeking all records, which would include 
videotapes, if they existed, or transcripts. And all we've gotten from the 
CIA is the claim that they can neither confirm nor deny having any records 
of my client.

AMY GOODMAN: Meg Satterthwaite, I want to thank you for being with us, 
director of the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University 
Law School.

MEG SATTERTHWAITE: Thank you very much.