Monday, August 24, 2009
Detainees held at secret camps run by American commandoes will now have their identities released to the International Committee of the Red Cross under a new policy crafted by the Obama administration. While George W. Bush was president of the United States, his administration refused to release information to Red Cross officials about who was imprisoned at special screening sites operated by U.S. Special Operations forces in Balad, Iraq, and Bagram, Afghanistan. In one case, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally ordered the CIA to hide a prisoner, Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul, in Iraq from the Red Cross for several months.
But now the military will be required to release the identities of detainees at such camps within two weeks of capture, allowing the ICRC to notify relatives of those held. The Balad camp has reportedly held as many as 30 to 40 foreign prisoners at any one time, while the number of detainees at the Afghan camp was believed to be smaller.
Even with this shift in policy, the Pentagon still will not allow Red Cross representatives to visit the special camps.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
U.S. Shifts, Giving Detainee Names to the Red Cross (by Eric Schmitt, New York Times)
Red Cross to Get Data on Prisoners Held in Secret at U.S. Camps (by Karen DeYoung, Washington Post)
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