Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and 'disappearance'
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA 05/04/06

In May 2005, three stunned and traumatized Yemeni men emerged from a covert network of US-run prisons scattered across continents. They had been transported from site to site on secret flights and detained since 2003 without any contact with the outside world. Amnesty International went to Yemen to interview them and the men's gruelling stories shed a glimmer of light on the murky system of captures, transfers and secret detention that has been developed by the USA in the "war on terror".

Muhammad Bashmilah and Salah 'Ali Qaru were arrested in Jordan and transferred to US custody in October 2003. Two months later Muhammad al-Assad was arrested in Tanzania and handed to US officials. As far as their families were concerned, the men then "disappeared".

In fact, they were held in at least four secret US-run facilities, probably in three different countries. From the information subsequently provided by the men, it is likely they were held in Djibouti, Afghanistan and somewhere in Eastern Europe...