In a report to be published this year, human rights lawyers claim the United States is indefinitely holding suspected terrorists onboard a fleet of as many as 17 'floating prisons'. They further assert that there has been an attempt to obfuscate the situation, particularly the number and location of detainees.
The information, already perceived as another indicator of America's scaling back of human rights in combat situations, has been compiled from a number of sources, including statements from the US military and the testimonies of prisoners. Increasingly, foreign goverments, non-governmental organisations and human rights watch groups have asked the US government to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.
The full analysis, set for a 2008 publishing, and spearheaded by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims that, contrary to a George W Bush statement in 2006, the United States has continued to engage in detention and extraordinary rendition tallying over 200 new cases since Bush vowed to discontinue the practice.
But it's this most recent news, of 'floating prisons', that has sparking fresh cries of foul, both in the US and elsewhere. According to the yet-to-be published research, the US has been employing the fleet of as many 17 since 2001. It further mentions that aboard the vessels, detainees are interrogated before being irregularly rendered to classified locations
It's said that the USS Bataan and the USS Pelelie have been confirmed as two of the possibly 17, with a further 15 ships suspected of the same. It's also believed that much of this activity has taken place around in the Indian Ocean, near a UK/American military base in the British territory of Diego Garcia.
One of the report's focal points will be the alleged abduction and detaining of over 100 individuals from East Africa, including Somali, Kenya, and Ethiopia by those African nations' special forces. The USS Ashland spent time off the Somalia coast in early 2007, when it's believed that FBI and CIA agents interrogated suspected al-Qaida terrorists. These disappeared persons are believed to be detained in Kenyan, Somali, Ethiopian and Guantanamo Bay prisons.
Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, has been quoted as saying: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."
The report also highlights the testimony of an inmate recently released from Guantánamo Bay, who claimed that a fellow prisoner alleged detention aboard a ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."
The Guardian, the UK newspaper that first broke news of the report, quizzed a US Navy spokesperson, Cammander Jeffrey Gordon, who reportedly said, "There are no detention facilities on US navy ships." He did, however, add that public record showed some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention. The Guardian reports that Gordon declined to comment on the specific charges that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as 'prison ships'.