US silent on body of dead detainee
Source: Agencies |
January 6, 2011, Thursday
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Print Edition
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THE family of Gul Rahman is still trying to recover his remains for burial, months after learning that he was stripped naked, doused in cold water and then left to die in a CIA-run Afghan prison known as the Salt Pit.
Suspected of links to al-Qaida, Rahman was picked up in the early morning hours of October 29, 2002, from a home in Islamabad and taken with four other people to a CIA black site called the Salt Pit near the Kabul Airport.
Rahman died on November 20, 2002, but his death was not known until revealed by an investigation in March. Since then, appeals by his family - Afghan refugees living in Pakistan since the 1980s - for his remains have gone unanswered.
"It has been a mental torture for his family," said Dr Gharat Baheer, who was picked up with Gul Rahman. Baheer spent six months at the Salt Pit and six years in Afghan prisons before being released in 2008. Baheer said the family has yet to even receive confirmation of his death from the United States.
Baheer is in regular touch with Rahman's family, who he says are living in a refugee camp outside the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar. Baheer said they fear that if they protest too much, the US will press Pakistan to harass them or even expel them from the country.
The CIA on Monday declined to comment on the return of Rahman's remains. The agency has said that its detention and interrogation program is over and it is focused on preventing future terrorist attacks. An effort request for Rahman's autopsy report was rejected - a decision upheld on appeal by the US Justice Department in November.
The Rahman family has sought the help of the -International Committee for the Red Cross both in Peshawar and in Afghanistan.
"But the Red Cross isn't able to get anything from the Americans," Baheer said.
Suspected of links to al-Qaida, Rahman was picked up in the early morning hours of October 29, 2002, from a home in Islamabad and taken with four other people to a CIA black site called the Salt Pit near the Kabul Airport.
Rahman died on November 20, 2002, but his death was not known until revealed by an investigation in March. Since then, appeals by his family - Afghan refugees living in Pakistan since the 1980s - for his remains have gone unanswered.
"It has been a mental torture for his family," said Dr Gharat Baheer, who was picked up with Gul Rahman. Baheer spent six months at the Salt Pit and six years in Afghan prisons before being released in 2008. Baheer said the family has yet to even receive confirmation of his death from the United States.
Baheer is in regular touch with Rahman's family, who he says are living in a refugee camp outside the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar. Baheer said they fear that if they protest too much, the US will press Pakistan to harass them or even expel them from the country.
The CIA on Monday declined to comment on the return of Rahman's remains. The agency has said that its detention and interrogation program is over and it is focused on preventing future terrorist attacks. An effort request for Rahman's autopsy report was rejected - a decision upheld on appeal by the US Justice Department in November.
The Rahman family has sought the help of the -International Committee for the Red Cross both in Peshawar and in Afghanistan.
"But the Red Cross isn't able to get anything from the Americans," Baheer said.
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