The U.S. has closed its controversial detention center near Bagram Air Base, leaving it with no prisoners in Afghanistan, after it turned over a Tunisian prisoner mentioned in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA interrogation techniques to Afghan authorities, defense officials told NBC News on Wednesday.
Redha al-Najar, a Tunisian who was suspected of having been one of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards, had been in U.S. custody since May 2002. A defense official said al-Najar, a second Tunisian and a Jordanian were turned over to Afghan authorities Wednesday, just a day after the Senate report detailed what it characterized as widespread abuses of U.S. detainees since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Pentagon told NBC News that it 'no longer operates detention facilities in Afghanistan nor maintains custody of any detainees' after the final handover. Under Washington's agreement with Kabul, the handoff to Afghanistan wasn't due to go into effect until Jan. 1. Defense officials said they couldn't explain why the U.S. was getting out three weeks early.
But Tina Foster, al-Najar's attorney, told Reuters that al-Najar - one of the first detainees to have been subjected to the CIA's 'enhanced'' interrogation techniques' - was transferred six days before the government was due to make a submission to the Supreme Court about his treatment. 'It's just another way of evading jurisdiction,' Foster told the news service. 'Now they will be able to say in court: 'It's not our problem.''
DoD News, the Pentagon's in-house news service, earlier Wednesday quoted Army Maj. Gen. John M. Murray, deputy commander for support for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, as saying U.S. and coalition personnel had already shifted to their new missions advising Afghan forces and government officials.
'That's where the coalition work is being done now,' Murray said. 'That's the crux of Operation Resolute Support' - the Pentagon's name for the handover to Afghanistan.
The Senate report that was released Tuesday didn't give any details of al-Najar's treatment, but it noted in an attached database that he was in CIA custody for 69 days in 2002, at a time when CIA interrogators were using harsh techniques like waterboarding, facial and abdomen slapping and 'rectal hydration' to induce detainees' cooperation.
Read the Senate Intelligence Committee report (PDF)
First published December 10 2014, 2:31 PM
Jim MiklaszewskiJim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the 'tanker wars' in the Persian Gulf.
Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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