Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

testified to the Senate that the CIA waterboarded only three individuals—Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. 3 Former President
Bush similarly declared in his memoirs that only three detainees in CIA custody
were waterboarded. 4 Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has also denied
the use of waterboarding by the US military. 5
• Unlawful rendition: All interviewees said their captors forcibly returned them to
Libya at a time when Libya’s record on torture made clear they would face a serious
risk of abuse upon return. All had expressed deep fears to their captors about going
back to Libya and five of them said that they specifically asked for asylum. One
of them, Muhammed Abu Farsan, sought asylum in the Netherlands while in transit
between China and Morocco. He said his asylum application was ultimately denied
and he was sent to Sudan, where he held a passport. But Sudanese authorities
kept him in detention and, shortly after his arrival, individuals representing themselves
as CIA officers interrogated him on three different days. Within two weeks he
was sent back to Libya. Though the Netherlands is the only government that actually
had provided any of the Libyans we interviewed with an opportunity to challenge
their transfer, the Tripoli Documents contain information suggesting Dutch officials
might have been aware that Abu Farsan would ultimately be sent to Libya from Sudan.
To the extent they knew that there was a genuine risk he would be returned to
Libya, they violated his rights against unlawful return.
• More information about Western collusion with the Gaddafi government: The
Human Rights Watch interviews and the Tripoli Documents present new details
showing a close degree of cooperation among the US, the UK, and other Western
governments with regard to the forcible return and subsequent interrogation of
3 Testimony of Michael Hayden in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, February 5, 2008,
http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs/110824.pdf, p. 71-72 (accessed July 2, 2012) (“Let me make it very clear and to
state so officially in front of this Committee that waterboarding has been used on only three detainees.”). The CIA
waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times, Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri twice. CIA
Office of the Inspector General, “Special Review: Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001 –
October 2003),” May 7, 2004, declassified in August 2009,
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20090825-DETAIN/2004CIAIG.pdf (accessed July 2, 2012), (“CIA OIG
report”), p. 90-91.
4 George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York, Crown Publishers, 2012), p. 171 (“Of the thousands of terrorists we captured in
the years after 9/11, about a hundred were placed into the CIA program. About a third of those were questioned using
enhanced techniques. Three were waterboarded.”).
5 Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2012), p. 585 (“To my knowledge, no U.S. military
personnel involved in interrogations waterboarded any detainees—not at Guantanamo Bay, or anywhere else in the world.”).
5 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | SEPTEMBER 2012