Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

oom was monitored with cameras. During this period he said he overheard two police
women arguing: “They were talking in their own language and I didn’t understand every-
thing, but I did hear ‘CIA’ about four or five times, so I expected that something not good
was about to happen.” After 13 days of detention, the Hong Kong authorities told him he
would be sent back to China.
On or about March 28, 2004, Saadi said he was handcuffed, his legs zip-tied, and he was
taken along with his wife and four children onto an empty plane with an Egyptian crew. He
and his children were taken to the back of the plane, while his wife, who was screaming
and in what he described as a “terrible psychological condition,” was kept elsewhere. It
was not until five Libyan security personnel—four men and a woman—appeared on the
plane during a stopover in Bangkok that Saadi realized he was being rendered to Libya.
Once he realized it, he lost consciousness. Saadi is diabetic and his blood sugar had risen.
“That’s when I first realized I was being sent back to Libya. It was a mixture of horrible
emotions: anger, fear, sadness.”
“I felt like we were being kidnapped. I was very scared. I thought they would execute us all,”
Kadija al-Saadi, Saadi’s oldest child who was 13 years old at the time, said. 332 Around this
time, she came to the area of the plane where her father was. When she saw many soldiers
around him and the needle in his arm while he was still handcuffed to the chair, “I fainted
too,” she said. Later during the flight, about half an hour before they landed, Libyan
security agents came and told her to come and say goodbye to her father. “I expected that
that was when they would come and execute him,” she said. 333
The Tripoli Documents corroborate Saadi’s story. Saadi’s return appears to have been
initiated by the MI6, but once the CIA discovered it was underway, they stepped in to do
everything they could to assist. A March 23, 2004 fax from the CIA to Libyan intelligence,
found in the folder marked “USA,” states that the CIA has “become aware” that Saadi and
his family were being held in detention in Hong Kong and that the Libyans have been
working with the British to “effect [his] removal to Tripoli” on a Libyan plane that was in the
Maldives. 334 In the fax, the CIA said that it was aware that the Hong Kong special wing had
332 Human Rights Watch interview with Kadija al-Saadi, Tripoli, Libya, March 25, 2012.
333 Ibid.
334 Tripoli Documents 2162-2163.
105 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | SEPTEMBER 2012