Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

“The biggest suffering for any prisoner like myself was the situation with
our families. When my daughter comes to me and says they prevented her
from going to school or my wife comes to me and says she doesn’t have a
dime to spend, that is suffering. You asked me about the physical abuse.
That was number 10 on the list of the worst things that I was going
through.” 213
Sharif’s Transfer and Treatment in Libya
Sharif was not returned to Libya until many months after Shoroeiya. Prior to this, his
American interrogators frequently asked him what he thought they should do with him.
This question was one of the “most disturbing things to me psychologically,” he told
Human Rights Watch. By then, he said, “it was clear—they knew I was not associated with
al Qaeda and was not a threat to the US. They kept asking me ‘What is the solution for you?
We are not just going to open the door for you and let you go.’” He suggested they help him
get political asylum in another country; he promised to respect the laws of that country
and begged them not to transfer him to Libya. “I will sign any document … [b]ut please,
don’t send me back to Libya. If you send me back there I will be sentenced to death and
killed,” he said he told them.
Despite his pleas, Sharif was transferred to Libya on April 20, 2005. His US captors secured
his hands, blindfolded him, took off his clothes, examined his body, and took
photographs of him naked. 214 They then drove him by car somewhere five or ten minutes
away. When they took the hood off his head, he found himself in a shipping container and
his arm was handcuffed to a steel ring welded to the wall of the container. The container
was in a hangar that appeared to be some sort of military storage facility. He said he could
tell because it was filled with boxes of ammunition and other military equipment, even
large airplane bombs. At that point he was informed he was being transported to Libya. “I
felt like this was the end,” he told Human Rights Watch. “I am a military opponent of the
Gaddafi regime, a leader of an armed group against Gaddafi, that participated in actions
against him, and now I am going to be handed over, delivered to him.”
213 Human Rights Watch interview with Shoroeiya, March 18, 2012.
214 Human Rights Watch interview with Sharif, March 14, 2012. See also See text box, “CIA Rendition Transportation
Procedures,” (above).
DELIVERED INTO ENEMY HANDS 58