| Marwan Jabour | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1977 (age 41–42) Amman Jordan |
| Arrested | 2004-05-09 Lahore Pakistani security officials |
| Released | 2006-06-30 Jordan |
| Detained at | CIA's network of black sites |
| Status | Released without charge after over two years extrajudicial detention |
Marwan Jabour is a former captive held in the CIA's network of black sites. [1] [2] He was raised him Saudi Arabia by his Palestinian guest worker parents. He moved to Pakistan for study, in 1994.
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is a country in Western Asia constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of approximately 2,150,000 km2 (830,000 sq mi), Saudi Arabia is geographically the largest sovereign state in the Middle East, the second-largest in the Arab world, the fifth-largest in Asia, and the 12th-largest in the world. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south; it is separated from Israel and Egypt by the Gulf of Aqaba. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland and mountains. As of October 2018, the Saudi economy was the largest in the Middle East and the 18th largest in the world. Saudi Arabia also has one of the world's youngest populations; 50 percent of its 33.4 million people are under 25 years old.
The Washington Post interviewed Mawrwan Jabour at his home in Pakistan, after his release. [2] They reported that he had been accused of being an "al Qaeda paymaster". According to its report, he confirmed he had traveled to Afghanistan for military training, in 1999, because he hoped to travel to Chechnya to help Chechens fight Russia. But he told the Washington Post he was told it would not be possible for him to travel to Chechnya, so he returned to Pakistan.
Chechnya, officially the Chechen Republic, is a federal subject of Russia.
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is, by a considerable margin, the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with about 146.79 million people as of 2019, including Crimea. About 77% of the population live in the western, European part of the country. Russia's capital, Moscow, is one of the largest cities in the world and the second largest city in Europe; other major cities include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait. However, Russia recognises two more countries that border it, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are internationally recognized as parts of Georgia.
He confirmed that after the American invasion of Afghanistan some of the men he trained with in Afghanistan in 1999 sought him out in Pakistan. [2] These men had fled the war zone, with their families, and asked for his help. He described their wives and children being seriously wounded. He acknowledged that, with financing from al Qaeda, he helped several dozen individuals with food, medicine and travel documents.
He was captured in early 2004, and transferred to the CIA's network of secret interrogation centers on June 16, 2004. [2] The Washington Post reports that American security officials confirmed he was held by the CIA, but would not discuss his accounts of conditions there. He was able to help human rights workers to place a number of the other individuals who had been held by the CIA.
Human Rights Watch published a fifty-page report on February 26, 2007 based on their own interviews with Marwan Jabour. [3] Marwan Jabour told Human Rights Watch that he was beaten during the six weeks he spent in Pakistani custody. [4] He said a friend he was visiting, and another guest, were taken into Pakistani custody at the same time he was. He told Human Rights Watch none of the men, women and children he helped were affiliated with Al Qaida.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures some governments, policy makers and human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and the group often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants and political prisoners.
Other techniques Marwan Jabour described experiencing included sleep deprivation, stress positions, enforced nudity, the administration of psychoactive drugs and having a rubber cord tied around his penis so he could not urinate. [4] He said he wasn't beaten in US custody, but he was subjected to sleep deprivation and stress positions there too, and he was shown a small wooden box where he was told Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been confined for extended periods of time, and threatened that this technique could be applied to him too.
Sleep deprivation, also known as insufficient sleep or sleeplessness, is the condition of not having enough sleep. It can be either chronic or acute and may vary widely in severity.
A stress position, also known as a submission position, places the human body in such a way that a great amount of weight is placed on just one or two muscles. For example, a subject may be forced to stand on the balls of his feet, then squat so that his thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates an intense amount of pressure on the legs, leading first to pain and then muscle failure.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a Pakistani Islamist militant held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges. He was named as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 9/11 Commission Report.
According to the Taipei Times , Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, issued a statement in response to the Human Rights Watch report. [5] According to Gimigliano the CIA's program of secret extrajudicial detention and use of extended interrogation techniques was:
- "...with great care and close review, producing vital information that has helped disrupt plots and save lives." [5]
- "...another key, lawful tool in the fight against terror." [5]
- "The United States does not conduct or condone torture, nor does it transfer anyone to other countries for the purpose of torture." [5]
