Man Without a Country

Why don't we focus on what Afghan women can do?
They can cook, bear children and pray.
As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers
--Al Franken
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Reprieve, a British human rights group, says the U.S. is operating a network of prison ships worldwide on which terrorism suspects are held incommunicado and abused. They claim many of the prisoners are later rendered to dark sites where they are tortured, and that the ships are chosen as detention cells to keep the misconduct away from the press.

They base their claim on Pentagon reports, testimony from released prisoners and European government sources. Their report can be read here.

From The Guardian (U.S. Accused of Holding Terror Suspects on Prison Ships):

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

The Navy Times reports the U.S. denies these allegations, though admitted that some prisoners were held on ship for "a few days" at the beginning of their confinement. If the allegations are true, Ranger wonders where such actions begin and where they will end.

Jose Padilla was a U.S. citizen banished to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., minus habeas corpus protection. If it can happen to him, it can happen to any of us. All that is needed is a trumped-up charge.

It appears that torture is no longer outsourced across the pond; just far enough out that it is in international waters, or off a friendly coastline. The U.S. Navy ship is not a legal detention facility, and stashing prisoners aboard is not a good omen.

If someone is apprehended as a bona fide terror suspect, they should be arrested and placed in pre-trial confinement in a federal detention facility.

Remember "American Taliban" soldier John Walker Lindh's treatment aboard U.S. Naval vessels following his capture on the battlefield? It wasn't anything that would get honorable mention at a Mother Teresa convention.