![]() ![]() Here it almost certainly picked up Yunus Rahmatullah and Amanatullah Ali and transferred them to Afghanistan. Conflicting flight plans were filed for this leg of the journey, one which has the aircraft landing on the 11th March, the other on the 12th. Eurocontrol and Federal Aviation Administration data shows that this aircraft had undertaken the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhadj and his wife, Fatima Bouchar, on 9 March 2004 from Bagkok to Tripoli, via Diego Garcia, before flying on to Palma de Mallorca, where it remained for 48 hours, before departing for Baghdad. Analysis of flight data demonstrates that the two men were rendered on board the CIA-owned Boeing 737 with registration number N313P. ![]() Within a month of their initial capture, Rahmnatullah and Ali were rendered by the CIA to Afghanistan, where they continue to be detained. Rahmatullah and Ali allege that while they were held thre, they were tortured by beating with chains, were threatened with execution, and were held in cells just 18 inches wide. They also described detainees being taken to a soundproof shipping container for interrogation, and emerging in a state of physical distress. Members of one of the US units that ran the prison have also come forward and reported that detainees were held in cells the size of large god kennels for prolonged periods, were routinely hooded, and were subjected to electric shocks. Human Rights Watch found that detainees at Camp Nama were subjected to beatings, exposure to extremes of cold, death threats and various other forms of psychological abuse and torture. This was restricted access for US military and CIA interrogators only, although some members of the UK’s SAS were permitted to attend interrogations. UK forces were involved in capture operations but were denied access to the area of the facility where interrogations took place. Guardian reporter Ian Cobain reported details of the way the prison operated and the nature of the torture and other human rights violations that detainees were subjected to. Indeed the US cleared him for release to Pakistan on 15 June 2010, provided ‘appropriate security assurances’ could be given by the Pakistani authorities that any threat posed by the detainee could be mitigated.Īfter they were captured by British forces, the men were handed over to US forces, and were held at the Camp Nama prison, a secret detention facility at Baghdad International Airport operated by US and UK military forces. ![]() Rahmatullah also denies any involvement with LET, and no evidence has ever been produced to the contrary. It was only through telephone calls that he was able to tell his family that it was British forces that captured him. But his letters revealed very little about how he was captured and how he has been treated, since the rules at Bagram forbid any discussion of his case, and letters out are heavily censored. They also learned he had been shot in the foot during his initial capture. ![]() This was when they were first informed that he had been rendered to Bagram. During his February 2004 trip to Iran, he had crossed the border into Iraq to see the Shia holy sites at Karbala and Najaf, important pilgrimage sites for Shia Muslims, made much more accessible following the fall of Saddam Hussein.įollowing his capture in February 2002, Ali’s family heard nothing from him until they received a letter through the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2005. As a rice merchant, he had been on business in Iran repeatedly since 2002, since Iran is a major rice importer. UK intelligence had incorrectly identified both men as members of the Sunni extremist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET).Īli is in fact a Shia Muslim, a minority sect that are targeted by LET. Once it was confirmed that there was no WMD programme, the Task Forces was reassigned to identify and capture Al Qaida suspects. Task Force 121 was initially designed to detain individuals suspected of knowing about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction programme. The capture was carried out as part of a wider set of operations by a joint Task Force, codenamed Task Force 121, made up of US and UK forces. Yunus Rahmatullah and Amanatullah Ali are Pakistani nationals who were captured in a mission codenamed Operation Aston by British forces in the Baghdad area of Iraq in February 2004, following a raid on a building MI6 believed was a safe house for foreign fighters. ![]()
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