US admits to torture at secret jail inside Thailand

WAR ON TERROR

The United States government has admitted for the first time that it had a secret jail in Thailand where suspected al-Qaeda operatives were flown in to be interrrogated, including being subjected to "waterboarding".

Federal prosecutors revealed the details in documents submitted to a court in New York as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Prosecutors also revealed that 92 videotapes made and stored in Thailand of the questionable interrogation techniques had been personally ordered to be destroyed by the then head of the CIA, Jose A Rodriguez Jr.

The tapes concerning two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were destroyed as the US Congress and the courts were intensifying their scrutiny of the agency's detention and interrogation programme. The civil liberties union is asking a judge to hold the agency in contempt for destroying the tapes.

In a speech on Monday in Washington, Attorney-General Eric Holder said "waterboarding is torture" and he would never authorise the technique.

In November 2005, the Washington Post and ABC News ran stories accusing the CIA of using "rendition" flights to transfer alleged al-Qaeda operatives to Thailand. Mr Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan while Mr al-Nashiri was arrested in the United Arab Emirates.

The reports claimed the CIA had a secret jail in Thailand where it subjected those prisoners to interrogation techniques deemed illegal under the Geneva Conventions.

But Thai authorities were quick to deny the reports.

Supreme Commander Gen Ruengroj Mahasaranont said the ABC News report was "just fiction" and "exaggerated".

A statement was issued by the Foreign Ministry saying: "Our investigations with relevant government agencies reveal that there have been no such secret prisons in Thailand."

The air force's Civil Affairs Directorate said foreign agencies had never been allowed to use air force bases for "any secret operations". Only some official military activities like joint military exercises were allowed, the directorate's statement said.

The air force questioned the credibility of ABC's sources and said members of the Thai media were welcome to visit its airbases to investigate the allegation further.

The Bangkok Post accepted this offer and a reporter was given a tour of the Udon Thani airbase, then touted as the most likely site of a CIA torture facility. The US used airbases at Udon Thani, Nakhon Phanon, Nakhon Ratchasima, U-tapao and a smaller one at Takhli in Nakhon Sawan during the Vietnam war.

"There is no fact in the unfounded claims," government spokesman Surapong Suebwonglee said at the time.

Mr Surapong said Bangkok was probably mentioned because it helped catch Hambali, an Indonesian accused of being Osma bin Laden's key link to Southeast Asia, in 2003.

Thailand's security cooperation with the US would have to be done "in an open and legitimate manner", he said.

In the 2005 report, ABC News said Mr Zubaydah was first held in Thailand in an unused warehouse on an active airbase. It also said that after he recovered from life-threatening wounds, incurred during his arrest, he was made to stand long hours in a cold cell and strapped feet-up to a "water board" until he begged for mercy and began to cooperate.

In "waterboarding", a detainee is strapped to a board, dunked under water and made to believe he might be drowned.

Mr Zubaydah has never been charged and remains at the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison facility in Cuba.

Mr al-Nashiri became the first person to be charged over the bombing of the USS Cole while it was in port in Yemen. He was captured in 2002 and held in secret locations before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

Last month the new Barak Obama government dropped those charges but said he remains a "high value" detainee at Guantanamo.