In March, 2002, a joint operation in Faisalabad by the Pakistani police, CIA and FBI cornered, shot and seriously wounded the Saudi terrorist and former anti-Russian mujahideen Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah. He received the best medical care for his wounds because he was needed for an important experiment in Thailand.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks of September, 2001, United States diplomacy was frantically busy. But US-Thai relations were ahead even of that development. Before 9/11 the CIA and the National Security Agency of Thailand had already set up the Counter-terrorism Intelligence Centre (CTIC) to cooperate on the issue. The attacks on New York and Washington focused the CTIC like a laser.
By early 2002, Washington had opened a facility in Thailand to house important foreign terrorists. The safe house itself, its purpose, its activities — all of these would be kept secret from all but a tiny few government officials.
In the past dozen years, some of the secrecy has slipped. The basic outline of the purpose and workings of the CIA’s secret prison in Thailand is known. What happened to Abu Zubaydah in the prison, and who did it to him — this is known. But major secrecy still shrouds the details of the Thailand safe house.
More secrets are to be stripped away shortly. As only the US can, the country will expose more of the concealment and confess to moral and real crimes. The final version of a 600-page report on the safe houses of Thailand and other countries is about to be released by the US senate.
The report will not answer all questions. The CIA, which has tried to oversee, obfuscate, censor, delay, black out and redact pretty well every paragraph of the report, did not even want the word "Thailand" to appear. In fact, as of today, it is unclear whether the report will actually say "Thailand" or something alike "a friendly country in Southeast Asia".
Either way, you'll probably recognise it, but it shows just how hard the advocates of a secret state are fighting the activists of an open government.
What happened to Abu Zubaydah and, shortly afterwards, to at least two other top al-Qaeda terrorists, is well known. They were tortured. Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded more than 80 times, probably more than 100. He was hit, stripped, humiliated, blasted with music, forced nude into a cold cell. He was certainly bound tightly by ropes and chains, probably drugged and certainly abused physically.
Then, after a while, the CIA destroyed the videotapes that documented all of the above, so there would be no horrifying evidence available to a US court.
The amount of information that Abu Zubaydah gave up in return for not being tortured is a matter of dispute. It is one of the items that might be in the senate report. The CIA, which conducted all the brutality, says that the torture made Abu Zubaydah give up the name of an al-Qaeda messenger, a name that led 10 years later to the hideout of Osama bin Laden. The FBI, which opposed most of the torture from the beginning and acted as “good cop” to the CIA’s “bad cop” with Abu Zubaydah, disputes that.
One of their officers has testified publicly that the al-Qaeda messenger’s name was handed out by Abu Zubaydah because the FBI was treating him well instead of waterboarding him.
The senate report might verify the report that Abu Zubaydah hoodwinked CIA interrogators by giving a phoney name as his al-Qaeda controller. He used the name of an Egyptian film star, and it took two weeks for the CIA to catch on to that trick and resume the torture.
The Thai safe house was not the only one. In fact, while the Thai facility was closed by 2004 — when the tapes were (supposedly) destroyed — other safe houses in other parts of the world were still hosting top al-Qaeda "executives". It is ironic that the only senior terrorist actually caught in Thailand, the Jemaah Islamiyah action chief Hambali, was whisked out of the country within hours and taken to a different country’s safe house.
But many in Thailand will be looking for new facts and clues when the US senate's report comes out.
One of the top questions is just who inside the country’s security apparatus participated. It is assumed, but not actually known, whether the prime minister at the time was informed of what was going on. Every prime minister — Thaksin, Sonthi, Abhisit, Yingluck — has denied all knowledge of the safe house. That hardly inspires confidence about who was running the country's security operations until May 22, not that Gen Prayuth has revealed any information.
In 2009, then-premier Abhisit actually said that the facility "does not exist", which was technically correct, in the present tense. But then-army commander Gen Anupong Paojinda went further, saying the CIA safe house was journalists' fantasy. Which it isn't.
A question that has gripped observers from the start of the story has been where the safe house was. US sources have told the Bangkok Post Sunday not to expect a direct answer to that from the new report. The most popular speculation has always been that the torture chamber was at or near the Udon Thani airbase, but there have actually never been any credible clues.
Until now. The US torture report is undergoing its last revisions and redacting. When it is issued, it will answer a few of the remaining questions of the CIA safe house in Thailand. But it will not answer all of them.