CIA facility in Tunisia?
From his prison cell in Bizerte (65km north of Tunis), The Tunisian prisoner Ramzi Bettibi managed to smuggle a very alarming letter that found its way on to the Internet (available in French). Ramzi is serving a four-year sentence at Bizerte for copying, onto a forum board he moderated, an online statement from a group threatening terror attacks if former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon attended the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that was held in Tunisia in 2005. Ramzi Bettibi was arrested on 15 March 2005 at the internet café where he worked. In prison he is frequently subjected to torture, which the authorities hope will make him collaborate with the State Security services. “Bettibi should be freed because the government never proved that he had a criminal intent to threaten others or to incite violence,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch in a statement published last year. “Under these circumstances, cutting and pasting on the Internet should not be a crime,” she added.
In his letter, Ramzi describes a secret detention facility near Bizerte city, where he has been interrogated by CIA and French-speaking agents about his alleged ties to Jihadist groups in Iraq and online activities. According to the letter, the prisoners are being interrogated and held in containers in a secret location around 15 minutes drive from Bizerte prison.
Since the closure of the secret CIA jails hosted by Poland and Romania following the Washington Post’s revelations and other media reports, there have been rumors circulating about the transfer of prisoners to other CIA facilities somewhere in North Africa. But this letter from an “eye-witness” (even if no one can confirm or deny that Ramzi Bettibi was the real author) appears to offer the first concrete “evidence” of the existence of such facility in Tunisia. It also details the prison's possible location and the identities of some of the prisoners who are being interrogated and held clandestinely. Surprisingly, the letter was written on June 9, 2007, one day only after the publication of the second report of “Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states” adopted by the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.
اللهم اشهد انّ مصيري في خطر انقذوا المعتقلين في ذلك السجن الامريكي لقد سمعت أن منهم السعودي سعيد الغامدي والتونسي ابو عمر التونسي…
ابحثوا عن هذا السجن إنه لايبعد كثيرا عن بنزرت وربما هو في ثكنة عسكرية حسب ما فهمت من المكان.
Oh God, witness that my fate is in great danger. Save the other detainees in this American detention. I've heard of a Saudi detainee named Saeed Al-ghamdi, and another Tunisian detainee named Abou Omar Al-tunisi.
Search for this prison. It's not far from Bizerte. I understood that It's may be located in a military Barracks.
According to a previous report issued by the International Association for the Support of Political Prisoners (AISPP), Ramzi Bettibi began a new hunger strike on January 18, 2007 in protest against maltreatment and abuse in prison. In a statement published online on March 12th, 2007, the National Council for Freedoms in Tunisia (CNLT) described the way he was tortured:
Le 23 février 2007, Ramzi Bettibi, le prisonnier du net, a été soumis à la violence extrême de 3 officiers en civil dans la prison de Bizerte, et qui se sont présentés comme la brigade de la Sûreté de l’Etat. Ils lui ont attaché les bras et les jambes à une chaise et ont voulu lui faire ingurgiter du lait de force pour qu’il cesse sa grève de la faim commencée en protestation contre des violences perpétrées à son encontre antérieurement. Une des ses dents a été cassée.
C’est la cinquième fois en l’espace de quelques mois que Ramzi Bettibi subit des séances de torture en prison visant à le faire collaborer avec les services de la Sûreté de l’Etat.
This is the fifth time in the space of a few months that Ramzi Bettibi has been tortured in prison, in order to make him collaborate with the State Security services.
7 comments
May the saftey and security of Ramzi Bettibi’s human rights be soon upheld against the apparent brutality afflicting him.
The Ben Gharbia account cannot be substantiated. No international organization monitoring secret terrorist prisons around the world has ever mentioned Tunisia as the site of any such prisons. The whole report sounds like a concocted fabrication especially that the only source to whom the allegations are attributed is behind bars. Nothing really proves he has really made such accusations and nothing proves such claims are credible. Please spare us the phoney accounts. We have enough real secret prisons to worry about.
Sam Morgan
@ Sam Morgan:
this is not the only source about the involvement of US officers in the investigation of Tunisian prisoners in Tunisia. The Council for Liberties in Tunisia (CNLT) a respectful Human Rights ONG has also reported that the prisoner khaled layouni(another prisoner) has been interrogated by US agents, in Tunisia, about his online activities:
http://www.kalimatunisie.com/article.php?id=470
تحقيق أمريكي مع سجين تونسي في مكتب عميد قضاة التحقيق
أفاد محامو السجين خالد العيوني الموقوف في إحدى القضايا المتعلقة بقانون مكافحة الإرهاب أنّ منوّبهم قد تم جلبه من سجنه بالمرناقية إلى مكتب التحقيق بمحكمة تونس الابتدائية يوم 29 جانفي 2007 حيث وقع استجوابه من قبل شخصين أمريكيّين أحدهما من أصل لبناني.
وقد رفض خالد العيوني الإجابة على أسئلة المحققين الأمريكيّين والتي كانت متعلّقة بدردشة إلكترونية أجراها منذ سنتين ويعتبرها الأمريكيّون ذات صلة “بعملية الأنفاق” التي فشلت منذ أكثر من سنتين في نيويورك
ويأتي هذا النشاط المخابراتي الأمريكي في تونس أياما بعد اعتراف وزير الداخلية التونسي بتاريخ 12 جانفي 2007 بأنّ التحقيق مع عناصر المجموعة المسلّحة يجري ” بالتنسيق مع بعض الدول التي لها معلومات حول هذه المجموعة واٍمتداداتها الإقليمية وأهدافها.