U.S. to U.N.: 'The United States Does Not Operate Any Secret Detention Facilities'

    In a report to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the Obama administration made its most unequivocal denial of the existence of secret detention facilities operated by any part of the U.S. government.  The document is a response to "55 questions prepared by the Committee and transmitted to the United States on January 10, 2010..." ranging from CIA rendition to allegations of torture by Chicago police in the 1980s. Among those questions were several regarding the detention of suspected terrorists and combatants.  Question 5(a) read in part:

Please provide information on: 

(a) Whether the State party has adopted a policy that ensures that no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control and that publicly condemns secret detention, pursuant the Committee's previous concluding observations (para. 17). Please disclose detailed information on the existence of any such facilities, in the past and present, and the authority under which they have been established.

      Although the answer provided by the United States is somewhat lengthy, it contains this flat denial [emphasis added]:

The United States does not operate any secret detention facilities. In some contexts, the United States operates battlefield transit and screening facilities, the locations of which are often classified for reasons of military necessity. All such facilities are operated consistent with applicable U.S. law and policy and international law, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and DoD Directive 2310.01E. The ICRC and relevant host governments are informed about these facilities, and the ICRC has access to allindividuals interned by the United States in the context of armed conflict, consistent with DoD policy.

    As recently as January 2013, the Washington Post reported that some secret arrests and detentions were still taking place, and details in that case are still murky.
    The report to the U.N. also makes a flat denial regarding allegations stemming from 2007 reports of a secret detention facility on the island of Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean:

The United States does not detain any persons on Diego Garcia. As indicated above in response to Question 5(a), the United States does not have and has never had a detention facility on Diego Garcia.

 
Note: A version of this article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

State Department Offers Reward for Leads on ‘Location’ of Terrorists

    The State Department announced on Monday a total of up to $23 million in rewards for information on terrorists in West Africa, the first time the Department's Rewards for Justice program has offered rewards in that part of the continent.  Although the Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that the leadership of al-Qaeda has been decimated, four of the five terrorist on this new list are either current al-Qaeda leadership or alumni of the organization according to the State Department press release.  And from the wording of the new reward offers, as well as many of the previous outstanding reward offers, capturing and taking these men into custody is not the primary focus of Rewards for Justice [emphasis added]:

The Secretary of State has authorized rewards of up to $5 million each for information leading to the location of AQIM leader Yahya Abu el Hammam and Signed-in-Blood Battalion leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar [former AQIM]; rewards of up to $3 million each for information leading to the location of AQIM leader Malik Abou Abdelkarim and MUJWA spokesperson Oumar Ould Hamaha [former AQIM]; and a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to the location of Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram.

    One of the distinguishing features of the Rewards for Justice program is the more limited  qualification attached to most of the reward offers.  While other government reward programs for information on fugitives depend on information leading to an arrest or even an arrest and conviction, the vast majority of rewards offered by the State Department's Rewards for Justice ask only for "information leading to the location" of the terrorists in question.
    There are exceptions, such as the $10 million for "[i]nformation leading to the arrest or conviction of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed," but even the $25 million reward for Ayman al-Zawahiri, founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, requires only "location."  In fact, rewards on only five of the 58 terrorists currently listed call for "capture" or "arrest."  The remainder, including all of the new West Africa additions, the first added to the program since President Obama's speech on counterterrorism policy two weeks ago, are subject to the location-only standard.
    In that speech, the president said in his justification of his drone policy, "despite our strong preference for the detention and prosecution of terrorists, sometimes this approach is foreclosed."  Since 53 of 58 Rewards for Justice offers simply ask for the "location" of the terrorists, it seems safe to assume that "detention and prosecution" is less a "strong preference" and more a rare exception, at least in this collection of high-value targets.  And with the president's renewed call for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the administration arguably has more incentive than ever to keep the number of high-ranking terrorist leaders in custody low.  The current structure of the Rewards for Justice program would seem to reflect the administration's intentions to do just that.


Note: This article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.