Zambia hosts US secret prisons

Zambia hosts US secret prisons
Written by Mwala Kalaluka
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 9:44:01 PM

ZAMBIA is one of the countries hosting secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons that newly elected United States President Barack Obama wants closed.

According to an article and map published in a British newspaper The Guardian of Friday January 23, 2009, Zambia is one of the countries with one CIA secret prison facility, while nations like South Africa have two CIA ‘black sites’.

A map showing the spread of CIA secret prisons in the publication, that broke the story of the CIA secret detention centres last year, is accompanied by the following caption: “The US keeps detainees in camps around the world, many of them shrouded in secrecy. These are the ones we know about.”

The US government has acknowledged before that it was holding at least 26, 000 people without trial in secret prisons.

The map in the Guardian highlights that apart from Zambia’s secret prison, Djibouti has three secret CIA detention facilities while Mauritania, Kosovo, Poland, Romania, Syria, Uzbekistan and the British-run Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia have one facility each.

The other countries with more than one secret CIA prison were highlighted as Morocco (3), Egypt (6), Iraq (5 facilities with 15, 800 detainees), Afghanistan (15 facilities with 600 detainees) and Jordan (2 facilities).

The Guardian also illustrates through the map that Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has 254 detainees.

Just days into office, President Obama signed executive orders hinting at the fact that the secret CIA prisons dotted allover the world would be closed.

“The orders that I signed today should send an unmistakable signal that our actions in the defence of liberty should be as just as our cause,” President Obama said in a speech at the State Department.

The executive orders signed by President Obama will facilitate for the abolishing of the CIA’s secret detention centres, torture and rendition and the shutting of Guantanamo Bay prison.

The CIA ‘black sites’, according to The Guardian, were authorized by a classified presidential directive six days after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and only acknowledged five years later in a speech in which former US president George W Bush declined to say where they were and insisted only that the techniques used there were “tough… safe, and lawful, and necessary.”

The Guardian stated that the black sites first came to light in Afghanistan where an airbase was used for interrogation and as a clearing centre for captives from around the world before they were flown to Guantanamo.

A cross section of Zambians opposed the establishment of a United States African Command Centre (AFRICOM) on Zambian soil during the late president Levy Mwanawasa’s administration.