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Revealed: the terror prison US is helping build in Morocco
By
Tom Walker Rabat and Sarah Baxter
02/12/06 "The
Times" -- -- THE United States is helping Morocco
to build a new interrogation and detention facility for Al-Qaeda
suspects near its capital, Rabat, according to western
intelligence sources.
The sources confirmed last week that building was under way at
Ain Aouda, above a wooded gorge south of Rabat’s diplomatic
district. Locals said they had often seen American vehicles with
diplomatic plates in the area.
The construction of the new compound, run by the Direction de la
Securité du Territoire (DST), the Moroccan secret police, adds
to a substantial body of evidence that Morocco is one of
America’s principal partners in the secret “rendition” programme
in which the CIA flies prisoners to third countries for
interrogation.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other groups
critical of the policy have compiled dossiers detailing the
detention and apparent torture of radical Islamists at the DST’s
current headquarters, at Temara, near Rabat.
A recent inquiry into rendition by the Council of Europe, led by
Dick Marty, the Swiss MP, highlighted a pattern of flights
between Washington, Guantanamo Bay and Rabat’s military airport
at Sale.
French intelligence and diplomatic sources said the most recent
such flight was in the first week in December, when four
suspects were seen being led blindfolded and handcuffed from a
Boeing 737 at Sale and transferred into a fleet of American
vehicles.
Morocco’s membership of a so-called “coalition of the willing”
has led to tension within the kingdom, where Mohammed VI, 42, is
trying to suppress a wave of Islamic fundamentalism, most
powerfully expressed in the Casablanca bombings of May 2003, in
which 12 suicide bombers — all of them Moroccan — killed more
than 40 people.
More than 3,000 suspected radical Islamists have been arrested
since, but some of the country’s higher-profile Al-Qaeda
sympathisers have been released, including Abdallah Tabarak, a
former bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden.
While much of the media is said to have been infiltrated by the
DST, a few publications that dare to question official policy
have accused the government of allowing Morocco to become “the
CIA’s dustbin”.
Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary — who described
Morocco and Tunisia yesterday as “long-standing friends and
constructive partners” in the fight against terrorism — is due
to visit today. Among the topics expected to be discussed with
officials is the opening of a new FBI office in Morocco.
Last Friday the country witnessed its first protests against the
Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. They were highly
organised and controlled but created a sense of apprehension in
the capital before Rumsfeld’s talks.
Morocco has an estimated 30,000 policemen for a population of
30m and many people seem scared of speaking to strangers. A
Sunday Times reporter was photographed by men with mobile phone
cameras at least three times last week but was never directly
challenged.
“It’s like a web — they let you spin away and like that they
believe they get more information,” said the French intelligence
source.
The presence of minders made asking questions around Ain Aouda
almost impossible, but at a restaurant adjoining a newly built
mosque nearby, elderly men supping mint tea while they watched
the African Nations Cup were clearly angry about the project.
“We’ve seen nothing but Americans for five months,” complained
one wizened figure before being told by his friends to be quiet.
There are no public access roads leading to the site, which can
be seen at the moment only from a bend above the Korifla Gorge.
The secluded forest setting is similar to that of Temara, 10
miles to the north.
Moroccan officials refused to make any comment about Ain Aouda.
A spokeswoman for the American embassy said she had no
information about the new building.
Temara itself already has a fearsome reputation among former
inmates. Binyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian-born Briton later sent to
Guantanamo Bay, told Amnesty International that interrogators
there cut his chest and penis when he refused to answer
questions.
Mohammed said he was held at Temara for 18 months before being
flown to another “black prison” in Afghanistan in January 2004,
and then on to Guantanamo Bay.
It is not clear how many suspects are being questioned in
Morocco. The French intelligence source said the four brought to
the country in December were all believed to be “high profile”
but gave no further details.
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
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