After I quit working yesterday, a story broke concerning the fact that Human Rights Watch (HRW), an organization which has made several accusations in this case, has confirmed that the U.S. was operating a secret prison in Afghanistan:

Accounts from detainees at Guantánamo reveal that the United States as recently as last year operated a secret prison in Afghanistan where detainees were subjected to torture and other mistreatment, Human Rights Watch said today. Eight detainees now held at Guantánamo described to their attorneys how they were held at a facility near Kabul at various times between 2002 and 2004. The detainees, who called the facility the "dark prison" or "prison of darkness," said they were chained to walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and kept in total darkness with loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time.

Most of the detainees said they were arrested in other countries in Asia and the Middle East, and then flown to Afghanistan. Detainees who arrived by airplane said they were driven about five minutes from a landing field to the prison. Afghan guards told some of them that the facility was located near Kabul. Some detainees who were kept at the facility were transferred at various times to and from another secret facility near Kabul. The detainees said they were later transferred to the main U.S. military detention facility near Bagram, where many other Guantánamo detainees say they were initially held.

It's unknown whether this prison is connected in some way to the "black hole" that the U.S. was operating at their facilities at the Bagram Air Base, although reports indicate this was a separate facility. However, Khaled Al-Masri, the German citizen who was abducted and interrogated for months, was held at an unknown location in Afghanistan, possibly the same one that HRW is referring to.

HRW's report on this prison can be found here. I'll warn you that the allegations of how the prisoners were mistreated is pretty horrific.

Switching over to Britain, I see that the police have opened their own investigation:

Police have launched an investigation into persistent claims that the CIA used British airports to fly terrorist suspects for torture in secret camps abroad.

Days after Tony Blair insisted he knew nothing about such "extraordinary rendition" operations, the move by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) threatens to embarrass the Government.

It is also the first attempt by the authorities to examine detailed claims that CIA flights have touched down more than 200 times in Britain.

Michael Todd, chief constable of Greater Manchester, is expected to review evidence collected by human rights campaigners and interview senior police officers from 10 forces across the country.

The investigation will attempt to establish whether there is evidence to back claims that CIA flights used British airports as stopping-off points while carrying terror suspects to secret detention camps around the world. It could develop into a criminal inquiry.

So now we've got two full-scale investigations underway by law enforcement - one in Spain and one in Britain. And a few governmental inquiries brewing in Germany, Portugal, Sweden and Iceland. And Poland and Romania are "double checking" the "fact" that they know they didn't host any prisons.

Meanwhile there's been a claim that British intelligence was "in the know" on the renditions:

Lawyers for a former pupil at a top British independent school have accused the British government of colluding with the CIA to send him to a series of prisons where he was abused, according to a newspaper report.

Al-Rawi, 37, an Iraqi national who has lived in Britain since 1985, and his business partner Jamil al-Banna, a Jordanian who was granted refugee status in Britain in 2000, were detained three years ago in Gambia. They were later flown by the CIA to Afghanistan and then to Cuba in March 2003.

The men are accused of being associated with al-Qaeda and Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric who has been described as Osama Bin Laden's European ambassador. Qatada is in a British jail pending deportation to his native Jordan.

Al-Rawi has claimed he was approached by MI5 in London to act as an unpaid intermediary with Qatada. When the preacher supposedly went into hiding at the end of 2001, al-Rawi admits finding Qatada a new flat. However, he also claims he told his MI5 handlers where the preacher was staying, the newspaper reports.

Both men said they have been repeatedly questioned at Guantanamo by American intelligence officers. Al-Banna claims he was kept in interrogation rooms for up to 14 hours a day with the air-conditioning on full so that it was freezing cold. The Home Office, which covers MI5, refused to comment.

Assuming al-Rawi isn't lying, that's a pretty startling claim, to say that MI5 wanted him to spy on Al-Qaeda and then turned the tables on him and turned him over to the CIA for intensive questioning/interrogation at Gitmo.

And in possibly related news, I see that the new CIA chief, Porter Goss, made an unscheduled semi-secret visit to Ukraine:

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Porter Goss had a secret meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in Kiev on Friday to discuss global terrorism and regional challenges, Yushchenko's spokeswoman confirmed Monday.

The meeting was confirmed only after a local newspaper had reported on the development early Monday, citing people familiar with the situation.

"This was a short meeting," Iryna Herashchenko, Yushchenko's spokeswoman, said. "One of the main issues at the meeting was the fight against terrorism."

Kudos to the Ukrainian press, who broke this story. Otherwise it wouldn't have been reported at all.

What is Goss doing in Ukraine, meeting with Yushchenko? Well we'll never know, but it does make it interesting because the original WaPo article said several "Eastern European countries, former Soviet States" were the ones hosting the prisons. And Ukraine is both in Eastern Europe and a former Soviet state.

Was there or is there still a secret prison in Ukraine? This seems unlikely, given the fact that the new pro-western government has been in power only 12 months. But on the other hand, former president Kuchma had sent troops to Iraq and was considered an "ally" by the United States. Was he perhaps earning hard cash by hosting a black prison site? Did Yushchenko authorize one? We'll have to wait and see...

And it's worth mentioning here that Jordan has been hinted at as hosting one of the secret prisons as well. Considering poor old Maher Arar was shipped by the U.S. to Jordan to be tortured (by Syria), the possibility of Jordan hosting a secret prison is very high.

So far there's been no new developments either out of the State Department or the Council of Europe, probably due to the fact that the Christmas vacation period is beginning.

As always, the investigation continues...

Peace