Gul Rahman
| Gul Rahman | |
|---|---|
| File:Photo of Gul Rahman, released by his family, via CBS News.jpg
Photo of Gul Rahman, released by his family
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| Arrested | October 2002 Pakistan To find Hekmatyar |
| Died | 20 November 2002 the Salt Pit |
| Citizenship | Afghanistan |
| Detained at | Salt Pit |
| Charge(s) | No charge |
| Status | Died in CIA custody |
| Occupation | Senior member of HIA |
Gul Rahman (died 20 November 2002) was a suspected Afghan militant and torture victim. He died in a secret CIA prison, or black site, located in northern Kabul, Afghanistan and known as the Salt Pit.[1][2] He had been captured October 29, 2002.[3][4]
His name was kept secret by the United States for more than seven years although his death was announced. In 2010 the Associated Press reported that before his death he was left half-stripped and chained against a concrete wall on a night when the temperature was close to freezing.[3] The United States government did not notify his family (wife and four daughters) of his death, according to the report.[3]
Contents
Capture and death
Gul Rahman was captured and arrested on 29 October 2002 during a joint operation by U.S. agents and Pakistani security forces against Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin.[5] He was reportedly arrested with the physician Ghairat Baheer, the son-in-law of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who leads the insurgent faction Hezb-e-Islami.[5] Rahman had traveled from Peshawar to Islamabad, Pakistan for a medical checkup when he was arrested at the home of Ghairat Baheer, and subsequently flown by the CIA to Afghanistan.[5]
U.S. officials claim Rahman was "violently uncooperative" while in custody at the Salt Pit, the CIA code name for an abandoned brick factory that had been turned into a CIA black site or covert interrogation center.,[5] including threatening to kill his guards - who responded by beating him, according to several former Central Intelligence Agency officials.[5] Rahman was also subjected to "48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower and rough treatment".[6] Gul Rahman reportedly died on 20 November 2002 after being stripped naked from the waist down and shackled to a cold cement wall in the Salt Pit, where temperatures were approximately 36° Fahrenheit/2° Celsius.[4]
His death prompted an internal CIA review and the development of improved guidance.[5] No one was ever charged in his death.[6]
After Rahman was identified in news accounts in April 2010, his family asked the International Red Cross for assistance in recovering his body for a religious burial.[citation needed]
Rescue of Hamid Karzai
According to Gul's brother, Habib Rahman, Gul Rahman was involved in a 1994 rescue of Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan since 2004. Karzai had been imprisoned by the government forces, and Rahman was working for the insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar's forces fired rockets at the building while Rahman entered and freed Karzai. Rahman took him to a safe house in Kabul.[2]
Senate Intelligence Committee's report of CIA torture
On December 9, 2014 the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture was published.[1] According to that report he had been subjected to total darkness, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, cold shower, "rough treatment", short shackling and finally froze to death. The report said he was the only captive known to have died in CIA custody.
Steven W Hawkins, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, writing in the The Guardian, reported that he found that the CIA official responsible for Rahman's death, was not only not punished, or sanctioned, rather, he received a cash bonus for his "consistently superior work".[6]
On Oct. 13 2015 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit [7] on behalf of Rahman's estate and two other former detainees against two psychologists, James Mitchell and John Jessen, that ACLU maintain were responsible for designing the protocols that resulted in Rahman's death and the torture of the other two plaintifs. The ACLU case is the first lawsuit brought against significant individuals identified in the Senate report since it was published.[8]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.mirror
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.mirror
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.mirror
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Salim v. Mitchell - Complaint https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/salim-v-mitchell-complaint
- ↑ Jenna LcLaughlin, "Former U.S. Detainees Sue Psychologists Responsible For CIA Torture Program" https://theintercept.com/2015/10/13/former-u-s-detainees-sue-psychologists-responsible-for-cia-torture-program/
External links
- "Salt Pit Death: Gul Rahman, CIA Prisoner, Died Of Hypothermia In Secret Afghanistan Prison", Huffington Post
- "Author of Torture Memos Admits Some Techniques Were Not Approved By DOJ", Truth-Out
| Suspected black sites | |
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| Held in the Salt Pit |
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| Held in the dark prison | |
| See also | |
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1 Died in custody.
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- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with unsourced statements from October 2013
- 2002 deaths
- Afghan torture victims
- Victims of human rights abuses
- Afghan people who died in prison custody
- Prisoners and detainees held in the Salt Pit
- Deaths from hypothermia
- Pashtun people
- Prisoners who died in United States military detention
- Year of birth missing
