Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul
On June 17th, 2004, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged holding an Iraqi "ghost prisoner" named Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul.[1][2][3] He is an Iraqi Kurd who was suspected of membership in Ansar al-Islam. The CIA had transported him to covert detention in Afghanistan. However Jack Goldsmith, a senior lawyer at the Department of Justice, advised the CIA that he was protected by the Geneva Conventions, and covertly transporting him out of Iraq was a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Rashul was the first ghost detainee to be publicly acknowledged by American authorities, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that he ordered Rashul to be imprisoned, off the books, at the request of DCI George Tenet.
Since he was kept him off the books, his guards never learned his real name. So they nicknamed him "Triple-X", the code name of a character from a 2004 spy movie.[4]
When some of the circumstance of his incarceration become public, it was suggested that the reason he had been secretly incarcerated for seven months, without being interrogated, was that he got lost. The order to keep him off the books caused those who would have interrogated him forgot about him, or couldn't find him. [5]
References
- ↑ Donald Rumsfeld. Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Peter Pace, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Department of Defense, June 17, 2004. Retrieved on 2008-05-17.
- ↑ Iraq's invisible man: A 'ghost' inmate's strange life behind bars, US News and World Report, June 28, 2004. Retrieved on 2008-05-17.
- ↑ Josh White. Army, CIA Agreed on 'Ghost' Prisoners, Washington Post, March 11, 2005, p. A16. Retrieved on 2008-05-17.
- ↑ Edward T. Pound. Hiding a bad guy named Triple X: How the military treated some inmates at Abu Ghraib like 'ghosts', US News and World Report, June 13, 2004. Retrieved on 2008-05-17.
- ↑ Julian Borger. Rumsfeld ordered secret detention of Iraqi suspect, The Guardian, Friday June 18, 2004. Retrieved on 2008-05-17.