Eve is here. Readers may be aware that some of the history of black American sites, such as foreign torture sites, are publicly available. According to a former Thai government official here, the US operated a second base here in the basement of the US embassy.
Written by Thomas Neuberger. Originally published on God’s Spies
A group of American soldiers administers “water treatment” to Filipino rebels during the Philippine-American War, circa 1900. From a book published in 1902. Temporary Archive/Getty Images (Source: Time Magazine)
This is a follow-up to a recent post on the Minnesota Black Site.
Does ICE run a dark site in Minnesota?
Is it really fair to call the ICE prison in the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building a “dark site”? Let’s take a look.
What is a “black site”?
“Dark site” is a scary word. It is frequently used in locations where the CIA maintains prisons below the radar, where abducted terrorists are captured, held, and usually tortured.
Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan was (and may still be) such a place. From the Atlantic in 2010:
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) operates a secret interrogation facility for high-value detainees at Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield, where prisoners are sometimes subjected to harsher interrogations than those used elsewhere, defense and administration officials said.
The New York Times and the BBC reported that inmates who passed through the facility reported abuse, including beatings and sexual humiliation, to the Red Cross, but were not allowed access. Lt. Gen. Robert Harward, the commander in charge of detention operations in Afghanistan, insisted that all detainees under his jurisdiction had regular access to the Red Cross and were not mistreated.
Wikipedia has more information, reporting a 2014 claim by “defense officials” that the facility had been shut down. (Really? No one knows. We pay our warriors to lie to keep us safe.)
The definition of a “black site” is as follows:
Black sites are state-run secret detention centers where prisoners who have not been charged with a crime are held without due process or court orders, often being abused or killed, and with no means of bail.
The interesting thing about black sites is that they’re actually not that secret. They simply aren’t recognized and can’t access testing. The Bagram Black Site was known as a torture site by the New York Times in 2005.
In 2005, The New York Times obtained a 2,000-page U.S. Army investigation report into the December 2002 killing of two unarmed Afghan civilian prisoners by U.S. military personnel at Bagram Theater Camp (also known as Bagram Collection Point or BCP, now Parwan Detention Center) in Bagram, Afghanistan, and the general treatment of prisoners. Two prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were repeatedly chained to the ceiling and beaten, resulting in their deaths. A military medical examiner ruled both prisoners’ deaths a homicide. Autopsies revealed that both prisoners had severe injuries to their legs, which were described as being similar to being hit by a bus. Seven soldiers were indicted in 2005.
By the way, there is still a detention center called Parwan Detention Facility next to the base. Black site? who knows?
Bishop Whipple Detention Center
The questions are: The prison located in the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building is…
Was it recognized? Is it possible to test? A place of torture?
…However, the last is not strictly necessary for a black site to exist.
To answer, it appears that immigration cells are allowed, but this is the first time I have seen any reports that there are separate cells for known citizens, where illegally detained or abducted citizens could be held indefinitely and without charge.
Second, Bishop Whipple Prison is certainly not subject to inspection.
Finally, regarding being a place of torture, consider this from an incident report in the Houston Chronicle (all emphasis mine):
On the way to the cell, [O’Keefe and Sigüenza] He said he saw other detainees screaming for help, but most were staring despondently at the ground. In one instance, a woman was observed trying to go to the bathroom while three male staff looked on. The overwhelming majority of detainees were Hispanic men, but there were also East Africans. Minnesota is home to the nation’s largest Somali community.
“Just hearing the visceral pain of the people in this center was terrible,” O’Keefe said. “And then you juxtapose that with the laughter that we heard from real agents. … It was very surreal and shocking in a way.”
Siguenza said one of his cellmates had a cut on his head and another injured his toe, but neither received medical attention. His requests for a drink of water or to go to the bathroom outside his cell were ignored, he said.
Pay attention to the toilet incident. Humiliation, including sexual humiliation, is a form of torture. It embarrasses people into submission, and it’s done on purpose.
There are also reports such as:
Law enforcement officials say the man injured while in ICE custody “deliberately ran headfirst into a brick wall.”
The Minnesota man suffered severe head injuries while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody earlier this month, and the agency kept a guard at his hospital bedside even as his condition worsened, his lawyers said.
The Mexican-born man was taken into custody by federal immigration agents on St. Paul’s east side on Jan. 8, according to a habeas corpus petition seeking his release in federal court.
The man was taken to the hospital by investigators four hours after his arrest. A CT scan showed the man had “bilateral life-threatening skull fractures and hemorrhage.” …
According to the request, one agent told hospital staff that “he was in a terrible situation,” but did not share any other information.
And consider the story of a man whose door was broken down to influence an arrest. He was taken to the Bishop Whipple Federal Building, where the incident occurred.
ICE agents take “trophy photos” and pack detainees into holding cells
Gibson said that after arriving at the Whipple Federal Building near MSP Airport, where ICE detention facilities are located, agents stopped her and forced her to participate in ritual humiliation.
“They took a photo of the trophy with their personal cellphones. One was standing to my right and the other was standing to my left. Then they gave a thumbs up and took a photo with their personal cellphones,” he said, adding that officials took similar photos with other detainees. …
Inside the jail, Gibson said officers placed him with about 40 other detainees in a bare metal holding cell about the size of a small conference room. Their feet were shackled. He said his cell was cold, had only one toilet and no privacy. Mr Gibson said it appeared one person in the cell had scabies.
Note also the blatant defiance of court orders in the same story.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan on Monday ordered ICE to keep Mr. Gibson away from his family and attorney in Minnesota.
But late Monday, officers loaded Gibson onto a plane with other detainees and took him to a detention center in El Paso, Texas.
This is not your typical arrest and detention facility. Not in Whipple or anywhere like that. And the state has three years left to build more facilities.
