"Off the Record"

A damning briefing paper from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights on the Bush administration's responsibility for enforced "disappearances" in the “War on Terror” entitled Off the Record.

From the report:
On September 6, 2006, President George W. Bush revealed that the United States runs a

system of secret detention in the “War on Terror,” but he did not disclose how many individuals were secretly detained. While only the U.S. government knows exactly who remains missing, Off the Record provides the most comprehensive list of these individuals, who are believed to have been subject to an enforced disappearance for which the United States bears responsibility.

Based on research by six major human rights groups—Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve—Off the Record identifies individuals believed to have been held at some point by the United States in secret sites, all of whom remain missing.

Off the Record provides new information about detainees already identified as “disappeared” (for example, Ali Abdul-Hamid al-Fakhiri, commonly known as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi) and names four missing detainees for the first time. It reveals the extent to which the United States illegally uses “proxy detention” to empty its secret sites and demonstrates that far from targeting the “worst of the worst,” the system sweeps up low-level detainees and even involves the detention of the wives and children of the “disappeared,” in violation of their human rights. Off the Record also documents allegations concerning the treatment of detainees while in secret detention, including torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.