The Guardian is reporting something we probably should have suspected: According to the human rights watch group Reprieve the United States has been, and continues to operate floating prisons to extrajudicially interrogate and house suspected terrorists:

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped. [Link]

I think that as G.W. Bush’s term ends we will be seeing ever more skeletons (pardon the pun) fall out of the closet. Traditionally, as soon as the Democrat and Republicans have chosen a nominee, they begin to receive briefings from the CIA on a host of national security topics and current operations. This is done to assure some degree of continuity by keeping the potential president elect informed. A transition is also a time when you’d expect increased leaking of information as new people look under the hood.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans. [Link]

We have previously written about Diego Garcia here and here (where the use of the island as a secret detention center was discussed).

For anyone who has watched the CBS show The Unit, all of this may sound familiar. The third season premiere was an episode about the CIA illegally operating a floating prison for terrorists:

The woman tells Bob that “rogues” in her agency are not happy that Jonas and the boys have found their “floating prison.” “A terrorist cruise to nowhere,” Bob observes. [Link]

Some of the statistics associated with what we’ve done during our “war against terror” are staggering:

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s legal director, said: “They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.

“By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.” [Link]

One of the ships suspected of being a “floating prison” is the U.S.S. Bataan. If true I find this to be slightly ironic considering the chapter in U.S. History for which the Bataan was named:

“Hell ships.” As General MacArthur’s forces approached the Philippines late in 1944, the Japanese loaded the Prisoners of War into cargo ships and sent them to Japan and Manchuria to work in coal mines and factories. The men of Bataan and Corregidor were packed into the holds of the ships so tightly that there was no room to sit or to lay down, and they had to take turns sleeping. They were given little food or water and no medical attention. The heat was so bad in the stifling, dark holds that men suffocated to death standing up. There were virtually no sanitary facilities and in some instances the Japanese would not even let the dead bodies be removed from the holds. [Link]