The Salt Pit

The Salt Pit

The Salt Pit is the codename of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison, and interrogation centre in Afghanistan. It is located north of Kabul and functioned as a brick factory prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan. In the winter of 2005 the "Salt Pit" became known to the general public over two incidents.

November 2002 death in custody

The recently assigned CIA case officer in charge of this prison directed the Afghan guards to strip a suspect naked, and chain him to the floor of his unheated cell, and leave him overnight.cite news
url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2576-2005Mar2.html
title=CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee Treatment: Afghan's Death Took Two Years to Come to Light; Agency Says Abuse Claims Are Probed Fully
author=Dana Priest
publisher=Washington Post
date=March 6, 2005
accessdate=2007-06-28] cite news
title=CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described: Sources Say Agency's Tactics Lead to Questionable Confessions, Sometimes to Death
author=Brian Ross, Richard Esposito
date=November 18, 2005
publisher=
url=http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866
accessdate=2007-06-28
] In the morning the suspect was dead. A post-mortem examination determined that he froze to death.The "Washington Post" described the CIA camp commandant as "newly minted", on their first assignment."ABC News" called the CIA camp commandant "a young, untrained junior officer".The "Washington Post"'s sources noted that the CIA camp commandant had subsequently been promoted.

Some journalists question the results of this autopsy.Fact|date=June 2007

The suspect was buried in an unmarked grave and his friends and family were never told of what happened to him.

Khalid El-Masri

Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped from F.Y.R.O.M. and rendered to Afghanistan.cite news
url=http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7591918/
publisher=MSNBC
date=April 21, 2005
title=CIA accused of detaining innocent man: If the agency knew he was the wrong man, why was he held?
accessdate=2007-06-28] El-Masri shared the same name as a suspect on the US's terrorist watchlist, and this triggered the suspicion of F.Y.R.O.M. authorities that he might be traveling on a forged passport.

A team of American security officials were dispatched to F.Y.R.O.M., where they took custody of El-Masri without regard to his legal rights under F.Y.R.O.M.'s law.cite news
url=http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,387185,00.html
author=Georg Mascolo, Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, Holger Stark
title=The Hunt for Hercules N8183J
publisher=Der Spiegel
date=November 28, 2005
accessdate=2007-06-28] It took over two months for the CIA official who ordered his arrest to take the step of verifying whether El-Masri's passport was legitimate.cite news
url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120301476_pf.html
title=Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake: German Citizen Released After Months in 'Rendition
author=Dana Priest
publisher=Washington Post
date=December 4, 2005
accessdate=2007-06-28] El-Masri described being beaten and injected with drugs as part of his interrogation.

On Thursday, May 18, 2006 U.S. Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis, III in Washington dismissed a lawsuit El-Masri filed against the CIA and three private companies allegedly involved with his transport, explaining that a public trial would "present a grave risk of injury to national security."cite news
url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051802107.html
title=Lawsuit Against CIA Is Dismissed: Mistaken Identity Led to Detention
author=Jerry Markon
publisher=Washington Post
date=19 May, 2006
accessdate=2007-09-20]

On Tuesday, October 9, 2007 the U.S Supreme court threw out El-Masri's appeal against the earlier judgement, without comment.cite news
url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7036051.stm
title=US court rejects CIA kidnap case
publisher=BBC
date=October 9 2007
accessdate=2007-11-23]

Trivia

Artist/geographer Trevor Paglen claims be be the only civilian to have taken a photo of the Salt Pit. Using El-Masri's testimony, Paglen located the Salt Pit using Google Earth and traveled to Afghanistan where he photographed the facility using a long-distance lens. [cite web
url=http://www.paglen.com/pages/projects/CIA/black_sites.html
title=The Black Sites
author=Trevor Paglen
accessdate=2008-02-11
language=English] He claims that he knew he was on the right track when he passed a goatherd wearing a baseball cap with the logo of Kellogg, Brown & Root on it. The photo was shown at Bellwether gallery in New York in 2006 along with other items documenting Paglen's attempts to trace secret government projects. It was produced in an edition of one, and bore a price tag of $20,000. [cite news
url=http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis12-7-06.asp
title=Black Site Specific
publisher=Artnet
date=December 7, 2006
accessdate=2008-01-08]

References

External links

* [http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/afghanistan/saltpit-imagery.htm GlobalSecurity.org satellite imagery of "The Salt Pit."]


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