Laid Saidi

Laid Saidi is an Algerian who has claimed that he was imprisoned, for several years, in a CIA black site in Afghanistan called "the salt pit".

He was apprehended apparently because of a taped telephone conversation in which the word "tirat", meaning "tires" in Arabic, was mistaken for the word "tairat", meaning "airplanes." [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/world/africa/07algeria.html?ei=5090&en=17b76be0aba70618&ex=1309924800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all Algerian Tells of Dark Odyssey in U.S. Hands] , "New York Times", July 7 2006 - [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0707-03.htm - mirror] ]

Saidi was imprisoned near Khalid el-Masri during the five months el-Masri was imprisoned in the salt pit, in a prominent instance of mistaken identity.

Saidi worked for Al-Haramain Foundation, a Saudi charity organization. He was expelled from Tanzania in July 2003, and rendered to Afghanistan. [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1166575.ece CIA sent me to be tortured in Afghan prison, says Algerian] , "The Independent", July 8 2006]

Saidi said that scars on his wrists were from being suspended from the ceiling by his hands. American officials assert that they stopped using this technique after it led to the deaths of two Afghans, Habibullah and Dilawar in Bagram, in December 2002.

Saidi described months of confusing interrogations, during which his interrogators kept insisting that he had spoken cryptically of planes during a telephone conversation. When the tape the Americans had made of this conversation was finally played for him, Saidi described being surprised to realize all these questions were due to a simple misunderstanding, that could have easily been dealt with, without months of torture.

Saidi claims to have spent months in "the dark prison" prior to his detention in the salt pit.

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