From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity

Dozens of 'Ghost Prisoners' Not Publicly Accounted For

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- On Sept. 6, 2006, President Bush announced that the CIA's overseas secret prisons had been temporarily emptied and 14 al-Qaeda leaders taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But since then, there has been no official accounting of what happened to about 30 other "ghost prisoners" who spent extended time in the custody of the CIA.

Some have been secretly transferred to their home countries, where they remain in detention and out of public view, according to interviews in Pakistan and Europe with government officials, human rights groups and lawyers for the detainees. Others have disappeared without a trace and may or may not still be under CIA control.

The bulk of the ghost prisoners were captured in Pakistan, where they scattered after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Among them is Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a dual citizen of Syria and Spain and an influential al-Qaeda ideologue who was last seen two years ago. On Oct. 31, 2005, the red-bearded radical with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head arrived in the Pakistani border city of Quetta, unaware he was being followed.

Nasar was cornered by police as he and a small group of followers stopped for dinner. Soon after, according to Pakistani officials, he was handed over to U.S. spies and vanished into the CIA's prison network. Since then, various reports have placed him in Syria, Afghanistan and India, though nobody has been able to confirm his whereabouts.

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