Forum: African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights
INTERIGHTS role: Co-representatives
Keywords: Extraordinary rendition, secret detention, torture

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should require Djibouti to answer for abuses it committed as part of the CIA’s secret detention and rendition programme, said the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law and the international human rights law organisation, INTERIGHTS in a legal filing on 28 February 2011. The two organisations urged the African Commission to officially accept the first-ever international case exposing an African country’s role in the U.S. rendition, secret detention, and torture programme. The case was confidentially filed in December 2009 on behalf of their client, Mohammed al-Asad, a Yemeni national who was detained in Djibouti in December 2003 and January 2004 as part of the CIA’s secret detention and rendition programme. In addition to secretly detaining al-Asad, Djibouti was responsible for transferring him into the 'black site' prison programme, where he spent some sixteen months in secret and incommunicado detention. In May 2005, al-Asad was transferred to Yemen, where he resides freely today.

To read the full press release, click here (28 February 2011).

To read coverage in the Washington Post, click here (28 February 2011). 

To read the AFP release click here (1 March 2011).

To read the complaint in al-Asad’s case, click here. 

To read the admissibility briefing, click here.

To read al-Asad’s declaration, click here. 

For other supporting evidence, click here.

For more information on CHRGJ’s work on protecting the rights of people abused in the context of the U.S. counter-terrorism measures, click here.

Contacts:

Veerle Opgenhaffen, Senior Program Director, CHRGJ
opgenhaffen@exchange.law.nyu.edu/ 917-526-1972

Solomon Sacco, Lawyer, INTERIGHTS
ssacco@interights.org / + 44 20 7843 0473

Helen Duffy, Litigation Director, INTERIGHTS
hduffy@interights.org / + 00 31 70 3459 777