MIDDLE EAST: The CIA is holding top al-Qaeda suspects in a secret Jordanian jail where they are subjected to interrogation methods banned in the United States, an Israeli newspaper said yesterday.
But a Jordanian security official dismissed as "totally baseless" the story in Haaretz, which attributed its information to international intelligence sources. A CIA official in Washington declined to comment.
The newspaper said at least 11 men held incommunicado in Jordan include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington, and Hambali, accused of being al-Qaeda's ally in south-east Asia.
"Their detention outside the US enables CIA interrogators to apply interrogation methods banned by US law and to do so in a country where co-operation with Americans is particularly close, thereby reducing the danger of leaks," Haaretz said.
But the Jordanian official, who declined to be named, said: "The allegations that surface every now and then that the US runs secret detention centres in the kingdom are totally baseless and seek to undermine the country's favourable human rights image abroad."
In Rumsfeld's War, a book drawing on declassified Pentagon documents, Rowan Scarborough said Jordanian interrogators had helped US counterparts in handling al-Qaeda suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"US interrogators are known to threaten some detainees with shipping them off to Jordan if they don't co-operate," Scarborough said. "Like other Middle Eastern countries, Jordan uses physical means to coerce confessions and vital intelligence information."