Human Rights Watch listed the names of 11 senior Al-Qaeda suspects it said were held by the CIA in secret locations overseas, where some had reportedly been tortured.

The suspects were detained with no notification to their families, no Red Cross access and, in some cases, no acknowledgement that they are even being held, the New York-based watchdog said in a 46-page report.

"'Disappearances' were a trademark abuse of Latin American military dictatorships in their 'dirty war' on alleged subversion," said Human Rights Watch special counsel Reed Brody.

"Now they have become a United States tactic in its conflict with Al-Qaeda," Brody said.

Latin American prisoners who were killed and buried in secret were often called the "disappeared."

Last February, two Army counterintelligence agents showed up at the University of Texas law school and demanded to see the roster from a conference on Islamic law held a few days earlier. Their reason: they were trying to track down students who the agents claimed had been asking "suspicious" questions. "I felt like I was in 'Law & Order'," said one student after being grilled by one of the agents. The incident provoked a brief campus uproar, and the Army later admitted the agents had exceeded their authority. But if the Pentagon has its way, the Army may not have to make such amends in the future. Without any public hearing or debate, NEWSWEEK has learned, Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress that could vastly expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants.

Abuse whistleblower 'disciplined'
From correspondents in Washington
May 22, 2004

THE US Army has reportedly taken disciplinary action against a soldier in military intelligence who alleged the army was trying to cover up the extent of the Iraqi prison scandal.

Earlier this week, Sergeant Samuel Provance told America's ABC television that dozens of soldiers had been involved in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Only seven have been charged so far.

Today, ABC quoted Sgt Provance as saying that he had been stripped of his security clearance and told he may face prosecution over his comments.

Sgt Provance said he had been transferred to a different platoon and his record was officially "flagged", meaning he cannot be promoted or given awards or honours.

The night of the Madrid train bombing, Mona and Brandon Mayfield were watching the Disney Channel with their children, when their program was interrupted by breaking news from the deadly devastation in Spain.

"He turned to me and said -- 'Those Goddamn terrorists. I'm sick and tired of them harming civilians,'" said Mona Mayfield, 35, remembering her husband's response.

Nearly two months later, her husband, thirty-seven-year-old Brandon Mayfield, a Portland attorney, became the first American to be arrested in connection with the Madrid bombing.

He is a former Army lieutenant who lives in a modest home in a Portland suburb, a convert to Islam who attends a mosque in nearby Beaverton and a native of Oregon who grew up in Kansas.

His family adamantly denies any connection to the train bombing.

"I think it's crazy -- we haven't been outside the country for 10 years," said his wife, who met her husband on a blind date at Fort Lewis army base near Tacoma, Wash. in 1987. "They found only a part of one fingerprint. It could be anybody. He was in the army and they're just trying to fit a certain profile."

The Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) today renewed its call for the firing of a Boston-area radio
talk show host after a newspaper report showed that his anti-Muslim remarks
were even more offensive than first thought.

CAIR made its original demand last Friday after receiving a complaint from
a concerned listener who said WTKK-FM (http://www.969fmtalk.com) host Jay Severin urged the killing of American Muslims. Quotes from a tape of the actual
program obtained by the Boston Globe show that Severin called Muslims a "fifth
column"* in America and seemed to confirm the report that he wanted them
killed. (WTKK denied CAIR's request for a tape of the program.)