Senators ask military to review Yemen abuse reported by AP

WASHINGTON – Two senior U.S. senators are asking Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to investigate reports that U.S. military interrogators worked with forces from the United Arab Emirates accused of torturing detainees in Yemen.

Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the ranking Democrat, Jack Reed, called the reports “deeply disturbing.”

The reports were revealed in an investigation by the Associated Press published Thursday.

That same day, McCain and Reed wrote a letter to the defense secretary asking him to conduct an immediate review of the reported abuse and what U.S. forces knew.

“We are confident that you find these allegations as extremely troubling as we do,” they told Mattis.

The AP’s report detailed a network of secret prisons across southern Yemen where hundreds are detained in the hunt for al-Qaida militants.

The 18 lock-ups are run by the UAE and by Yemeni forces it created, according to accounts from former detainees, families of prisoners, civil rights lawyers and Yemeni military officials. At the Riyan airport in the southern Yemeni city of Mukalla, former inmates described shipping containers smeared with feces and crammed with blindfolded detainees. They said they were beaten, rotated on a spit over flames and sexually assaulted, among other abuse. One witness, who is a member of a Yemeni security force, said American forces were at times only yards (meters) away.

Defense Department officials acknowledged that U.S. personnel worked with the UAE on interrogations in Yemen. They said that the department had looked into reports of torture and concluded that its personnel were not involved.

The American officials confirmed that the U.S. provides questions to the Emiratis and receives transcripts of their interrogations. A Yemeni witness of American interrogations also told the AP that no torture took place during those sessions where he was present.

The UAE is among the critical allies that the U.S. relies on in the fight against al-Qaida. The U.S. views the militants’ branch in Yemen as a direct terrorist threat to Americans. Mattis has praised the small Gulf country as “Little Sparta” for its outsized role.

“We request that you direct an immediate review of the facts and circumstances related to these alleged abuses, including U.S. support to the Emirati and Yemeni partner forces that were purportedly involved,” the lawmakers wrote. “We also request that you conduct a thorough assessment of what, if anything, U.S. forces knew about these alleged abuses or subsequently learned about them.”

The lawmakers requested a Defense Department briefing on its findings as soon as possible.