After being injected with an unknown substance, forced to take unidentified pills, and badly beaten, an American from San Francisco thought he was not going to make it out alive from China’s secretive black jails. Warren Rothman said he was taken to four different black jails—ordinary places that are turned into unofficial jails by Chinese officials who often subject detainees to abuses with impunity. At one point during his ordeal, Rothman said he was tied up, had dirt jammed into his mouth, and was kicked and punched. “I really thought at this point, that was the end of my life right there. I was not accepting it, but I thought that was it. I heard the guards joking about me, how I’m coughing and spitting out this dirt,” Rothman recalled about what was going through his mind at the time. The harrowing experience happened more than 10 years ago, but …