JURIST Special Guest Columnist and British human and medical rights activist Dr. David Nicholl, a neurologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, UK, says that Amnesty International’s new report into the rendition and torture of one-time “ghost detainee” Khaled al-Maqtari by the CIA highlights yet again the complicity of doctors in the US detention and rendition process….

Article here

1 CommentToggle Meta

Three years ago, The Sunday Times published flight logs of CIA civilian jets in Europe, setting off a controversy over the whether countries across the continent have been secretly involved in America’s rendition of terrorist suspects to countries that carry out torture.

The row is now set to be reignited. Inquiries by Ana Gomes, a Portuguese member of the European parliament, have uncovered not only more CIA flight logs but also more sensitive military flight plans, which until now have remained a closely guarded secret.

The logs show how most prisoners changed planes at a Turkish military airbase and flew across Greek, Italian and Portuguese airspace. Others reached Cuba after touching down in Spain, whose governing socialist party once expressed indignation at conditions in Guantanamo.

The flight logs show that three Britons - Shafiq Rasul, Jamal Udeen and Asif Iqbal - were flown across Europe to Cuba on January 14, 2002. Moazzam Begg, another Briton, was taken by the same route to Guantanamo on February 2, 2003; and Binyam Mohamed, a British resident whose release the British government is now trying to negotiate, arrived in Cuba after crossing Europe in a special flight in September 2004.

According to the flight plans, the first 23 prisoners to arrive at Guantanamo - including another British citizen, Feroz Abbasi, then 21, and an Australian, David Hicks - had arrived at the American naval base in Cuba after flying from the Moron airbase in Spain.

Abbasi has claimed in a statement that prisoners were abused within hours of arriving. “We were made to sit on our heels, one foot over the other, supported by one foot’s toes alone, for hours. Some of us were old, weak, fatigued, and injured - they were the ones to drop first in the searing Caribbean heat.”

Described by the Pentagon as the “worst of the worst” from Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the images of prisoners such as Abbasi dressed in orange jumpsuits, their heads shaved and shackled by their wrists and ankles, shocked the world. Within a day, Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, announced that the Geneva conventions would not apply to what were now called “enemy combatants”.

Full article at Times Online

Leave a ReplyToggle Meta

If you can believe it, Maher made his statements via video from Canada… for he remains on a U.S. government watch list.

Lawmakers apologize to man wrongly held

Canadian says he was tortured, forced to confess he trained at terror camp

WASHINGTON - Members of Congress apologized Thursday to a Canadian engineer seized by U.S. officials and taken to Syria, where he and the Canadian government say he was tortured.
[...]

“Let me personally give you what our government has not: an apology,” Democratic Rep. Bill Delahunt said as he opened the hearing. “Let me apologize to you and the Canadian people for our government’s role in a mistake.”

Arar said he was grateful for the lawmakers’ apologies, but hoped the U.S. government eventually will apologize to him officially.

Associated Press

As if being slighted by Bush, (you know, the guy directly responsible for the grief brought on to Mr. Arar), was not enough, Dana Rohrabacher was all too glad to get in one more jab for “the party of moral values.”

Started off sounding like an apology from DANA… but then it banked to the right and nose-dived into a steamy pile of republican “I-don’t-really-give-a-frig”.

MSNBC.com

3 CommentsToggle Meta

No one objects to your “detaining and interrogating” prisoners Mr. Hayden. What is objected to is the torture and secret prisons and detaining people forEVER without charging them with anything. And according to people who have been released after your extraordinary rendition, THEY ARE BEING TORTURED!!!

The director of the CIA praised the government’s much-criticized program of detaining and interrogating prisoners yesterday, crediting it for most of the information in a July intelligence report on the terrorist threat to America.

General Michael Hayden said the CIA has detained fewer than 100 people at secret facilities abroad since the capture of Abu Zubaydah, the Al Qaeda operative, in 2002, and even fewer prisoners have been secretly transferred to or from foreign governments.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Hayden defended the government’s policy of extraordinary rendition, criticized the media for publishing stories about the government’s intelligence activities, and warned that Al Qaeda is trying to plant operatives in the United States.

Extraordinary rendition refers to the interrogation policy involving the secret transfer of prisoners from US control into the hands of foreign governments, some of which have a history of torture.

The US government says it does so only after it is assured that transferred prisoners will not be subjected to torture.

More at The Boston Globe

Leave a ReplyToggle Meta

Crossposted from The Nation Editorials:

In 2005, when the Washington Post caught the scent of CIA secret flights and “black site” prisons for terrorism suspects in Eastern Europe, the Bush Administration managed to intimidate the paper into keeping the names of the host countries out of its stories. Now, thanks to a report from the Council of Europe, we know why: not national security but sordid criminality.

In exchange for increased influence in NATO, Washington persuaded the “highest state authorities” in Poland and Romania to turn over detention facilities to US operatives who established what can only be described as torture shops: Prisoners were kept naked for weeks, chained to walls and often kept in “solitary confinement and extreme sensory deprivation in cramped cells, shackled and handcuffed at all times,” sometimes at temperature extremes “so hot one would gasp for breath, sometimes freezing cold.” The report confirms the CIA’s reliance on “enhanced interrogation techniques”–a k a waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other tactics condemned as torture by human rights organizations as well as the United Nations.

The report, compiled by Swiss lawyer Dick Marty for the council, was condemned by the Polish and Romanian governments, which denied the existence of the prisons. But Marty brings a wealth of evidence to bear: He interviewed intelligence officers and military officials, prisoners, attorneys and guards. He tracked flight records. His report adds substance and detail to a growing body of evidence documenting US illegalities.

Read more »

Comments OffToggle Meta

Ireland is not part of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” but the city of Derry’s publicly owned airport is seriously considering becoming the first in Europe to officially prohibit the landing of planes the CIA uses for “renditions,” the kidnapping of terrorism suspects in Europe and elsewhere and rendering them to countries known to our State Department for torturing prisoners.
Derry’s disrespect for the CIA’s most faithful protector, our president, is one of many signs of citizen outrage throughout Europe in the wake of revelations by the Council of Europe (overseeing human rights) and the European Parliament, which have uncovered collaboration with the CIA by the secret services of various EU countries-brazenly in violation of these nations’ sovereignty, laws, and international treaties.

Most Europeans, however-like most Americans-do not realize that the CIA often uses the planes and expertise of private U.S. airline corporations, “patriotically” serving in the “war on terror.” Like the CIA, these companies keep their involvement a deep secret.

More at the Village Voice

Comments OffToggle Meta

Hear this all you Red Sox fans……..

One of the surprise witnesses in the case will be Philip Morse - one of the minority owners of the US baseball team the Boston Red Sox, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Rome.

From the BBC

The first criminal trial over the CIA’s extraordinary rendition of terror suspects is due to open in Italy. Twenty’six Americans and six Italians are accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.

The Americans - most believed to be CIA agents - will be tried in absentia. Italy has not announced if it will seek their extradition to the Milan trial.

US President George W Bush will arrive in Italy hours after the trial opens.

Italy’s government has asked the country’s highest court to set aside the trial, as prosecution documents will break state secrecy laws and damage relations with the CIA.

The Constitutional Court is due to rule on that appeal by September, and defence lawyers are expected to ask that the trial be adjourned until the high court makes its ruling.

Read more »

Comments OffToggle Meta

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude tomorrow.

Despite denials by their governments, senior security officials in Poland and Romania have confirmed to investigators for the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America’s most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation methods. These included water-boarding which leads detainees to believe they are drowning, which critics have condemned as severe torture.

Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council’s report, which has been seen by the Guardian, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons’ operations and the identities of some of the prisoners.

More at the Guardian

Comments OffToggle Meta

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - A coalition of human rights groups is demanding the United States account for 39 terror suspects it believes have been secretly imprisoned and published their names in a report being released Thursday.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and four other groups have drawn up a list of 39 so-called “ghost detainees” - people they claim are held by U.S. authorities and are still missing.

“What we’re asking is where are these 39 people now, and what’s happened to them since they ‘disappeared’?” Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said “there’s a lot of myth outside government when it comes to the CIA and the fight against terror.”

“The plain truth is that we act in strict accord with American law, and that our counterterror initiatives - which are subject to careful review and oversight - have been very effective in disrupting plots and saving lives,” Gimigliano said. “The United States does not conduct or condone torture.”

Information about the detainees was gleaned from interviews with former prisoners - such as Marwan Jabour, an Islamic militant who claims to have spent two years in CIA custody - and officials in the U.S., Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, she said.

Information on the purported missing detainees was, in some cases, incomplete, the report acknowledged. Some detainees had been added to the list because Jabour remembered being shown photos of them during interrogations, it said.

Others were identified only by their first or last names, like “al-Rubaia,” who was added to the list after a fellow inmate reported seeing the name scribbled onto the wall of his cell. But information for at least 21 of the detainees had been confirmed by two or more independent sources, Fitzgerald said.

More at Yahoo News

Comments OffToggle Meta

by Jane Mayer
from “The New Yorker”

from an article first published October 2006

On the official Web site of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, there is a section devoted to a subsidiary called Jeppesen International Trip Planning, based in San Jose, California. The write-up mentions that the division “offers everything needed for efficient, hassle-free, international flight operations,” spanning the globe “from Aachen to Zhengzhou.” The paragraph concludes, “Jeppesen has done it all.”

Boeing does not mention, either on its Web site or in its annual report, that Jeppesen’s clients include the C.I.A., and that among the international trips that the company plans for the agency are secret “extraordinary rendition” flights for terrorism suspects. Most of the planes used in rendition flights are owned and operated by tiny charter airlines that function as C.I.A. front companies, but it is not widely known that the agency has turned to a division of Boeing, the publicly traded blue-chip behemoth, to handle many of the logistical and navigational details for these trips, including flight plans, clearance to fly over other countries, hotel reservations, and ground-crew arrangements.

The Bush Administration has defended the clandestine rendition program, which began during the Clinton years, as an effective method of transporting terrorists to countries where they can be questioned or held. Human-rights activists and others have said the program’s primary intent is to send suspects to detention centers where they can be interrogated harshly, and have criticized it as an illegal means of “outsourcing torture.”

A former Jeppesen employee, who asked not to be identified, said recently that he had been startled to learn, during an internal corporate meeting, about the company’s involvement with the rendition flights. At the meeting, he recalled, Bob Overby, the managing director of Jeppesen International Trip Planning, said, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights-you know, the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.” The former employee said that another executive told him, “We do the spook flights.” He was told that two of the company’s trip planners were specially designated to handle renditions. He was deeply troubled by the rendition program, he said, and eventually quit his job. He recalled Overby saying, “It certainly pays well. They”-the C.I.A.-”spare no expense. They have absolutely no worry about costs. What they have to get done, they get done.”

Overby, who was travelling last week, did not return several phone calls. Mike Pound, the head of corporate communications for Jeppesen, said that he would have no comment, and he added, “Bob Overby will have no comment as well.” Tim Neale, the director of media relations for Boeing’s corporate office in Chicago, said, “The flight-planning services we provide our customers are confidential, and we do not comment publicly on any work done for any customer without their consent.” The C.I.A. had no comment.

read more at THE NEW YORKER

Comments OffToggle Meta

GENEVA - A U.N. anti-torture panel said Monday it was concerned about allegations that Poland housed CIA-run prisons for terrorist suspects, despite Warsaw’s repeated denial of cooperating with the U.S. secret detention program.

The U.N. Committee Against Torture urged Poland to share the details of an investigation carried out by its parliament rejecting charges of Polish participation in the secret CIA prison network.

The committee of 10 independent experts noted a Polish delegation statement “emphatically refuting all allegations” of clandestine detention centers on its soil, but said it needed more information from the parliament’s confidential inquiry “so that the matter can be put to rest.”

Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski shrugged aside the call for Warsaw to share details of the parliamentary investigation. “We treat this as a closed issue,” Kaczynski said when asked about the request.

President Bush acknowledged last year that terrorism suspects were held in CIA-run prisons overseas, but did not say where.

More at Yahoo News

Comments OffToggle Meta

I can’t believe the world is allowing Bush to get away with this crap. It’s shameful. Just shameful.

NAIROBI, Kenya - CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.

The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen, and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP.

Continue reading at MSNBC

Comments OffToggle Meta

From the French Foreign Minister: “That won’t prevent them from one day signing on in New York at U.N headquarters…..I hope they will.” Don’t hold your breath buddy! Haven’t you heard? Our leaders think secret detention and torture are A-OK!!

PARIS (AP) - Nearly 60 countries signed a treaty on Tuesday that bans governments from holding people in secret detention, but the United States and some of its key European allies were not among them.

The signing capped a quarter-century of efforts by families of people who have vanished at the hands of governments.

“Our American friends were naturally invited to this ceremony; unfortunately, they weren’t able to join us,” French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told reporters after 57 nations signed the treaty at his ministry in Paris.

“That won’t prevent them from one day signing on in New York at U.N. headquarters - and I hope they will.”

The U.S. Embassy in Paris declined immediate comment. President Bush acknowledged in September that terrorism suspects have been held in CIA-run prisons overseas, but did not specify where.

Many other Western nations, including Germany, Spain, Britain and Italy, also did not sign the treaty. France introduced the convention at the U.N. General Assembly in November and it was adopted in December.

Many delegates expressed hope that other nations will sign by year-end. Some European nations have expressed support for the treaty, but face constitutional hurdles or require a full Cabinet debate before signing, French and U.N. officials said.

Read more at AOLNews

Comments OffToggle Meta

Portugal’s attorney general is opening a criminal investigation into claims that CIA flights, some of them allegedly carrying terror suspects, made stopovers in the country, the state-owned news agency reported on Monday.

The agency Lusa quoted Deputy Attorney General Candida Almeida as saying the investigation had ‘many leads’ to pursue after a Portuguese deputy at the European Parliament presented a dossier of allegations.

‘Before, we had no indications (of a crime), but the complaints we have received show areas we might explore,’ Almeida was quoted as saying.

Officials at the attorney general’s office were not immediately available for comment. But authorities often use Lusa to make official announcements.

The attorney general’s decision to launch a formal investigation is embarrassing for the government. Last week, Foreign Minister Luis Amado said authorities had not unearthed any evidence of CIA flights and would not investigate the matter further.

Read more here

Comments OffToggle Meta

CNN Report on Italian Court Hearing to Seek Indictment of CIA Agents

MILAN, Italy — A former Italian intelligence chief who faces possible indictment over the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program said Monday he never took part in illegal activity.

Nicolo Pollari said at a hearing that he was unable to defend himself properly, claiming documents that would clarify his position had been excluded from the proceedings because they contained state secrets, according to his lawyers.

Pollari is one of five Italian intelligence officials facing possible indictment in the alleged abduction of cleric and terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.

Prosecutors say Pollari and other officials of the military intelligence agency SISMI worked with the Americans to abduct the cleric.

Twenty’six Americans also could be indicted in what would be the first criminal prosecution involving the CIA program to secretly transfer terror suspects to third countries, where critics say they may face torture.

Read more at the Washington Post

Comments OffToggle Meta