Trying CIA kidnappers and torturers in absentia

This is from Hornberger's Blog. As this article notes the U.S. somehow considers the CIA above the law. If any other agency did this there would be hell to pay. Italy is no doubt quite angry that the CIA actions simply ruined their own investigations--although some think that at least some in the Italian govt. were aware what was happening. Note that some who belonged to Italy's military intelligence service are actually on trial. Of course the U.S. government has refused to co-operate even though Italy is a staunch ally of the U.S.


Hornberger’s Blog
Wednesday, April 16, 2008


Trying CIA Kidnappers and Torturers in Absentia
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Twenty-six CIA agents are scheduled to go on trial today for kidnapping. Unfortunately, all of them will be tried in absentia because the Bush administration, which has long claimed to be against torture, refuses to send the accused kidnappers to Italy, where the prosecution is taking place.

The Italian indictment alleges that in June 2005 the CIA officials kidnapped Hassan Osama Nasr, who is known as Abu Omar, in Italy and then forcibly carried him against his will to Egypt for torture. Nasr claims that Egyptian torturers then tortured him brutally.

The Italian torture trial also involves nine Italian defendants who allegedly conspired with the CIA agents to kidnap Omar and rendition him to Egypt. They include Gen. Nicolo Pollari, the former head of SISMI, Italy’s military intelligence service, who was forced to resign over the Omar kidnapping, as well as his former deputy, Marco Mancini.

Hopefully, the trial will shed more light on the CIA’s kidnapping, rendition, and torture scheme. As Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch (who will be speaking at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s upcoming June 6-8 conference “Restoring The Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties”), stated in a Reuters news dispatch: “It should show the world that Italy does not give get-out-of-jail-free cards to kidnappers. The CIA’s rendition program should be on trial in the United States. But since the US Department of Justice has utterly failed in its responsibility to investigate and prosecute these serious crimes, it is up to Italy to bring the perpetrators to justice.”

To date, neither Congress nor the Justice Department has shown any interest in conducting a serious investigation into any criminal wrongdoing by the CIA, including its kidnapping, secret prisons, rendition, and torture schemes. That’s because in the minds of U.S. officials nothing that the CIA does can ever be considered criminal, especially since here in the United States the CIA is not just above the law, it is the law. Fortunately, Italian prosecutors feel differently.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

Abu Omar and Extraordinary Rendition

This is an excerpt from a longer article at MotherJones on rendition. This article is useful in giving a first hand account of rendition and the horrors of torture in Egypt. Not surprisingly, it sounds as if Omar will remain tortured by the effects of his torture as long as he lives. Of course the persons involved have never been apprehended by Italian police because they are protected by the U.S. government which reserves the right to act wherever it chooses even without authorisation.


Inside the CIA's extraordinary rendition program ­and the bungled abduction of would-be terrorists" />

Peter Bergen" />
March 03" /> , 2008" /> For hours, the words come pouring out of Abu Omar as he describes his years of torture at the hands of Egypt's security services. Spreading his arms in a crucifixion position, he demonstrates how he was tied to a metal door as shocks were administered to his nipples and genitals. His legs tremble as he describes how he was twice raped. He mentions, almost casually, the hearing loss in his left ear from the beatings, and how he still wakes up at night screaming, takes tranquilizers, finds it hard to concentrate, and has unspecified "problems with my wife at home." He is, in short, a broken man.

There is nothing particularly unusual about Abu Omar's story. Torture is a standard investigative technique of Egypt's intelligence services and police, as the State Department and human rights organizations have documented myriad times over the years. What is somewhat unusual is that Abu Omar ended up inside Egypt's torture chambers courtesy of the United States, via an "extraordinary rendition"—in this case, a spectacular daylight kidnapping by the Central Intelligence Agency on the streets of Milan, Italy.

First introduced during the Clinton administration, extraordinary renditions—in which suspected terrorists are turned over to countries known to use torture, usually for the purpose of extracting information from them—have been one of the cia's most controversial tools in the war on terror. According to legal experts, the practice has no justification in United States law and flagrantly violates the Convention Against Torture, an international treaty that Congress ratified in 1994. Nonetheless, Congress and the American courts have essentially ignored the practice, and the Bush administration has insisted that it has never knowingly sent anyone to a place where he will be tortured.

But Abu Omar's case is unique: Unlike any other rendition case, it has prompted a massive criminal investigation—though not in the United States. An Italian prosecutor has launched a probe of the kidnapping, resulting in the indictment of 26 American officials, almost all of them suspected cia agents. It has also generated a treasure trove of documents on the secretive rendition program, including thousands of pages of court filings that detail how it actually works. Late last year, I traveled to Milan to review those documents and to Egypt, where Abu Omar now lives. What I found was a remarkable tale of cia overreach and its consequences—a tale that could represent the beginning of a global legal backlash against the war on terror.

An avuncular, portly man in his mid-40s clad in a turban and a floor-length blue robe, Abu Omar met me at a corner store near his home, the first time he had agreed to talk to an American magazine reporter. He took me to his tidy, cramped apartment near Alexandria's run-down Victorian rail station. The walls were bare other than some religious calligraphy. The screen saver on his computer was a picture of Mecca.

Abu Omar, whose full name is Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, served me pungent coffee and sugary biscuits prepared by his unseen wife. Then, leaning forward in a massive gilded chair, he told me how in the weeks before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, he'd felt he was being watched and followed as he walked the streets of Milan, where he'd been granted political asylum in 2001 following an earlier spell of imprisonment and torture in Egypt. A member of Egypt's militant Islamic Group and a part-time cleric, he had been waging a public campaign against the impending war; Italian authorities had been investigating his circle of acquaintances since mid-2002 and believed he might have been recruiting fighters to go to Iraq, a charge he denies.

A little before noon on February 17, 2003, Abu Omar was headed to his mosque, incongruously located inside a garage. He strolled down Via Guerzoni, a quiet street mostly empty of businesses and lined with high, view-blocking walls. A red Fiat pulled up beside him and a man jumped out, shouting "Polizia! Polizia!" Abu Omar produced his ID. "Suddenly I was lifted in the air," he recalled. He was dragged into a white van and beaten, he said, by wordless men wearing balaclavas. After trussing him with restraints and blindfolding him, they sped away.

Hours later, when the van stopped, Abu Omar heard airplane noise. His clothes were cut off and something was stuffed in his anus, likely a tranquilizing suppository. His head was entirely covered in tape with only small holes for his mouth and nose, and he was placed on a plane. Hours later he was hustled off the jet. He heard someone speaking Arabic in a familiar cadence; in the distance, a muezzin was calling the dawn prayer. After more than a decade in exile, he was back in Egypt.

Abu Omar was taken into a building, put in a blue prison suit, freshly blindfolded, and presented to someone described as an important pasha, or government official. The pasha said he'd be released if he'd go back to Italy to spy on the militants at his mosque. He said no.

And so began Abu Omar's descent into one of the 21st century's nastier circles of hell. His cell had no lights or windows, and the temperature alternated between freezing and baking. He was kept blindfolded and handcuffed for seven months. Interrogations could come at any time of the day or night. He was beaten with fists, electric cables, and chairs, stripped naked, and given electric shocks.

His tormentors' questions largely revolved around his circle of Islamists in Italy, though every now and again they'd indicate that they knew he wasn't a big-time terrorist. They were detaining him only because "the Americans imposed you on us." When he asked, "Why, then, do you abuse me so much?" they replied, "This is our family tradition."

In the fall of 2003, Abu Omar was taken to another prison; it was here that he was crucified and raped by the guards. After seven more months of torture, a Cairo court found there was no evidence that Abu Omar was involved in terrorism and ordered him freed. He was told not to contact anyone in Italy—including his wife—and not to speak to the press or human rights groups. Above all, he was not to tell anyone what had happened.

After agreeing to the conditions, he was deposited at his mother's home in Alexandria. He promptly called his wife in Italy. It was the first time she'd heard from him in 14 months. Italian investigators, who'd been monitoring Abu Omar's phone in Milan for years, recorded the call. His wife asked him how he had been treated. He told her sarcastically, "They brought me food from the fanciest restaurant," though nearly three weeks later, he admitted to her, "I was very close to dying." He also spoke with a friend in Milan, Mohamed Reda El Badry, whose phone was also being tapped by Italian investigators. "I was freed on health grounds," he told El Badry in one of the recorded calls. "I was almost paralyzed; still today I cannot walk more than 200 yards.... I was incontinent, suffered from kidney trouble."

And then, just as suddenly as Abu Omar had reappeared, he vanished again. Egyptian authorities had gotten wind of his calls to Italy. This time he was imprisoned for three years. He smuggled out a letter describing his ordeal, which found its way to the Arab and Italian press and international human rights organizations. Inevitably, that led to more torture.

Was it illegal for American officials to send Abu Omar to Egypt? Yes, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which prohibits delivering someone to a country where there are "substantial grounds" to assume that he might be tortured. Were there substantial grounds to believe that transferring Abu Omar to Egypt would result in his being tortured? Plenty, according to a State Department report that detailed the methods used by Egypt's security services during the year that Abu Omar was abducted and confined, including stripping and blindfolding prisoners; dousing them with cold water; beatings with fists, whips, metal rods, and other objects; administering electric shocks; suspending prisoners by their arms; and sexual assault and threats of rape.

The White House has routinely claimed that when the United States renders individuals to other countries it receives assurances that, as President Bush stated at a press conference in March 2005, "they won't be tortured...This country does not believe in torture." Several months later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated, "The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured."

But in the case of Abu Omar, Rice's assertions are demonstrably false. According to a previously unpublished study conducted by Katherine Tiedemann of The New America Foundation and myself, the same is true of many of the extraordinary renditions going back to the program's beginnings in 1995. (See "Rendition by the Numbers," above.) Fourteen documented extraordinary renditions took place under the Clinton administration. Almost all of those prisoners were rendered to Egypt, where at least three were executed. After 9/11 the pace of renditions sped up and the program expanded dramatically. Prisoners were now also transferred to Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, and even Libya, Sudan, and Syria. In all, we found 53 documented cases of extraordinary rendition since September 2001; only one prisoner specifically said he had not been tortured. Of the sixteen men who have been released, eight claimed they were tortured and/or mistreated while in foreign custody; one died within weeks of being released. Nineteen of the rendered men have not been heard from since they disappeared.

Brad Garrett is a former fbi special agent who obtained uncoerced confessions from two of the most high-profile terrorists in recent American history: Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and Mir Aimal Kasi, who shot and killed two cia employees outside the Agency's headquarters the same year. "The whole idea that you would send anyone to some other country to obtain the intel you want is ludicrous," he told me in an email. "If we want the intel, there are approaches that will render the information without torture. The problem is that someone in the U.S. government is convinced that torture is the way to go, and so if we are not allowed to do it, then send them to someplace where torture is sanctioned."

extraordinary renditions

Maher Arar
Renditions: Extraordinary, erroneous, ineffective?
Last Updated Feb. 5, 2007
CBC News
To Canadians, Maher Arar is the most well-known example. Germans know about Khaled al-Masri and in Italy, it's Osama Mustfafa Hasan, also known as Abu Omar, who gets the headlines.

What all three have in common, aside from being Muslims, is extraordinary rendition. Each has been taken forcibly to another country, allegedly by U.S. intelligence, to be interrogated or tortured about allegations of involvement in international terrorism. Arar and al-Masri have been released and declared innocent. Abu Omar remains in prison in his native Egypt.

More than 150 men, almost all of Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin, have been subjected to extraordinary rendition since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to U.S. media reports.

Khaled al-Masri was subjected to 'extraordinary rendition' in 2004, spending five months in a cell at Bagram airforce base in Afghanistan. U.S. officials now admit that his detention was a case of mistaken identity. (Thomas Kienzle/Associated Press) But these three cases are provoking public outrage and official action by the home governments of the countries where the men live: Arar got an apology and compensation from Canada; German prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 13 Americans suspected of involvement in the al-Masri case; judges in Milan are demanding that 26 alleged CIA agents testify in a preliminary hearing about Abu Omar's forced deportation.

Civil and legal rights campaigners say it's time for Washington to take a long, hard look at extraordinary rendition. Does it work? Is it worth the cost? Is information obtained from torture in third-country jails even accurate, let alone legally permissible?

There's even a new name for the controversial practise if it turns out that the victim is innocent: erroneous rendition.

From small beginnings
When the United States began its covert program of seizing foreign nationals and sending them to third countries, it was known simply as rendition. That was the 1990s when a man named Michael Scheurer ran the CIA's al-Qaeda desk.

"We wanted to find a way to get confirmed or convicted al-Qaeda fighters off the street," Scheurer said, "to places where they already had legal problems, a warrant, a conviction in absentia, so we took them to where their crimes could be adjudicated."

'Nobody wanted any surprises," retired CIA agent Michael Scheurer
CIA agents have no legal powers of arrest, Scheurer points out, and rendition had to be negotiated carefully with countries where suspects were picked up and those where they were handed over to the authorities. "Nobody wanted any surprises," says the now-retired covert agent.

Everything changed after 9/11. President George W. Bush declared war on terrorism, and vowed to bring America's enemies to justice. That meant sweeping new powers for U.S. intelligence agencies, including a new CIA program of "extraordinary rendition." The added element was the urgent U.S. need to know about the 9/11 plot and future threats to American soil. A scheme that began as a way to get al-Qaeda members "off the streets" became an exercise in extracting information from suspects, often using methods that wouldn't be allowed under United States law.

A 'catalogue of horrors'
Throughout 2002, Bush administration lawyers came up with a baffling array of definitions of permissible interrogation techniques, based on definitions of Afghanistan as a "failed state" and al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters as "illegal enemy combatants," not prisoners of war. Heavily criticized by human rights groups, this policy stopped short of the most brutal forms of physical and mental torture.

Extraordinary rendition didn't. Suspects picked up on Afghan battlefields, Pakistani madrassahs or, as in Maher Arar's case, at JFK airport in New York were sent to Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Bagram airbase outside Kabul. Interrogators weren't hindered by due process or by the American legal system. Suddenly, torture became possible. "It was a catalogue of horrors," said Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union, "you began to hear about outrages of every kind."

"It is simply unacceptable to torture someone to get information to prove his innocence." Mandred Gjindic, Khaled al-Masri lawyer
News emerged of so-called "black prisons" where the CIA held "ghost prisoners" whose identities were unknown. Eventually, as the Arar and al-Masri cases showed, evidence emerged that the U.S. had made some egregious errors of rendition. Al-Masri's German lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, says the United States has admitted that his client was a victim of mistaken identity when he was picked up at the Serbia-Montenegro border in December 2003.

"Khaled al-Masri spent five months being questioned and abused in a jail cell in Bagram [Afghanistan]." Gjjidic said, "He was never charged with anything. It is simply unacceptable to torture someone to get information that proves his innocence. Someone gave the order to do that and they must pay the price for that decision."

Former Italian spy chief Nicolo Pollari appeared before judges in Milan to answer questions about the 'extraordinary rendition' of Abu Omar. Arrest warrants for 26 CIA and Italian agents have also been issued in the case. (Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press) In Italy, even a former head of Italy's spy service is caught up in the Abu Omar case. Late last month, Nicolo Pollari was questioned by magistrates in Milan over his role in the abduction and rendition of the controversial Egyptian cleric, allegedly by the CIA and Italian intelligence. Omar was under investigation for links to al-Qaeda when he was seized in Milan and taken to his native Egypt in 2003, but he has never formally been charged with a crime.

Torture not just illegal
Critics of extraordinary rendition don't just want it abolished because it's illegal, and has subjected innocent men to unthinkable ordeals, but also question whether it works at all as a means of thwarting militant activities.

"Information obtained like that [from torture] is not something I'd look upon as valid," says Michael Scheuer, "especially when you're dealing with people like these [al-Qaeda militants]. They'll tell you anything that advances their cause, no matter what you do to them. They never stop fighting jihad."

In the pages of the U.S. media, a parade of retired intelligence and law enforcement officials are expressing similar opinions. Torture is not only illegal and immoral, but ineffective, they're saying. Any confessions or information obtained from torture are unreliable. It's difficult, if not impossible, to find favourable opinions of rugged interrogation techniques any more.

"You end up radicalizing the entire population," Tom Parker, former MI5 agent
Dan Coleman, a retired FBI agent who worked on many counter-terrorism cases, says traditional police work and due process produce more concrete results than flashy rendition programs and rough interrogation tactics. Speaking to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Coleman was scornful of former colleagues in the CIA who, he said, "seemed to think there were different rules" after Sept. 11, 2001."

Giving foreign terror suspects their rights under U.S. law actually made them more co-operative, in Coleman's experience. "The lawyers show these guys there's a way out. It's human nature, people don't co-operate with you unless they have some reason to."

Others agree. Tom Parker, a former British intelligence officer who teaches at Yale, said his country had learned hard lessons from its mistakes in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, when IRA suspects were subject to tough physical questioning. It didn't work, Parker said.

"The U.S. is doing what the British did, detaining people and violating their civil liberties. It did nothing but exacerbate the situation. You end up radicalizing the entire population."

Rendition's uncertain future
Faced with a wave of criticism and adverse international reaction, the U.S. administration appears to be distancing itself from extraordinary rendition. European governments have been embarrassed by the revelation, in a report last year by Swiss Senator Dick Marty, that many of them worked closely with Washington in rendition cases. That co-operation will be much more difficult in future.

The warrants for CIA suspects in Germany and Italy probably won't result in arrests or charges, sources close to the two investigations say, but revelations in court about rendition will add to public pressure for more checks and balances on a discredited practise.

Arar and al-Masri are both considering new lawsuits to seek redress for their ordeals. U.S. courts have rejected attempts by both to sue the government and the CIA but lawyers are planning appeals and fresh submissions. The very due process that extraordinary rendition ignored may just prove its undoing.