You would think that the US would have realised by now that these renditions show it as a country that hasn't the slightest respect for human rights when it comes to anyone who might be remotely connected to terrorism. The US has become an international pariah and anti-US sentiments are growing throughout most of the world.
Given the rhetoric about freedom and human rights in the US it is surprising that the US public and intelligentsia is not taking action to stop this barbarian practice.
U.S. questions Canadians in secret Ethiopian prisons by Anthony Mitchell
Globe and Mail 04/04/07
Nairobi : CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaeda militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries, including Canada, at secret prisons in Ethiopia, notorious for torture and abuse.
Human-rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, including 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.
They 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 The Associated Press.
Some were swept up by Ethiopian troops who drove a radical Islamist government out of neighbouring Somalia late last year. Others have been deported from Kenya, where many Somalis have fled violence in their homeland.
Ambra Dickie, a spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Canada, said last night the department was looking into reports of Canadians being interrogated by CIA and FBI agents in East Africa, but would not be commenting at this time.
Ethiopia, which denies holding secret prisoners, is a country with a long history of human-rights abuses.
U.S. government officials acknowledged questioning prisoners in Ethiopia. But they said U.S. agents are following the law and are investigating past attacks and current threats of terrorism.
Some U.S. allies have expressed consternation at the transfers to the prisons. One Western diplomat in Nairobi, who agreed to speak only if not quoted to avoid angering U.S. officials, said he sees the United States as playing a guiding role in the operation.
Associated Press
Showing posts with label extra-ordinary rendition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extra-ordinary rendition. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Saturday, March 24, 2007
New Rendition Destinations: Somalia, Ethiopia
The rest of the article is at the ICH blog.
These happening are mostly under the mainstream press radar. The mainstream radar must have been presented as a gift from Bush and buddies. As all this occurs conflict in Somalia is escalating.
Getting Away With It: Rendition and Regime Change in Somalia
By Chris Floyd
03/24/07 "ICH" -- -- Yesterday we wrote of the plight of a U.S. citizen who had fled the fighting during the Bush-backed invasion of Somalia only to find himself "renditioned" into the sinister prisons of the Ethiopian invaders – despite the fact that U.S. officials declared that there were no charges against him. (See the second half of that post.)
Now The Independent reports that Amir Meshal – the 24-year-old New Jersey man renditioned by U.S. officials because he refused to confess to being an al Qaeda agent – is not alone in being subjected to the lawless procedure so beloved by the defenders of civilization. (For an early example of this, which also involved Somalia, see Render Unto Caesar.)
Anger at US 'rendition' of refugees who fled Somalia (Independent)
Excerpts: At least 150 people arrested in Kenya after fleeing violence in Somalia have been secretly flown to Somalia and Ethiopia, where they are being held incommunicado in underground prisons, human rights groups say...
Several of the suspects are understood to be held in underground prisons at Mogadishu airport where they are held shackled to the wall. Most have since been sent on to two detention facilities in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia has been accused of routinely torturing political prisoners. A further 50 or 60 people accused of belonging to Ethiopian rebel groups fighting alongside Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts were sent directly to Ethiopia....
The suspects deported from Kenya were interrogated beforehand by American FBI officials in Kenyan prisons, where they were accused of having links with al-Qa'ida. "This is extraordinary rendition," said Maini Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Human Rights Commission. "Britain and America are involved in interrogating suspects."
Following the US-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops, thousands of Somalis have tried to escape the violence by crossing the long, porous border with Kenya. Many of those caught on the Kenya-Somalia border were accused of belonging to the Islamic Courts and refused entry.
At least 150 of those who managed to get through were detained by Kenyan police, including 17 women and 12 children, one a baby of seven months. Many needed medical attention but did not receive it, including a pregnant Tunisian woman who had a bullet lodged in her back.
All were held in Kenyan prisons for several weeks without access to lawyers and family members. As well as being interrogated by the FBI, human rights groups in Nairobi also claimed British officials were involved.
"The Americans had direct access to the prisoners, one on one," said Al-Amin Kimathi of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, adding that US diplomatic vehicles carried the suspects from Nairobi police stations to be questioned. "Senior Kenyan police officers told us they had nothing to do with the operation," said Mr Kimathi. "It was out of their hands."
The US has claimed that Somalia's Islamic Courts, which controlled much of the country until December, was run by an al-Qa'ida cell. Ethiopian troops, backed by US intelligence and logistical support, overpowered the Islamic Courts within a few days of fighting at the end of last year.
This latter claim is baseless. It is simply a reflection of the Bush gang's primitive tactic of labeling any inconvenient Muslim group or individual as "al Qaeda," which then "justifies" any action taken against them: military invasion, assassination, rendition, indefinite detention, torture.
It's clear that no nation on earth will be allowed to organize its own society as it wishes, or work out its own internal conflicts, if the American elite decides they have some financial or strategic interest in the matter. The only nations immune to this power-mad interventionist philosophy are those who can strike back hard enough to upset the elite's apple cart. And thus we have Bush's "war on terror" – which is, as we've often noted, simply an escalation of the long-running, bipartisan foreign policy of the "National Security State" that has ruled America for 60 years.
This year marks the anniversary of this coup d'état: the 1947 "National Security Act." Writing on the 50th anniversary of this supplanting of the Republic, Gore Vidal wrote:
Fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues...we bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine..."
Obviously, the situation that Vidal describes didn't begin with the illegal implantation of the Bush Regime by the rightwing faction of the Supreme Court (two of whom had family members profiting from the Bush campaign) in December 2000. It has gone on for decades, under "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans. But it has reached a new pitch of intensity, audacity and recklessness today.
Somalia might seem an odd choice for "the path of action" – the Hitlerian phrase that Bush incorporated into the official "National Security Strategy of the United States" in formalizing the doctrine of "preventive" – i.e., aggressive – war. (It was also then that he declared that his version of corrupt crony capitalism to be the "single sustainable model of national success.") But as "blaqfather," a commentor on the previous points out, before Somalia collapsed into anarchy in 1991, it was being actively explored by major oil companies: "A World Bank and U.N. survey that year of eight northeastern African countries' petroleum potential ranked Somalia second only to Sudan as the top prospective commercial producer. Northern Somalia lay within a regional oil window reaching south across the Gulf of Aden, the geologists said." So Somalia's affairs are not entirely without interest to a Washington regime populated by professional oilmen.
What's more, Somalia's geographic location gives it heightened importance in the Bush Regime's strategy to control the Horn of Africa and dominate the continent's ever-more-vital oil supplies. The Pentagon recently set up its first-ever "African Command," adding it to the string of regions under the command of a military proconsul. (Bush has also created the first such satrapy covering the United States itself, which has never before been the subject – the target? – of a military "command.")
And finally, Somalia was "doable." You can crush it without cost, squash it like a fly, and not only do it on the cheap – with Ethiopian troops and local warlords serving as your proxies – you can do it without notice. The entire Somalian campaign – and America's very extensive involvement in it – has passed virtually unremarked in the U.S. media, and plays no part at all on the national political scene. It is simply a non-event, something happening far away to a bunch of darkies – Muslim darkies, on top of that – so who cares? It's not even worth a joke by Leno or Letterman
These happening are mostly under the mainstream press radar. The mainstream radar must have been presented as a gift from Bush and buddies. As all this occurs conflict in Somalia is escalating.
Getting Away With It: Rendition and Regime Change in Somalia
By Chris Floyd
03/24/07 "ICH" -- -- Yesterday we wrote of the plight of a U.S. citizen who had fled the fighting during the Bush-backed invasion of Somalia only to find himself "renditioned" into the sinister prisons of the Ethiopian invaders – despite the fact that U.S. officials declared that there were no charges against him. (See the second half of that post.)
Now The Independent reports that Amir Meshal – the 24-year-old New Jersey man renditioned by U.S. officials because he refused to confess to being an al Qaeda agent – is not alone in being subjected to the lawless procedure so beloved by the defenders of civilization. (For an early example of this, which also involved Somalia, see Render Unto Caesar.)
Anger at US 'rendition' of refugees who fled Somalia (Independent)
Excerpts: At least 150 people arrested in Kenya after fleeing violence in Somalia have been secretly flown to Somalia and Ethiopia, where they are being held incommunicado in underground prisons, human rights groups say...
Several of the suspects are understood to be held in underground prisons at Mogadishu airport where they are held shackled to the wall. Most have since been sent on to two detention facilities in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia has been accused of routinely torturing political prisoners. A further 50 or 60 people accused of belonging to Ethiopian rebel groups fighting alongside Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts were sent directly to Ethiopia....
The suspects deported from Kenya were interrogated beforehand by American FBI officials in Kenyan prisons, where they were accused of having links with al-Qa'ida. "This is extraordinary rendition," said Maini Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Human Rights Commission. "Britain and America are involved in interrogating suspects."
Following the US-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops, thousands of Somalis have tried to escape the violence by crossing the long, porous border with Kenya. Many of those caught on the Kenya-Somalia border were accused of belonging to the Islamic Courts and refused entry.
At least 150 of those who managed to get through were detained by Kenyan police, including 17 women and 12 children, one a baby of seven months. Many needed medical attention but did not receive it, including a pregnant Tunisian woman who had a bullet lodged in her back.
All were held in Kenyan prisons for several weeks without access to lawyers and family members. As well as being interrogated by the FBI, human rights groups in Nairobi also claimed British officials were involved.
"The Americans had direct access to the prisoners, one on one," said Al-Amin Kimathi of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, adding that US diplomatic vehicles carried the suspects from Nairobi police stations to be questioned. "Senior Kenyan police officers told us they had nothing to do with the operation," said Mr Kimathi. "It was out of their hands."
The US has claimed that Somalia's Islamic Courts, which controlled much of the country until December, was run by an al-Qa'ida cell. Ethiopian troops, backed by US intelligence and logistical support, overpowered the Islamic Courts within a few days of fighting at the end of last year.
This latter claim is baseless. It is simply a reflection of the Bush gang's primitive tactic of labeling any inconvenient Muslim group or individual as "al Qaeda," which then "justifies" any action taken against them: military invasion, assassination, rendition, indefinite detention, torture.
It's clear that no nation on earth will be allowed to organize its own society as it wishes, or work out its own internal conflicts, if the American elite decides they have some financial or strategic interest in the matter. The only nations immune to this power-mad interventionist philosophy are those who can strike back hard enough to upset the elite's apple cart. And thus we have Bush's "war on terror" – which is, as we've often noted, simply an escalation of the long-running, bipartisan foreign policy of the "National Security State" that has ruled America for 60 years.
This year marks the anniversary of this coup d'état: the 1947 "National Security Act." Writing on the 50th anniversary of this supplanting of the Republic, Gore Vidal wrote:
Fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues...we bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine..."
Obviously, the situation that Vidal describes didn't begin with the illegal implantation of the Bush Regime by the rightwing faction of the Supreme Court (two of whom had family members profiting from the Bush campaign) in December 2000. It has gone on for decades, under "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans. But it has reached a new pitch of intensity, audacity and recklessness today.
Somalia might seem an odd choice for "the path of action" – the Hitlerian phrase that Bush incorporated into the official "National Security Strategy of the United States" in formalizing the doctrine of "preventive" – i.e., aggressive – war. (It was also then that he declared that his version of corrupt crony capitalism to be the "single sustainable model of national success.") But as "blaqfather," a commentor on the previous points out, before Somalia collapsed into anarchy in 1991, it was being actively explored by major oil companies: "A World Bank and U.N. survey that year of eight northeastern African countries' petroleum potential ranked Somalia second only to Sudan as the top prospective commercial producer. Northern Somalia lay within a regional oil window reaching south across the Gulf of Aden, the geologists said." So Somalia's affairs are not entirely without interest to a Washington regime populated by professional oilmen.
What's more, Somalia's geographic location gives it heightened importance in the Bush Regime's strategy to control the Horn of Africa and dominate the continent's ever-more-vital oil supplies. The Pentagon recently set up its first-ever "African Command," adding it to the string of regions under the command of a military proconsul. (Bush has also created the first such satrapy covering the United States itself, which has never before been the subject – the target? – of a military "command.")
And finally, Somalia was "doable." You can crush it without cost, squash it like a fly, and not only do it on the cheap – with Ethiopian troops and local warlords serving as your proxies – you can do it without notice. The entire Somalian campaign – and America's very extensive involvement in it – has passed virtually unremarked in the U.S. media, and plays no part at all on the national political scene. It is simply a non-event, something happening far away to a bunch of darkies – Muslim darkies, on top of that – so who cares? It's not even worth a joke by Leno or Letterman
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Two challenges for the US Supreme Court
A great article copied from Fisher's blog. If Cuba has sovereignty over Guantanamo as some justice argues maybe Castro (Raul) can just close it down! Cuba by the way does not admit the legitimacy of the US lease and never cashes the yearly checks sent by the US.
A challenge to use of the state secrets act is overdue. Intelligence operatives routinely use this as a defence against attempts to hold them responsible for their crimes. This was done in the Arar case the Al Masri case and many others.
NEW TESTS FOR THE SUPREMES
By William Fisher
Two of the Bush Administration’s signature issues may soon face further challenges in the U.S. Supreme Court. In one case, the high court will be asked to review lower court decisions upholding the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act. In the other, lawyers may contest the government’s use of the so-called ‘state secrets privilege’ in a case involving the practice of “extraordinary rendition.”
Both cases are being seen as tests of the court’s commitment to more open government and to the constitutional concept of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government. And both are likely to cast a spotlight on the new prominence of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has become the ‘moderate swing vote’ in close court decisions since the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor last year. Justice O’Connor was frequently the “5” in 5-4 court decisions.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York-based legal advocacy organization, yesterday (March 5) asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision dismissing cases filed on behalf of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. The Court is expected to grant review and is being asked to hear the cases in May. Under this schedule, the Court would likely hand down a decision in June or July.
These would be the first cases argued before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). The MCA, which the Bush administration hurriedly pushed through Congress, was signed into law by the President in October 2006. It was the second attempt by the Bush administration to strip detainees of their statutory right to challenge their detention in the courts.
The Supreme Court has affirmed this right in two previous cases -- Rasul v. Bush in 2004 and in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in 2006. The Court held in Rasul that Guantánamo is not beyond the reach of US law and that the detainees there have the right to challenge their detention in US courts, and directed the lower courts to consider the merits of those challenges. It reaffirmed that ruling in Hamdan. This would be the third time the Court takes up the issue.
Despite the Court's two previous rulings, nearly 400 detainees still remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay without charge or trial, never having had any meaningful chance to show that they deserve to be released.
By stripping federal civilian courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions, the MCA gave President Bush the right to indefinitely hold detainees outside the US without charges.
The appeals court's majority decision found that overruling the MCA would "defy the will of Congress," and asserted that habeas corpus does not apply to foreigners who are not in the US. It effectively ruled that the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay is a property leased by the US from Cuba, and that Cuba has sovereignty over it.
In her appeals court dissent, Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote that habeas corpus may indeed apply to foreign nationals outside the US and that the lawmakers' action had "exceeded the powers of Congress." The US Constitution stipulates that habeas may be suspended only "when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." This is likely to be at the heart of the appeal to the Supreme Court.
The US Justice Department expressed approval of the ruling. It believes that foreign detainees enjoy no constitutional rights when they are detained in other countries.
Shayana Kadidal, supervising attorney of CCR's Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative, said, "The Supreme Court has twice ruled in favor of the detainees. Yet hundreds of men have been imprisoned for more than five years without ever having a fair hearing because the administration, the lower courts and Congress have effectively ignored those rulings. The Court needs to make plain for the third time that it meant what it said."
The current appeal to the nation’s highest court involves two cases. Al Odah v. United States consists of eleven habeas petitions, including many of the first ones filed after the Supreme Court's Rasul decision. Boumediene v. United States involves six Bosnian-Algerian humanitarian workers seized by the US military in Sarajevo after Bosnian courts determined that a three-month investigation had unearthed no evidence to support their continued detention and ordered local authorities to release them.
In Al Odah, Senior US District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green held that detainees possess "the fundamental right to due process of law under the Fifth Amendment" and that certain detainees are protected by the Geneva Conventions. US District Judge Richard Leon reached the opposite conclusion in Boumediene, ruling that the detainees possess no substantive rights to vindicate through habeas corpus. The two cases were argued together on appeal. The Court of Appeals took nearly two years to decide the cases.
The MCA is also facing legislative challenges. Congressional Democrats -- now a majority in both houses -- have already introduced bills, one co-sponsored by a powerful Republican, to amend the MCA and restore habeas rights for detainees.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that committee's senior Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have introduced a bill that would restore habeas corpus rights.
Another bill was introduced recently by Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. The Dodd measure would return habeas corpus rights to detainees and clarify other parts of the law.
Shayana Kadidal, managing attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, pointed out that the MCA "also allows for evidence obtained through torture -- a violation of the Geneva Conventions -- and greatly widens the scope of who the president can label an 'enemy combatant'."
The second case involves a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was on vacation in Macedonia when he was kidnapped and transported to a CIA-run "black site" in Afghanistan. After several months of confinement in squalid conditions, he was abandoned on a hill in Albania with no explanation. He was never charged with a crime.
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, El-Masri sued former CIA director George Tenet, other CIA officials, and four US-based aviation corporations, with violations of US and universal human rights laws. El-Masri claims he was “victimized by the CIA's policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’." He is seeking an apology from the CIA.
The US Government responded to the suit by invoking the “state secrets privilege”, arguing that a public trial of a lawsuit against a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency for abducting and imprisoning a German citizen would lead to disclosure of information harmful to US national security.
The US Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of the Government, opening the way for a challenge in the US Supreme Court. ACLU lawyers are currently considering such an appeal, contending that the Bush Administration’s frequent use of the state secrets privilege is little more than legal sleight-of-hand to keep illegal or embarrassing information hidden from public scrutiny.
Once rarely used, the “state secrets privilege” has over the past five years become a routine defense used by the US Government to keep cases from being tried.
The privilege is based on a series of US legal precedents allowing the federal government to dismiss legal cases that it claims would threaten foreign policy, military intelligence, or national security.
A relic of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, it has been invoked numerous times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Judges have denied the privilege on only five occasions.
It was used against Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the state secrets privilege and the Supreme Court upheld that decision. It has also been used to block legal actions by other “whistleblowers” who work in the national security field.
The privilege was also invoked to stop the suit brought by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was stopped at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport on his way back to Canada from a vacation in North Africa, detained for several days without access to a lawyer or to his family, and then flown to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for 10 months. He was released without charges.
A two-year investigation by a Canadian Commission found that the Canadian Government had provided the US with false information and that there was no basis for believing Arar had any connection with terrorists. Canada issued an apology and paid Arar more than $2 million in damages. The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned over the matter.
The US Government has consistently refused to discuss details of the case.
However, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has admitted El-Masri’s kidnapping and detention was the result of a “mistake” by the CIA. The incident threatened to sour US relations with Germany following the election of Angela Merkel as Chancellor. Rice traveled to Europe in an attempt to repair the damage following Germany’s opposition to the American invasion of Iraq.
The ACLU believes “there is an acute need for clarification of the state secrets doctrine because the government is increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and to keep legitimate cases out of court.”
The Lebanese-born Al-Masri says he took a bus from Germany to Macedonia, where Macedonian agents confiscated his passport and detained him for 23 days, without access to anyone, including his wife.
He says he was then put in a diaper, a belt with chains to his wrists and ankles, earmuffs, eye pads, a blindfold and a hood. He claims he was put into a plane, his legs and arms spread-eagled and secured to the floor. He was drugged and flown to Afghanistan, where he was held in solitary confinement for five months before being dropped off in a remote rural section of Albania. He claims it was a CIA-leased aircraft that flew him to Afghanistan, and CIA agents who were responsible for his rendition to Afghanistan.
The aviation companies accused of transporting him during his detention are also protected by the “state secrets” privilege.
El-Masri’s suit seeks an explanation and an apology from the CIA.
If the El-Masri suit goes forward to the Supreme Court, it will also shine a bright light on the US practice of “extraordinary rendition,” which involves sending persons detained by the US to prisons in countries known to practice torture.
According to Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, the practice started in 1995 during the Clinton Administration as a means of holding and interrogating people suspected of having ties to Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden.
Secretary of State Rice has defended the practice, saying it was a vital tool in the war on terror. However, she has insisted that the U.S. does not "send anyone to a country to be tortured."
"The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured," she said. "Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured."
But most human rights and foreign affairs experts believe that such “diplomatic assurances” are worthless. They say there is ample evidence that detainees who are “rendered” to other countries are frequently subjected to torture. The US has rendered prisoners to a number of countries that have notoriously poor human rights records, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan and Algeria, as well as to suspected CIA secret prisons in Eastern Europe.
The existence of the Eastern European prisons was revealed by the Washington Post. The Post reported that prisoners were routinely tortured, using such techniques as “waterboarding” – submerging a prisoner in restraints in water to convince him he was drowning -- mock execution, prolonged shackling, being threatened with dogs, and "cold cell," in which prisoners are held naked in low temperatures and doused with cold water.
Rendition is known to have been a CIA practice for some years. But its frequency increased exponentially after 9/11, with reportedly dozens of prisoners being kidnapped from Italy, Sweden and other European countries. Italy has recently indicted a number of US citizens, believed to be CIA agents, for kidnapping an Italian citizen on Italian soil. The US has indicated that the accused will not be extradited to stand trial.
Earlier, a report by investigators for the European Parliament said they had evidence that the CIA had flown 1,000 undeclared flights over Europe since 2001, in some cases transporting terrorist suspects abducted within the European Union to countries known to use torture.
posted by BILL @ Tuesday, March 06, 2007
A challenge to use of the state secrets act is overdue. Intelligence operatives routinely use this as a defence against attempts to hold them responsible for their crimes. This was done in the Arar case the Al Masri case and many others.
NEW TESTS FOR THE SUPREMES
By William Fisher
Two of the Bush Administration’s signature issues may soon face further challenges in the U.S. Supreme Court. In one case, the high court will be asked to review lower court decisions upholding the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act. In the other, lawyers may contest the government’s use of the so-called ‘state secrets privilege’ in a case involving the practice of “extraordinary rendition.”
Both cases are being seen as tests of the court’s commitment to more open government and to the constitutional concept of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government. And both are likely to cast a spotlight on the new prominence of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has become the ‘moderate swing vote’ in close court decisions since the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor last year. Justice O’Connor was frequently the “5” in 5-4 court decisions.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York-based legal advocacy organization, yesterday (March 5) asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision dismissing cases filed on behalf of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. The Court is expected to grant review and is being asked to hear the cases in May. Under this schedule, the Court would likely hand down a decision in June or July.
These would be the first cases argued before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). The MCA, which the Bush administration hurriedly pushed through Congress, was signed into law by the President in October 2006. It was the second attempt by the Bush administration to strip detainees of their statutory right to challenge their detention in the courts.
The Supreme Court has affirmed this right in two previous cases -- Rasul v. Bush in 2004 and in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in 2006. The Court held in Rasul that Guantánamo is not beyond the reach of US law and that the detainees there have the right to challenge their detention in US courts, and directed the lower courts to consider the merits of those challenges. It reaffirmed that ruling in Hamdan. This would be the third time the Court takes up the issue.
Despite the Court's two previous rulings, nearly 400 detainees still remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay without charge or trial, never having had any meaningful chance to show that they deserve to be released.
By stripping federal civilian courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions, the MCA gave President Bush the right to indefinitely hold detainees outside the US without charges.
The appeals court's majority decision found that overruling the MCA would "defy the will of Congress," and asserted that habeas corpus does not apply to foreigners who are not in the US. It effectively ruled that the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay is a property leased by the US from Cuba, and that Cuba has sovereignty over it.
In her appeals court dissent, Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote that habeas corpus may indeed apply to foreign nationals outside the US and that the lawmakers' action had "exceeded the powers of Congress." The US Constitution stipulates that habeas may be suspended only "when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." This is likely to be at the heart of the appeal to the Supreme Court.
The US Justice Department expressed approval of the ruling. It believes that foreign detainees enjoy no constitutional rights when they are detained in other countries.
Shayana Kadidal, supervising attorney of CCR's Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative, said, "The Supreme Court has twice ruled in favor of the detainees. Yet hundreds of men have been imprisoned for more than five years without ever having a fair hearing because the administration, the lower courts and Congress have effectively ignored those rulings. The Court needs to make plain for the third time that it meant what it said."
The current appeal to the nation’s highest court involves two cases. Al Odah v. United States consists of eleven habeas petitions, including many of the first ones filed after the Supreme Court's Rasul decision. Boumediene v. United States involves six Bosnian-Algerian humanitarian workers seized by the US military in Sarajevo after Bosnian courts determined that a three-month investigation had unearthed no evidence to support their continued detention and ordered local authorities to release them.
In Al Odah, Senior US District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green held that detainees possess "the fundamental right to due process of law under the Fifth Amendment" and that certain detainees are protected by the Geneva Conventions. US District Judge Richard Leon reached the opposite conclusion in Boumediene, ruling that the detainees possess no substantive rights to vindicate through habeas corpus. The two cases were argued together on appeal. The Court of Appeals took nearly two years to decide the cases.
The MCA is also facing legislative challenges. Congressional Democrats -- now a majority in both houses -- have already introduced bills, one co-sponsored by a powerful Republican, to amend the MCA and restore habeas rights for detainees.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that committee's senior Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have introduced a bill that would restore habeas corpus rights.
Another bill was introduced recently by Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. The Dodd measure would return habeas corpus rights to detainees and clarify other parts of the law.
Shayana Kadidal, managing attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, pointed out that the MCA "also allows for evidence obtained through torture -- a violation of the Geneva Conventions -- and greatly widens the scope of who the president can label an 'enemy combatant'."
The second case involves a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was on vacation in Macedonia when he was kidnapped and transported to a CIA-run "black site" in Afghanistan. After several months of confinement in squalid conditions, he was abandoned on a hill in Albania with no explanation. He was never charged with a crime.
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, El-Masri sued former CIA director George Tenet, other CIA officials, and four US-based aviation corporations, with violations of US and universal human rights laws. El-Masri claims he was “victimized by the CIA's policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’." He is seeking an apology from the CIA.
The US Government responded to the suit by invoking the “state secrets privilege”, arguing that a public trial of a lawsuit against a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency for abducting and imprisoning a German citizen would lead to disclosure of information harmful to US national security.
The US Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of the Government, opening the way for a challenge in the US Supreme Court. ACLU lawyers are currently considering such an appeal, contending that the Bush Administration’s frequent use of the state secrets privilege is little more than legal sleight-of-hand to keep illegal or embarrassing information hidden from public scrutiny.
Once rarely used, the “state secrets privilege” has over the past five years become a routine defense used by the US Government to keep cases from being tried.
The privilege is based on a series of US legal precedents allowing the federal government to dismiss legal cases that it claims would threaten foreign policy, military intelligence, or national security.
A relic of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, it has been invoked numerous times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Judges have denied the privilege on only five occasions.
It was used against Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the state secrets privilege and the Supreme Court upheld that decision. It has also been used to block legal actions by other “whistleblowers” who work in the national security field.
The privilege was also invoked to stop the suit brought by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was stopped at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport on his way back to Canada from a vacation in North Africa, detained for several days without access to a lawyer or to his family, and then flown to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for 10 months. He was released without charges.
A two-year investigation by a Canadian Commission found that the Canadian Government had provided the US with false information and that there was no basis for believing Arar had any connection with terrorists. Canada issued an apology and paid Arar more than $2 million in damages. The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned over the matter.
The US Government has consistently refused to discuss details of the case.
However, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has admitted El-Masri’s kidnapping and detention was the result of a “mistake” by the CIA. The incident threatened to sour US relations with Germany following the election of Angela Merkel as Chancellor. Rice traveled to Europe in an attempt to repair the damage following Germany’s opposition to the American invasion of Iraq.
The ACLU believes “there is an acute need for clarification of the state secrets doctrine because the government is increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and to keep legitimate cases out of court.”
The Lebanese-born Al-Masri says he took a bus from Germany to Macedonia, where Macedonian agents confiscated his passport and detained him for 23 days, without access to anyone, including his wife.
He says he was then put in a diaper, a belt with chains to his wrists and ankles, earmuffs, eye pads, a blindfold and a hood. He claims he was put into a plane, his legs and arms spread-eagled and secured to the floor. He was drugged and flown to Afghanistan, where he was held in solitary confinement for five months before being dropped off in a remote rural section of Albania. He claims it was a CIA-leased aircraft that flew him to Afghanistan, and CIA agents who were responsible for his rendition to Afghanistan.
The aviation companies accused of transporting him during his detention are also protected by the “state secrets” privilege.
El-Masri’s suit seeks an explanation and an apology from the CIA.
If the El-Masri suit goes forward to the Supreme Court, it will also shine a bright light on the US practice of “extraordinary rendition,” which involves sending persons detained by the US to prisons in countries known to practice torture.
According to Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, the practice started in 1995 during the Clinton Administration as a means of holding and interrogating people suspected of having ties to Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden.
Secretary of State Rice has defended the practice, saying it was a vital tool in the war on terror. However, she has insisted that the U.S. does not "send anyone to a country to be tortured."
"The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured," she said. "Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured."
But most human rights and foreign affairs experts believe that such “diplomatic assurances” are worthless. They say there is ample evidence that detainees who are “rendered” to other countries are frequently subjected to torture. The US has rendered prisoners to a number of countries that have notoriously poor human rights records, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan and Algeria, as well as to suspected CIA secret prisons in Eastern Europe.
The existence of the Eastern European prisons was revealed by the Washington Post. The Post reported that prisoners were routinely tortured, using such techniques as “waterboarding” – submerging a prisoner in restraints in water to convince him he was drowning -- mock execution, prolonged shackling, being threatened with dogs, and "cold cell," in which prisoners are held naked in low temperatures and doused with cold water.
Rendition is known to have been a CIA practice for some years. But its frequency increased exponentially after 9/11, with reportedly dozens of prisoners being kidnapped from Italy, Sweden and other European countries. Italy has recently indicted a number of US citizens, believed to be CIA agents, for kidnapping an Italian citizen on Italian soil. The US has indicated that the accused will not be extradited to stand trial.
Earlier, a report by investigators for the European Parliament said they had evidence that the CIA had flown 1,000 undeclared flights over Europe since 2001, in some cases transporting terrorist suspects abducted within the European Union to countries known to use torture.
posted by BILL @ Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Markey introduces bill to ban extra-ordinary rendition
Arar is trying to sure US officials. He is appealing the rejection of his suit on grounds of national security. I hope this bill passes into law.
U.S. Democrat cites Arar as he pushes anti-torture bill on Capitol Hill
Canadian Press
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
WASHINGTON (CP) - U.S. Democrats are pushing legislation that would ban the American government from sending people like Maher Arar to be interrogated in third countries.
Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts re-introduced a bill that would outlaw the practice of so-called extraordinary rendition. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was detained at a New York airport in 2002 and sent to Syria where he underwent torture and lengthy detention.
The Democrats' bill would require the U.S. State Department to publish a list of countries that engage in torture, and prohibit officials from transferring anyone to those countries.
Arar, who was exonerated by a Canadian inquiry of any terrorist ties, is suing American officials.
© The Canadian Press 2007
U.S. Democrat cites Arar as he pushes anti-torture bill on Capitol Hill
Canadian Press
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
WASHINGTON (CP) - U.S. Democrats are pushing legislation that would ban the American government from sending people like Maher Arar to be interrogated in third countries.
Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts re-introduced a bill that would outlaw the practice of so-called extraordinary rendition. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was detained at a New York airport in 2002 and sent to Syria where he underwent torture and lengthy detention.
The Democrats' bill would require the U.S. State Department to publish a list of countries that engage in torture, and prohibit officials from transferring anyone to those countries.
Arar, who was exonerated by a Canadian inquiry of any terrorist ties, is suing American officials.
© The Canadian Press 2007
Saturday, March 3, 2007
US court throw out al Masri CIA torture case
In the name of security CIA operatives are able to get away with kidnappings world wide and even torture with absolute immunity. According to this article the US does not even admit to a mistake! These types of actions are among the reasons that disapproval of the US is growing worldwide and al-Masri case has ruffled feathers in Europe especially. No doubt Arar's case will also be thrown out of court for security reasons and leave those responsible for his rendition untouched.
US court throws out CIA torture case
Published: Friday March 2, 2007
A US federal appeals court on Friday upheld a refusal to hear the case of a Lebanese-born German man who says he was tortured by the CIA, citing national security reasons.
Khaled el-Masri claims was detained by the CIA for several months in 2004 on suspicion of links to terrorism.
Masri, 43, filed suit in December 2005 saying he had been snatched while on a trip in Macedonia, taken to Afghanistan, jailed, beaten and harassed before being set free without charge after five months.
He demanded an explanation and an apology from the United States for his detention, as well as 75,000 dollars in damages.
The US government had urged the court to reject the appeal saying that for national security reasons it could not confirm or deny any of the allegations because they were related to the activities of the CIA.
The court said that to make his case, el-Masri "would be obliged to produce admissible evidence not only that he was detained and interrogated, but that the defendants were involved in his detention and interrogation in a manner that renders them personally liable to him.
"Such a showing could be made only with evidence that exposes how the CIA organizes, staffs and supervises its most sensitive intelligence operations.
"The defendants could not properly defend themselves without using privileged evidence," the decision said.
American Civil Liberties Union director Anthony Romero said the court was wrong.
"Regrettably, today's decision allows CIA officials to disregard the law with impunity by making it virtually impossible to challenge their actions in court," he said in a statement.
"The state secrets doctrine has become a shield that covers even the most blatant abuses of power," he said.
Masri has also taken his case to the German courts and a court in southern Munich in January ordered the arrest of 13 people, thought to be CIA agents, in connection with his alleged kidnapping.
His is one of the most high-profile cases of the suspected "extraordinary renditions" by the CIA -- flying terror suspects through European states to detention in third countries where they risk being tortured.
After meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in December 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Masri's case "was accepted as a mistake by the US government," but US officials later suggested her remark was the result of a misunderstanding.
Reports have indicated that US agents confused Masri with a terror suspect with a similar name who was linked to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
US court throws out CIA torture case
Published: Friday March 2, 2007
A US federal appeals court on Friday upheld a refusal to hear the case of a Lebanese-born German man who says he was tortured by the CIA, citing national security reasons.
Khaled el-Masri claims was detained by the CIA for several months in 2004 on suspicion of links to terrorism.
Masri, 43, filed suit in December 2005 saying he had been snatched while on a trip in Macedonia, taken to Afghanistan, jailed, beaten and harassed before being set free without charge after five months.
He demanded an explanation and an apology from the United States for his detention, as well as 75,000 dollars in damages.
The US government had urged the court to reject the appeal saying that for national security reasons it could not confirm or deny any of the allegations because they were related to the activities of the CIA.
The court said that to make his case, el-Masri "would be obliged to produce admissible evidence not only that he was detained and interrogated, but that the defendants were involved in his detention and interrogation in a manner that renders them personally liable to him.
"Such a showing could be made only with evidence that exposes how the CIA organizes, staffs and supervises its most sensitive intelligence operations.
"The defendants could not properly defend themselves without using privileged evidence," the decision said.
American Civil Liberties Union director Anthony Romero said the court was wrong.
"Regrettably, today's decision allows CIA officials to disregard the law with impunity by making it virtually impossible to challenge their actions in court," he said in a statement.
"The state secrets doctrine has become a shield that covers even the most blatant abuses of power," he said.
Masri has also taken his case to the German courts and a court in southern Munich in January ordered the arrest of 13 people, thought to be CIA agents, in connection with his alleged kidnapping.
His is one of the most high-profile cases of the suspected "extraordinary renditions" by the CIA -- flying terror suspects through European states to detention in third countries where they risk being tortured.
After meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in December 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Masri's case "was accepted as a mistake by the US government," but US officials later suggested her remark was the result of a misunderstanding.
Reports have indicated that US agents confused Masri with a terror suspect with a similar name who was linked to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, February 24, 2007
US worried about blowback from renditions
Another obvious reason why the US will not admit Arar's innocence is that Arar still has an appeal in place of the rejection of an earlier suit against the US government.
This is from the Globe and Mail.
A world of Maher Arars
Why won't the U.S. admit Maher Arar's innocence? It may be fear of precedent. Tales of other suspects seized and sent abroad to face torture are beginning to come to light in Europe. This week, those stories helped bring down the Italian government. And as Doug Saunders reports, this could be just the beginning.
DOUG SAUNDERS
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
E-mail Doug Saunders | Read Bio | Latest Columns
On an October evening five years ago, a Gulfstream III executive jet appeared in the sky above Rome and requested a landing at Ciampino Airport, a small military and tourist-flight destination on the ancient Via Appia. On board the 14-seat plane were two pilots, a steward, five CIA agents and a tall, elegant Canadian wearing a green sweater, a pair of jeans and metal shackles.
The Gulfstream, registered to a CIA-connected firm known as Presidential Aviation, was on European soil for exactly 37 minutes. When it had finished refuelling, it left Ciampino at 8:59 p.m. and headed to Amman, Jordan. There, Maher Arar was carried off the plane, beaten, and loaded into a van headed to Damascus, where he would face 10 months and 10 days of horrendous torture.
Those 37 minutes are now coming back to haunt Europe.
Mr. Arar's ordeal, and the wealth of investigations and recriminations that have followed in Canada, has provoked a deep sense of alarm in European politics this week. This Syrian-Canadian's case, the abject apology he received from Prime Minister Stephen Harper last month and the bewildering lack of acknowledgment from Washington, has made a half-dozen governments realize that they may soon face similar public self-examinations.
The possibility, revealed in a European Union report last week, that as many as 20 more Arar-like cases may be emerging within Europe, is souring relations between Europe and the U.S. in anti-terrorism operations, and between European governments and their own people in electoral politics.
Major court cases are under way in Germany and Italy against domestic and U.S. agents for kidnapping citizens and sending them to Muslim countries to be tortured — cases that could implicate senior government officials and tarnish national leaders, as they have in Canada.
It is fair to say that Mr. Arar's spectre claimed its first major victim on Wednesday in Rome, when a parliamentary conflict over co-operation with the U.S. "war on terrorism," tainted by the use of Italian airports to transport Mr. Arar and others to sites of torture, led to the collapse of Italy's government.
Those 37 minutes that Mr. Arar spent on the tarmac in Rome, apparently with the consent of Italian authorities under anti-terrorism agreements with the U.S., have now become part of the controversy. An Italian magistrate, Salvatore Vitello, will travel to Canada later this winter as part of his investigation to determine whether Italians and Americans were guilty of kidnapping.
Across Europe, prosecutors such as Mr. Vitello have shifted their energies from charging potential al-Qaeda terrorists to investigating officials who may have overstepped the bounds of law in their pursuit of antiterrorism.
"We are investigating Mr. Arar's transit through Rome, which is itself a crime if behind it there was an actual crime — that is, if in the U.S. he was illegally kidnapped. If that is the case, if he was kidnapped, then Rome was part of it," Mr. Vitello told The Globe and Mail. "The fact that he was in Rome for those 37 minutes — somebody must have given permission for that."
A year ago, his investigation would have been another colourful sideshow in the flamboyant world of European jurisprudence. But Mr. Arar's precedent has changed that.
In Canada, the Arar case has led to the resignation of RCMP chief Giuliano Zaccardelli, to an apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the payment of $11.5-million in damages to Mr. Arar, and to tensions between a Conservative government and a U.S. Republican administration. Foreign minister Stockwell Day has engaged in a heated showdown with his U.S. counterparts over his demand that Mr. Arar be removed from an American no-fly list. And the Liberal Party, in a forthcoming election, will be confronted with its indifference and possible collusion in the Arar case.
The issue of "extraordinary rendition" — the U.S. practice of seizing suspected terrorists, placing them on unmarked airplanes, and sending them without charge or trial to countries that practice torture — has festered for years in the background of European politics. But it has been an issue that has mainly concerned political parties and activists on the far left, groups that are predictably anti-American. In mainstream politics, it has simply been part of the War on Terrorism's background noise.
There has now been a palpable change. The carte blanche given after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to U.S. authorities to conduct anti-terror operations on European soil has become a menacing liability, and the subject of potentially destructive investigations, in several European countries. Governments are also reducing military co-operation with the U.S: This week saw Britain and Denmark announcing plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, with others expected to follow.
And when the European Parliament last week released a report condemning the 1,245 CIA flights made in Europe and the 20 European citizens subjected to "rendition," the responses no longer fell along predictable left-right lines.
European leaders are now looking nervously to Canada. Mr. Arar's "rendition" in 2002 was probably the first major use of the practice to come to light, and Canada is the first country to have been scorched politically by the explosive discovery that innocent people were tortured as a result of the practice.
Senior Canadian government officials and European Union diplomats have told The Globe and Mail that they believe the U.S. is avoiding any apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing in the Arar case because it could open a Pandora's box of recriminations from Europe, where two cases almost identical to Mr. Arar's are being tried in Germany and Italy and at least 18 more could be pending.
American intelligence officials are facing criminal charges in European courts, and an admission that mistakes have been made could transform transatlantic relations into an enormous forensic investigation, they say.
Europe is now feeling the pain that Canada has undergone, in part as a result of information unearthed in the half-dozen inquiries into Mr. Arar's treatment. In Italy, the fallout has centred on the case of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a Milan cleric also known as Abu Omar, who was seized by CIA agents in 2003 and flown to Cairo, where he was tortured and sexually abused in prison. He was released this week.
Last Friday, Italy had its Arar moment. Milan magistrate Armando Spataro indicted 26 U.S. citizens, including Italian CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady, and five Italians in the rendition of Abu Omar. All of them face charges of kidnapping. The Italian officials include the head of intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, who like the RCMP chief was forced to resign over the case, which is known in Italy as the Imam Rapito ("kidnapped imam") affair.
The U.S. has refused to acknowledge the Italian prosecution or to admit that the rendition occurred. It has also refused the magistrate's request to extradite the defendants (the Italian government has also decided not to press the extradition request at the highest levels). But Italian law allows people to be tried, convicted and sentenced in absentia, so the case will continue, likely revealing embarrassing information about high-level support for the renditions in Italian governments.
In Germany, a case strikingly similar to Mr. Arar's has led to arrest warrants against 13 CIA officers and damning revelations about German complicity in kidnapping. That case involves Khaled el-Masri, who was seized while on vacation in 2003 and sent to Afghanistan for five months (similarly, Mr. Arar, a computer programmer, had been returning from a family vacation). As with Mr. Arar, it appears that Mr. el-Masri has no relationship with terrorism and that his rendition was founded on completely false evidence.
Both Sweden and Portugal are also facing major investigations which accuse their governments of allowing citizens to be seized and sent to Egypt and other countries for torture, without any criminal charges.
Significantly, the case against the U.S. is now being made by judges and officials who have traditionally held pro-American, terror-fighting positions.
Mr. Spataro, the Milan magistrate, is as far from an anti-American firebrand as you can get in Italy: He has spent much of the past 30 years prosecuting terrorist and Mafia groups in Italy, and is not known for a hostility to U.S. interests.
"The job is the same — I have led many investigations against internal terrorism since the early 1970s. Many of my colleagues were killed by terrorist organizations," Mr. Spataro said this week from a Milan office filled with Americana — the wall behind his desk is dominated by a Norman Rockwell print chronicling the integration of southern U.S. schools.
"But we were absolutely sure that it is impossible to fight terrorism without respect for the laws. And with this investigation I hope that we can confirm that it is impossible to win over Islamic terrorism without the respect for law."
The Arar and Abu Omar cases were different in this respect: Along with his indictments of intelligence officials last week, Mr. Spataro laid criminal charges against Abu Omar himself, charging him with membership in a criminal organization (a crime in Italy). Mr. Spataro said that he strongly believes that Abu Omar could have been prosecuted for terrorism far more efficiently if the U.S. practice of rendition had not been followed. But now, he says, the terror-fighters are just as guilty as the alleged terrorist.
"I want to make clear that according to Italian law there is no difference between prosecuting terrorism and prosecuting those who fight terrorism," he said.
That seems to be the bridge that was crossed in Europe this week: It is now the people who were the most stalwart anti-terrorist fighters, the most loyal supporters of George W. Bush's approach to al-Qaeda, who are speaking out against the abuses of that system. With an eye on Canada, the moderates and centre-rightists of Europe are realizing that the U.S. is not prepared to offer a reasonable explanation for those abuses.
That was the case this week with Gijs de Vries, the EU's head of anti-terrrorism, who announced that he will step down in March because he has lost faith in his U.S. partners. He previously had embraced the American approach to counterterrorism, and harshly criticized the European parliament for its rendition-system investigation, with which he refused to co-operate. But on Wednesday, he said that the lack of U.S. explanation for its actions had made it impossible for him to do his job properly.
"The CIA renditions, together with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and the military commissions act, unfortunately have tarnished the image of the United States in the fight against terrorism, among Muslims and non-Muslims," he told reporters. "I hope the United States, now that there is a new political dynamic in the U.S. Congress, can return to a mainstream interpretation of international human rights."
It was this sort of realization, on a larger scale, that led to the collapse of the Italian government on Wednesday. The expansion of a U.S. military base and the presence of Italian troops in Afghanistan were bound to be divisive in Italy, where Communists and other parties of the extreme left always have built a strong base on anti-Americanism. Those parties make up part of the left-wing coalition government of Romano Prodi, which took power from Silvio Berlusconi in last spring's elections.
But the U.S. base became a rallying point for more than just the far left. A public sense that Italian airports and bases have been used for immoral or questionable activities has led the wider Italian public to take part in protests against the expansion, drawing tens of thousands of people.
It created an environment where even the parties of Mr. Berlusconi's right could vote against the pro-American measures without upsetting their constituencies. On Wednesday, it was mainly right-wing politicians who voted against the military-base expansion and the Afghanistan measure, bringing down the government.
Sergio Romano, a former Italian senior diplomat and leading voice of the country's centre-right, told The Globe and Mail that he now believes that the U.S. should not have bases on Italian soil, because it has abused its friendly relationship with its European allies to the point that it can no longer be trusted.
"I believe that the very same people who have been most aware that terrorism is a threat are now the people who are critical in this case of kidnapping," he said from his Milan office. "I think that calling it a 'war on terrorism' has caused a number of mistakes on our part."
It is bizarre to find the likes of Mr. Romano, an ardently pro-American voice, calling for restrictions on U.S. rights in Europe. But with an eye to Mr. Harper's government, European leaders are realizing that it is perilous to support the Bush administration at this awkward political moment.
"I think there is a body of opinion which feels that this kind of thing should be looked at with new eyes," Mr. Romano said "We know very well that the Americans used their bases in Djibouti to attack al-Qaeda in Ethiopia this year . . . If they decide to attack Hezbollah, God forbid, they'll be using Italian bases to do it.
"And we won't be told beforehand. We'll learn the next day. And you become complicit in such things. We do not want that any more."
Doug Saunders is a London-based member of The Globe and Mail's European bureau. His Focus column, Reckoning, will return next week.
This is from the Globe and Mail.
A world of Maher Arars
Why won't the U.S. admit Maher Arar's innocence? It may be fear of precedent. Tales of other suspects seized and sent abroad to face torture are beginning to come to light in Europe. This week, those stories helped bring down the Italian government. And as Doug Saunders reports, this could be just the beginning.
DOUG SAUNDERS
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
E-mail Doug Saunders | Read Bio | Latest Columns
On an October evening five years ago, a Gulfstream III executive jet appeared in the sky above Rome and requested a landing at Ciampino Airport, a small military and tourist-flight destination on the ancient Via Appia. On board the 14-seat plane were two pilots, a steward, five CIA agents and a tall, elegant Canadian wearing a green sweater, a pair of jeans and metal shackles.
The Gulfstream, registered to a CIA-connected firm known as Presidential Aviation, was on European soil for exactly 37 minutes. When it had finished refuelling, it left Ciampino at 8:59 p.m. and headed to Amman, Jordan. There, Maher Arar was carried off the plane, beaten, and loaded into a van headed to Damascus, where he would face 10 months and 10 days of horrendous torture.
Those 37 minutes are now coming back to haunt Europe.
Mr. Arar's ordeal, and the wealth of investigations and recriminations that have followed in Canada, has provoked a deep sense of alarm in European politics this week. This Syrian-Canadian's case, the abject apology he received from Prime Minister Stephen Harper last month and the bewildering lack of acknowledgment from Washington, has made a half-dozen governments realize that they may soon face similar public self-examinations.
The possibility, revealed in a European Union report last week, that as many as 20 more Arar-like cases may be emerging within Europe, is souring relations between Europe and the U.S. in anti-terrorism operations, and between European governments and their own people in electoral politics.
Major court cases are under way in Germany and Italy against domestic and U.S. agents for kidnapping citizens and sending them to Muslim countries to be tortured — cases that could implicate senior government officials and tarnish national leaders, as they have in Canada.
It is fair to say that Mr. Arar's spectre claimed its first major victim on Wednesday in Rome, when a parliamentary conflict over co-operation with the U.S. "war on terrorism," tainted by the use of Italian airports to transport Mr. Arar and others to sites of torture, led to the collapse of Italy's government.
Those 37 minutes that Mr. Arar spent on the tarmac in Rome, apparently with the consent of Italian authorities under anti-terrorism agreements with the U.S., have now become part of the controversy. An Italian magistrate, Salvatore Vitello, will travel to Canada later this winter as part of his investigation to determine whether Italians and Americans were guilty of kidnapping.
Across Europe, prosecutors such as Mr. Vitello have shifted their energies from charging potential al-Qaeda terrorists to investigating officials who may have overstepped the bounds of law in their pursuit of antiterrorism.
"We are investigating Mr. Arar's transit through Rome, which is itself a crime if behind it there was an actual crime — that is, if in the U.S. he was illegally kidnapped. If that is the case, if he was kidnapped, then Rome was part of it," Mr. Vitello told The Globe and Mail. "The fact that he was in Rome for those 37 minutes — somebody must have given permission for that."
A year ago, his investigation would have been another colourful sideshow in the flamboyant world of European jurisprudence. But Mr. Arar's precedent has changed that.
In Canada, the Arar case has led to the resignation of RCMP chief Giuliano Zaccardelli, to an apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the payment of $11.5-million in damages to Mr. Arar, and to tensions between a Conservative government and a U.S. Republican administration. Foreign minister Stockwell Day has engaged in a heated showdown with his U.S. counterparts over his demand that Mr. Arar be removed from an American no-fly list. And the Liberal Party, in a forthcoming election, will be confronted with its indifference and possible collusion in the Arar case.
The issue of "extraordinary rendition" — the U.S. practice of seizing suspected terrorists, placing them on unmarked airplanes, and sending them without charge or trial to countries that practice torture — has festered for years in the background of European politics. But it has been an issue that has mainly concerned political parties and activists on the far left, groups that are predictably anti-American. In mainstream politics, it has simply been part of the War on Terrorism's background noise.
There has now been a palpable change. The carte blanche given after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to U.S. authorities to conduct anti-terror operations on European soil has become a menacing liability, and the subject of potentially destructive investigations, in several European countries. Governments are also reducing military co-operation with the U.S: This week saw Britain and Denmark announcing plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, with others expected to follow.
And when the European Parliament last week released a report condemning the 1,245 CIA flights made in Europe and the 20 European citizens subjected to "rendition," the responses no longer fell along predictable left-right lines.
European leaders are now looking nervously to Canada. Mr. Arar's "rendition" in 2002 was probably the first major use of the practice to come to light, and Canada is the first country to have been scorched politically by the explosive discovery that innocent people were tortured as a result of the practice.
Senior Canadian government officials and European Union diplomats have told The Globe and Mail that they believe the U.S. is avoiding any apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing in the Arar case because it could open a Pandora's box of recriminations from Europe, where two cases almost identical to Mr. Arar's are being tried in Germany and Italy and at least 18 more could be pending.
American intelligence officials are facing criminal charges in European courts, and an admission that mistakes have been made could transform transatlantic relations into an enormous forensic investigation, they say.
Europe is now feeling the pain that Canada has undergone, in part as a result of information unearthed in the half-dozen inquiries into Mr. Arar's treatment. In Italy, the fallout has centred on the case of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a Milan cleric also known as Abu Omar, who was seized by CIA agents in 2003 and flown to Cairo, where he was tortured and sexually abused in prison. He was released this week.
Last Friday, Italy had its Arar moment. Milan magistrate Armando Spataro indicted 26 U.S. citizens, including Italian CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady, and five Italians in the rendition of Abu Omar. All of them face charges of kidnapping. The Italian officials include the head of intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, who like the RCMP chief was forced to resign over the case, which is known in Italy as the Imam Rapito ("kidnapped imam") affair.
The U.S. has refused to acknowledge the Italian prosecution or to admit that the rendition occurred. It has also refused the magistrate's request to extradite the defendants (the Italian government has also decided not to press the extradition request at the highest levels). But Italian law allows people to be tried, convicted and sentenced in absentia, so the case will continue, likely revealing embarrassing information about high-level support for the renditions in Italian governments.
In Germany, a case strikingly similar to Mr. Arar's has led to arrest warrants against 13 CIA officers and damning revelations about German complicity in kidnapping. That case involves Khaled el-Masri, who was seized while on vacation in 2003 and sent to Afghanistan for five months (similarly, Mr. Arar, a computer programmer, had been returning from a family vacation). As with Mr. Arar, it appears that Mr. el-Masri has no relationship with terrorism and that his rendition was founded on completely false evidence.
Both Sweden and Portugal are also facing major investigations which accuse their governments of allowing citizens to be seized and sent to Egypt and other countries for torture, without any criminal charges.
Significantly, the case against the U.S. is now being made by judges and officials who have traditionally held pro-American, terror-fighting positions.
Mr. Spataro, the Milan magistrate, is as far from an anti-American firebrand as you can get in Italy: He has spent much of the past 30 years prosecuting terrorist and Mafia groups in Italy, and is not known for a hostility to U.S. interests.
"The job is the same — I have led many investigations against internal terrorism since the early 1970s. Many of my colleagues were killed by terrorist organizations," Mr. Spataro said this week from a Milan office filled with Americana — the wall behind his desk is dominated by a Norman Rockwell print chronicling the integration of southern U.S. schools.
"But we were absolutely sure that it is impossible to fight terrorism without respect for the laws. And with this investigation I hope that we can confirm that it is impossible to win over Islamic terrorism without the respect for law."
The Arar and Abu Omar cases were different in this respect: Along with his indictments of intelligence officials last week, Mr. Spataro laid criminal charges against Abu Omar himself, charging him with membership in a criminal organization (a crime in Italy). Mr. Spataro said that he strongly believes that Abu Omar could have been prosecuted for terrorism far more efficiently if the U.S. practice of rendition had not been followed. But now, he says, the terror-fighters are just as guilty as the alleged terrorist.
"I want to make clear that according to Italian law there is no difference between prosecuting terrorism and prosecuting those who fight terrorism," he said.
That seems to be the bridge that was crossed in Europe this week: It is now the people who were the most stalwart anti-terrorist fighters, the most loyal supporters of George W. Bush's approach to al-Qaeda, who are speaking out against the abuses of that system. With an eye on Canada, the moderates and centre-rightists of Europe are realizing that the U.S. is not prepared to offer a reasonable explanation for those abuses.
That was the case this week with Gijs de Vries, the EU's head of anti-terrrorism, who announced that he will step down in March because he has lost faith in his U.S. partners. He previously had embraced the American approach to counterterrorism, and harshly criticized the European parliament for its rendition-system investigation, with which he refused to co-operate. But on Wednesday, he said that the lack of U.S. explanation for its actions had made it impossible for him to do his job properly.
"The CIA renditions, together with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and the military commissions act, unfortunately have tarnished the image of the United States in the fight against terrorism, among Muslims and non-Muslims," he told reporters. "I hope the United States, now that there is a new political dynamic in the U.S. Congress, can return to a mainstream interpretation of international human rights."
It was this sort of realization, on a larger scale, that led to the collapse of the Italian government on Wednesday. The expansion of a U.S. military base and the presence of Italian troops in Afghanistan were bound to be divisive in Italy, where Communists and other parties of the extreme left always have built a strong base on anti-Americanism. Those parties make up part of the left-wing coalition government of Romano Prodi, which took power from Silvio Berlusconi in last spring's elections.
But the U.S. base became a rallying point for more than just the far left. A public sense that Italian airports and bases have been used for immoral or questionable activities has led the wider Italian public to take part in protests against the expansion, drawing tens of thousands of people.
It created an environment where even the parties of Mr. Berlusconi's right could vote against the pro-American measures without upsetting their constituencies. On Wednesday, it was mainly right-wing politicians who voted against the military-base expansion and the Afghanistan measure, bringing down the government.
Sergio Romano, a former Italian senior diplomat and leading voice of the country's centre-right, told The Globe and Mail that he now believes that the U.S. should not have bases on Italian soil, because it has abused its friendly relationship with its European allies to the point that it can no longer be trusted.
"I believe that the very same people who have been most aware that terrorism is a threat are now the people who are critical in this case of kidnapping," he said from his Milan office. "I think that calling it a 'war on terrorism' has caused a number of mistakes on our part."
It is bizarre to find the likes of Mr. Romano, an ardently pro-American voice, calling for restrictions on U.S. rights in Europe. But with an eye to Mr. Harper's government, European leaders are realizing that it is perilous to support the Bush administration at this awkward political moment.
"I think there is a body of opinion which feels that this kind of thing should be looked at with new eyes," Mr. Romano said "We know very well that the Americans used their bases in Djibouti to attack al-Qaeda in Ethiopia this year . . . If they decide to attack Hezbollah, God forbid, they'll be using Italian bases to do it.
"And we won't be told beforehand. We'll learn the next day. And you become complicit in such things. We do not want that any more."
Doug Saunders is a London-based member of The Globe and Mail's European bureau. His Focus column, Reckoning, will return next week.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
CIA rendition planes used Canadian airline callsign
So it seems there is no penalty for using a bogus call sign. You would think that the ICAO authorities would be a bit upset that someone is misusing the call sign of a bankrupt Canadian airline.
From The Sunday TimesFebruary 19, 2006
US military planes criss-cross Europe using bogus call sign
Jon Swain and Brian Johnson-Thomas in Rome
THE American military have been operating flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use.
Not only is the call sign bogus — according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) — so, it appears, are some of the aircraft details the Americans have filed with the air traffic control authorities.
In at least one case, a plane identified with the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” — transporting terrorist suspects — left a US air base just after the arrival of an aircraft using the bogus call sign.
The call sign Juliet Golf Oscar (JGO) followed by a flight number belongs, says the ICAO, to a now bankrupt Canadian low-cost airline called Jetsgo of Montreal.
But for several years and as recently as last December it has been used selectively by both the American air force and army to cover the flights of aircraft to and from the Balkans.
These range from Learjet 35 executive jets to C-130 transport planes and MC-130P Combat Shadows, which are specially adapted for clandestine missions in politically sensitive or hostile territory.
A Sunday Times analysis of flight plans and radio logs has placed these aircraft at locations including Tuzla in Bosnia, Pristina in Kosovo, Aviano, the site of a large joint US-Italian military air base in northern Italy, and Ramstein in Germany, the headquarters of the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE).
On December 11, 2004, USAFE in Ramstein filed a flight plan for a Learjet 35 to fly from Tuzla to Aviano. The flight plan was copied to 15 addressees including Tuzla airport, Aviano airport and a mysterious recipient labelled “xxxxxxxx”.
The aircraft’s identity was given as JGO 80, the flight was a Learjet 35 operated by the Department of Defence and the registration was 99999E.
The status of the flight was given as “humanitarian”. But it was also given as “state”, which means government, and as “protected”, which means diplomatic.
During the time the plane was in the air, USAFE changed some of the flight plan timings and at the same time the registration changed. The aircraft metamorphosed into 40112E but continued to be a Learjet 35 and was still JGO 80 and a humanitarian, government and diplomatic flight.
While the Learjet was on the ground at Tuzla, an Ilyushin 76 was loading a cargo of 45 tons of surplus weapons and ammunition sold off by the Bosnian military and destined for Rwanda in defiance of a UN embargo.
The Ilyushin left Tuzla, flew over Italy and headed south in the direction of Africa. The American Learjet took off 55 minutes later.
In a report exposing arms trafficking to war-torn central Africa, Amnesty International has suggested that “US security authorities were engaged in a covert operation to ferry arms to Rwanda in the face of political opposition from the European Union”.
Another interesting convergence of flights occurred in February 2004. On February 24, an MC-130P Combat Shadow using the call sign JGO 50 took off from Aviano for an unknown destination.
Two days later, on February 26, the aircraft left Pristina for Tuzla. A short while after that, a Gulfstream 5 executive jet, call sign JGO 47, flew from Tuzla to Aviano, arriving at 23.11 GMT. The next day, a Learjet 35 using the call sign SPAR 92 left Aviano for an unknown destination.
SPAR is short for Special Air Resources, an American military airlift service that transports senior military officers and civilian VIPs.
However, SPAR 92 has been identified as the aircraft which was used by the CIA secretly to transport a Muslim preacher who was kidnapped by CIA agents in Milan in 2003.
A USAFE spokesman last week said American aircraft using the JGO call sign were performing “Joint Guard Operations” for the Nato/European peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.
However, inquiries have shown that the military operation called “Joint Guard” ended in 1998. They also show that none of the US aircraft deployed in it match ones using the JGO call sign.
A spokesman for the ICAO said: “Our records indicate that the designator JGO is still assigned to Jetsgo and the ICAO does not assign the same code to two operators.”
Additional reporting: Peter Danssaert
From The Sunday TimesFebruary 19, 2006
US military planes criss-cross Europe using bogus call sign
Jon Swain and Brian Johnson-Thomas in Rome
THE American military have been operating flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use.
Not only is the call sign bogus — according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) — so, it appears, are some of the aircraft details the Americans have filed with the air traffic control authorities.
In at least one case, a plane identified with the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” — transporting terrorist suspects — left a US air base just after the arrival of an aircraft using the bogus call sign.
The call sign Juliet Golf Oscar (JGO) followed by a flight number belongs, says the ICAO, to a now bankrupt Canadian low-cost airline called Jetsgo of Montreal.
But for several years and as recently as last December it has been used selectively by both the American air force and army to cover the flights of aircraft to and from the Balkans.
These range from Learjet 35 executive jets to C-130 transport planes and MC-130P Combat Shadows, which are specially adapted for clandestine missions in politically sensitive or hostile territory.
A Sunday Times analysis of flight plans and radio logs has placed these aircraft at locations including Tuzla in Bosnia, Pristina in Kosovo, Aviano, the site of a large joint US-Italian military air base in northern Italy, and Ramstein in Germany, the headquarters of the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE).
On December 11, 2004, USAFE in Ramstein filed a flight plan for a Learjet 35 to fly from Tuzla to Aviano. The flight plan was copied to 15 addressees including Tuzla airport, Aviano airport and a mysterious recipient labelled “xxxxxxxx”.
The aircraft’s identity was given as JGO 80, the flight was a Learjet 35 operated by the Department of Defence and the registration was 99999E.
The status of the flight was given as “humanitarian”. But it was also given as “state”, which means government, and as “protected”, which means diplomatic.
During the time the plane was in the air, USAFE changed some of the flight plan timings and at the same time the registration changed. The aircraft metamorphosed into 40112E but continued to be a Learjet 35 and was still JGO 80 and a humanitarian, government and diplomatic flight.
While the Learjet was on the ground at Tuzla, an Ilyushin 76 was loading a cargo of 45 tons of surplus weapons and ammunition sold off by the Bosnian military and destined for Rwanda in defiance of a UN embargo.
The Ilyushin left Tuzla, flew over Italy and headed south in the direction of Africa. The American Learjet took off 55 minutes later.
In a report exposing arms trafficking to war-torn central Africa, Amnesty International has suggested that “US security authorities were engaged in a covert operation to ferry arms to Rwanda in the face of political opposition from the European Union”.
Another interesting convergence of flights occurred in February 2004. On February 24, an MC-130P Combat Shadow using the call sign JGO 50 took off from Aviano for an unknown destination.
Two days later, on February 26, the aircraft left Pristina for Tuzla. A short while after that, a Gulfstream 5 executive jet, call sign JGO 47, flew from Tuzla to Aviano, arriving at 23.11 GMT. The next day, a Learjet 35 using the call sign SPAR 92 left Aviano for an unknown destination.
SPAR is short for Special Air Resources, an American military airlift service that transports senior military officers and civilian VIPs.
However, SPAR 92 has been identified as the aircraft which was used by the CIA secretly to transport a Muslim preacher who was kidnapped by CIA agents in Milan in 2003.
A USAFE spokesman last week said American aircraft using the JGO call sign were performing “Joint Guard Operations” for the Nato/European peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.
However, inquiries have shown that the military operation called “Joint Guard” ended in 1998. They also show that none of the US aircraft deployed in it match ones using the JGO call sign.
A spokesman for the ICAO said: “Our records indicate that the designator JGO is still assigned to Jetsgo and the ICAO does not assign the same code to two operators.”
Additional reporting: Peter Danssaert
Friday, February 16, 2007
US article on extra-ordinary rendition
Zaccardelli the RCMP chief did not resign because of the screwups revealed by the O'Connor inquiry. He resigned because of his own screwup while testifying before committees. In effect he gave contradictory testimony or less politely perjured himself. That is why he resigned. In fact he pointedly refused to resign earlier and defended the RCMP's actions for the most part even after the O'Connor report showed their mistakes. No one has ever been punished for misleading mistaken and even libelous reports on Arar sent to the US authorities. Several have been promoted however.
This is from TomPaine.com
Umm, Torture Is A Bad Idea
John Prados
February 16, 2007
John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. His current book is Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA.
This week the European Parliament finished its investigation into the CIA’s use of “extraordinary renditions” to kidnap European citizens and residents and subject them to torture and imprisonment without trial. The EU condemned both the practice and 14 member nations for complying with it, frequently under the direction of non-elected intelligence officials without knowledge or consent from government representatives, let alone the public.
Today an Italian court has decided to grant warrants to arrest 26 CIA personnel allegedly involved in the February 2003 kidnapping in Milan of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. The chief of the Italian military intelligence service and his deputy are defending themselves before courts in the case. German courts in Munich recently issued arrest warrants against 13 alleged CIA officers and contract employees in the January 2004 rendition of German citizen Khaled al-Masri. The German parliament is reviewing its intelligence service’s collaboration with the CIA. There is widespread outrage in both Europe and the Muslim world over these practices.
What is the Bush administration response? Shoot the messengers. General Michael V. Hayden, the current CIA director, was asked a few months ago about the agency’s foreign intelligence partnerships, given the mounting investigations of CIA activities. Without touching the controversial U.S. operations at all, his response was, “If an ally believes—fears—that we can’t keep such activities private, then that ally is going to be much more reluctant to deal with us.”
Much as in the bad old days, the CIA persists in the delusion that what people say—not what it does—is the issue. The agency is riding for a fall. Ham-handed American spooks—who depend, by their own admission, on foreign intelligence services in up to 90 percent of their operations—have muddied the waters even with our best friends. The controversial “rendition” program that is at the centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism efforts has swept up many innocents along with known terrorists and has sparked trouble for our allies.
In Canada, citizen Maher Arar was apprehended in October 2002 while making an airline connection in the U.S.—but then rendered to Syria by the CIA. The chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was forced to resign as a result of Canadian security’s contribution to this travesty. And the Swedish intelligence service was appalled at high-handed CIA behavior in snatching two Egyptian nationals in that country in December 2001.
Aside from the U.S. denials and wholesale evasions of responsibility—the Bush people have refused to take Maher Arar off the U.S. terrorist watch list (or even apologize), even though the man has been cleared by a massive royal commission investigation. The effect of these operations can only sour foreign cooperation with the CIA.
A response in the form of a new long-term development plan at the CIA is in progress. The plan has two elements relevant here: First, the agency intends to increase its capability to act unilaterally; second, the procedure for approving covert operations is to be modified. Although it is also true the CIA’s dependence on foreign services is excessive and should be reduced, unilateral efforts bear their own burdens (the Bay of Pigs was such an operation). More important is the Covert Action Review Group, the unit responsible for approving proposed activities, which in the new order would not be answerable to the chief, but to the CIA’s deputy director. Today that person would be Stephen R. Kappes, who, while he is not the top boss and is not invested with the chief’s private vision and knowledge, has experience picking up the pieces after covert disasters—unlike General Hayden, with no covert ops background whatever. Moreover, both Kappes and Hayden are heavily committed to a welter of review boards and progress management committees required by the new strategic development plan.
Above the level of the CIA, covert operations proposals are supposed to be approved by higher authorities, reviews that seem to be cursory in the Bush administration. Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA’s European Division, recounts how he once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation. “Her chief concern,” Drumheller told Der Spiegel earlier this month , “was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it.” There were no deliberations on the value of the target or the potential flap that could be caused by such an intervention.
In addition, the head of the National Clandestine Service—the former CIA Directorate of Operations—which produces the proposals for covert operations, is the same cowboy who presided over the agency’s Counterterrorism Center at the height of the renditions program. It was on his watch that the Masri, Arar and Nasr affairs began. As for the action teams, Drumheller says they “are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful ... If they didn’t do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks.” These officers did courageous things in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they should not be expected to take a broad view of the missions being proposed. When these officers see themselves in danger of arrest in foreign lands, that, too, must have an impact.
The broad international support for the United States after 9/11 has evaporated, and the old Cold War attitudes in America that accepted the use of these techniques are long gone. The Bush administration’s covert operations have been as catastrophic as its conventional military campaign in Iraq, yet it is now posturing itself for unilateral action. This is a disaster waiting to happen. America needs a rational foreign policy. The country cannot be saved by a new posse of covert cowboys.
This is from TomPaine.com
Umm, Torture Is A Bad Idea
John Prados
February 16, 2007
John Prados is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. His current book is Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA.
This week the European Parliament finished its investigation into the CIA’s use of “extraordinary renditions” to kidnap European citizens and residents and subject them to torture and imprisonment without trial. The EU condemned both the practice and 14 member nations for complying with it, frequently under the direction of non-elected intelligence officials without knowledge or consent from government representatives, let alone the public.
Today an Italian court has decided to grant warrants to arrest 26 CIA personnel allegedly involved in the February 2003 kidnapping in Milan of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. The chief of the Italian military intelligence service and his deputy are defending themselves before courts in the case. German courts in Munich recently issued arrest warrants against 13 alleged CIA officers and contract employees in the January 2004 rendition of German citizen Khaled al-Masri. The German parliament is reviewing its intelligence service’s collaboration with the CIA. There is widespread outrage in both Europe and the Muslim world over these practices.
What is the Bush administration response? Shoot the messengers. General Michael V. Hayden, the current CIA director, was asked a few months ago about the agency’s foreign intelligence partnerships, given the mounting investigations of CIA activities. Without touching the controversial U.S. operations at all, his response was, “If an ally believes—fears—that we can’t keep such activities private, then that ally is going to be much more reluctant to deal with us.”
Much as in the bad old days, the CIA persists in the delusion that what people say—not what it does—is the issue. The agency is riding for a fall. Ham-handed American spooks—who depend, by their own admission, on foreign intelligence services in up to 90 percent of their operations—have muddied the waters even with our best friends. The controversial “rendition” program that is at the centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism efforts has swept up many innocents along with known terrorists and has sparked trouble for our allies.
In Canada, citizen Maher Arar was apprehended in October 2002 while making an airline connection in the U.S.—but then rendered to Syria by the CIA. The chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was forced to resign as a result of Canadian security’s contribution to this travesty. And the Swedish intelligence service was appalled at high-handed CIA behavior in snatching two Egyptian nationals in that country in December 2001.
Aside from the U.S. denials and wholesale evasions of responsibility—the Bush people have refused to take Maher Arar off the U.S. terrorist watch list (or even apologize), even though the man has been cleared by a massive royal commission investigation. The effect of these operations can only sour foreign cooperation with the CIA.
A response in the form of a new long-term development plan at the CIA is in progress. The plan has two elements relevant here: First, the agency intends to increase its capability to act unilaterally; second, the procedure for approving covert operations is to be modified. Although it is also true the CIA’s dependence on foreign services is excessive and should be reduced, unilateral efforts bear their own burdens (the Bay of Pigs was such an operation). More important is the Covert Action Review Group, the unit responsible for approving proposed activities, which in the new order would not be answerable to the chief, but to the CIA’s deputy director. Today that person would be Stephen R. Kappes, who, while he is not the top boss and is not invested with the chief’s private vision and knowledge, has experience picking up the pieces after covert disasters—unlike General Hayden, with no covert ops background whatever. Moreover, both Kappes and Hayden are heavily committed to a welter of review boards and progress management committees required by the new strategic development plan.
Above the level of the CIA, covert operations proposals are supposed to be approved by higher authorities, reviews that seem to be cursory in the Bush administration. Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA’s European Division, recounts how he once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation. “Her chief concern,” Drumheller told Der Spiegel earlier this month , “was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it.” There were no deliberations on the value of the target or the potential flap that could be caused by such an intervention.
In addition, the head of the National Clandestine Service—the former CIA Directorate of Operations—which produces the proposals for covert operations, is the same cowboy who presided over the agency’s Counterterrorism Center at the height of the renditions program. It was on his watch that the Masri, Arar and Nasr affairs began. As for the action teams, Drumheller says they “are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful ... If they didn’t do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks.” These officers did courageous things in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they should not be expected to take a broad view of the missions being proposed. When these officers see themselves in danger of arrest in foreign lands, that, too, must have an impact.
The broad international support for the United States after 9/11 has evaporated, and the old Cold War attitudes in America that accepted the use of these techniques are long gone. The Bush administration’s covert operations have been as catastrophic as its conventional military campaign in Iraq, yet it is now posturing itself for unilateral action. This is a disaster waiting to happen. America needs a rational foreign policy. The country cannot be saved by a new posse of covert cowboys.
Italian judge indicts 26 Americans, 5 Italians in alleged CIA kidnap
If terrorists had done the kidnapping they would be now in Guantanamo or rendered somewhere but terror by the good guys is not punishable except by a trial such as this which will never apprehend the accused. The accused will be going about their business no doubt amused (well maybe not!) by the antics of the Italian court.
Italian judge indicts 26 Americans, 5 Italians in alleged CIA kidnapping
Last Updated: Friday, February 16, 2007 | 7:11 AM ET
The Associated Press
An Italian judge on Friday indicted 26 Americans and five Italians in the first criminal trial over the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.
The judge set the trial date for June 8. Prosecutors allege that five Italian intelligence officials worked with the Americans — almost all CIA agents — to abduct terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.
Nasr was allegedly transferred by vehicle to the Aviano Air Force base near Venice and then by air to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany and on to Egypt, where critics say he was tortured.
All but one of the American suspects have been identified as CIA agents, including the former station chiefs in Rome and Milan. The other is a U.S. Air Force officer stationed at the time at Aviano.
Even if a request is made for the Americans' extradition — a move bound to irritate U.S.-Italian relations — it was unlikely that the CIA agents would be turned over for trial abroad.
The CIA has refused to comment on the case, while the former Italian chief of military intelligence has insisted that Italian intelligence had no role. The only defendant to appear during the preliminary hearing, Nicolo Pollari, told the judge that he was unable to defend himself properly because documents clarifying his position had been excluded from the proceedings because they contain state secrets.
Continue Article
The case has put an uncomfortable spotlight on intelligence operations as prosecutors press the Italian government to seek the extradition of the U.S. agents. The previous government of Silvio Berlusconi refused, and Premier Romano Prodi's centre-left government has yet to make its decision.
All of the U.S. agents have court-appointed lawyers, who have acknowledged having no contact with their clients.
"It's a defence in the dark," said Guido Meroni, who represents six Americans accused of helping organize the abduction.
Meroni has argued that the evidence connecting his clients to Nasr's disappearance was circumstantial, based on phone records and their presence in hotels in Italy during the period before the abduction.
Prosecutors say the alleged kidnapping operation was a breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised Italy's own anti-terrorism efforts.
Nasr was under investigation for terrorism-related activities at the time of his abduction, and Milan prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest more than two years after he disappeared from Milan, while he was in Egyptian custody.
Nasr, who allegedly was tortured during four years' imprisonment in Egypt, was released earlier this week from jail. His lawyer in Egypt said in an interview on Italian state TV that he wants to return to Italy, where he had been granted the status of political refugee.
Prosecutors elsewhere in Europe are moving ahead with cases aimed at the CIA program.
This week, the Swiss government approved prosecutors' plans to investigate the flight that allegedly took Nasr over Swiss air space from Italy to Germany.
And a Munich prosecutor recently issued arrest warrants for 13 people in connection with another alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping, this one of a German citizen who says he was abducted in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonia border and flown to Afghanistan.
© The Canadian Press
Italian judge indicts 26 Americans, 5 Italians in alleged CIA kidnapping
Last Updated: Friday, February 16, 2007 | 7:11 AM ET
The Associated Press
An Italian judge on Friday indicted 26 Americans and five Italians in the first criminal trial over the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.
The judge set the trial date for June 8. Prosecutors allege that five Italian intelligence officials worked with the Americans — almost all CIA agents — to abduct terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.
Nasr was allegedly transferred by vehicle to the Aviano Air Force base near Venice and then by air to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany and on to Egypt, where critics say he was tortured.
All but one of the American suspects have been identified as CIA agents, including the former station chiefs in Rome and Milan. The other is a U.S. Air Force officer stationed at the time at Aviano.
Even if a request is made for the Americans' extradition — a move bound to irritate U.S.-Italian relations — it was unlikely that the CIA agents would be turned over for trial abroad.
The CIA has refused to comment on the case, while the former Italian chief of military intelligence has insisted that Italian intelligence had no role. The only defendant to appear during the preliminary hearing, Nicolo Pollari, told the judge that he was unable to defend himself properly because documents clarifying his position had been excluded from the proceedings because they contain state secrets.
Continue Article
The case has put an uncomfortable spotlight on intelligence operations as prosecutors press the Italian government to seek the extradition of the U.S. agents. The previous government of Silvio Berlusconi refused, and Premier Romano Prodi's centre-left government has yet to make its decision.
All of the U.S. agents have court-appointed lawyers, who have acknowledged having no contact with their clients.
"It's a defence in the dark," said Guido Meroni, who represents six Americans accused of helping organize the abduction.
Meroni has argued that the evidence connecting his clients to Nasr's disappearance was circumstantial, based on phone records and their presence in hotels in Italy during the period before the abduction.
Prosecutors say the alleged kidnapping operation was a breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised Italy's own anti-terrorism efforts.
Nasr was under investigation for terrorism-related activities at the time of his abduction, and Milan prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest more than two years after he disappeared from Milan, while he was in Egyptian custody.
Nasr, who allegedly was tortured during four years' imprisonment in Egypt, was released earlier this week from jail. His lawyer in Egypt said in an interview on Italian state TV that he wants to return to Italy, where he had been granted the status of political refugee.
Prosecutors elsewhere in Europe are moving ahead with cases aimed at the CIA program.
This week, the Swiss government approved prosecutors' plans to investigate the flight that allegedly took Nasr over Swiss air space from Italy to Germany.
And a Munich prosecutor recently issued arrest warrants for 13 people in connection with another alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping, this one of a German citizen who says he was abducted in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonia border and flown to Afghanistan.
© The Canadian Press
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Some European countries colluded with the CIA in renditions
It is interesting that quite a few of the delegates voted against the report. The report simply sets out what is already common knowledge. It is interesting though that it concludes that many countries actually colluded with the CIA.
European countries helped the CIA move terror suspects: report
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 | 12:46 PM ET
CBC News
The European Parliament approved a report on Wednesday that accuses 14 European governments of allowing the U.S. to remove and transfer suspected extremists to CIA secret prisons.
The report says the countries, including Britain, Germany and Italy, turned a blind eye when the CIA forcibly removed suspects from their soil and put them on secret flights to countries where they could be tortured.
According to the report, the CIA operated more than 1,200 flights into or over European countries for four years after the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
A majority of members of the European Parliament, the parliamentary body of the European Union, approved the report. A total of 382 were in favour, while 256 were against, and 74 abstained.
"This is a report that doesn't allow anyone to look the other way," Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava, who drafted the report, said Wednesday.
"We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again."
Continue Article
The report offers no actual proof that the CIA operated secret prisons in Europe, but says the European countries named in the report were complicit with the U.S. secret renditions program.
Socialist and Liberal legislators argued that the report provides evidence of several abductions by CIA agents and shows that European security services helped and concealed CIA activities in Europe.
Centre-right legislators, meanwhile, said the report provides no actual proof that the CIA renditions program exists and they insisted that the criticism in the report be toned down.
The report, based on a year-long investigation, was amended before it received approval. It is less critical in its final form.
According to a report by BBC News, the report defines extraordinary renditions as cases in which "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of U.S. officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture."
Members of the parliament are elected by EU citizens once every five years. The report carries no weight in EU law.
European countries helped the CIA move terror suspects: report
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 | 12:46 PM ET
CBC News
The European Parliament approved a report on Wednesday that accuses 14 European governments of allowing the U.S. to remove and transfer suspected extremists to CIA secret prisons.
The report says the countries, including Britain, Germany and Italy, turned a blind eye when the CIA forcibly removed suspects from their soil and put them on secret flights to countries where they could be tortured.
According to the report, the CIA operated more than 1,200 flights into or over European countries for four years after the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
A majority of members of the European Parliament, the parliamentary body of the European Union, approved the report. A total of 382 were in favour, while 256 were against, and 74 abstained.
"This is a report that doesn't allow anyone to look the other way," Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava, who drafted the report, said Wednesday.
"We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again."
Continue Article
The report offers no actual proof that the CIA operated secret prisons in Europe, but says the European countries named in the report were complicit with the U.S. secret renditions program.
Socialist and Liberal legislators argued that the report provides evidence of several abductions by CIA agents and shows that European security services helped and concealed CIA activities in Europe.
Centre-right legislators, meanwhile, said the report provides no actual proof that the CIA renditions program exists and they insisted that the criticism in the report be toned down.
The report, based on a year-long investigation, was amended before it received approval. It is less critical in its final form.
According to a report by BBC News, the report defines extraordinary renditions as cases in which "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of U.S. officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture."
Members of the parliament are elected by EU citizens once every five years. The report carries no weight in EU law.
Monday, February 5, 2007
A US opinion piece on the Arar affair
Its good to see an article such as this in a US publication. Rather neat opening too!
The U.S. owes Maher Arar an apology and more
By Robyn Blumner
Tribune Media Services
Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:02/05/2007 12:48:54 AM MST
''On behalf of the United States, I wish to apologize to you and your family,'' President Bush told Maher Arar in a televised news conference, during which the president announced that the United States was also giving Arar $8.9 million in compensation for our role in sending the Canadian to a Syrian prison where he was tortured.
OK, now it's time to wake up from a dream. This scene happened all right, not in the United States but in Canada, and the nobly contrite politician was Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, not our own Decider-in-Chief.
Arar's ordeal is well known. The software engineer was detained during a stopover at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002. After being subject to days of interrogation in the United States, the Syrian-born Canadian was sent to Syria under the American program of extraordinary rendition. He spent 10 months in a cell the size of a grave and was tortured into signing a false confession that he was associated with terrorists and had trained in Afghanistan - a place he had never visited. He was eventually released without charge.
Since Arar's return to Canada, our neighbor to the north committed itself to investigating its role in this outrage. A two-year inquiry by Justice Dennis O'Connor concluded that there was no evidence linking Arar to terrorism, and that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were demonstrably wrong when they informed U.S. border agents that Arar was suspected of Islamic extremism. The head of the RCMP resigned over the incident.
Canada has now issued a very public apology, coming straight from its national leader, and the nation will compensate Arar for its hand in his terrifying ordeal. Harper has also promised increased oversight of Canada's intelligence agencies ''to lessen the likelihood that something like this will ever happen again.''
Arar responded to the prime minister's gesture by declaring, ''I feel proud as a Canadian.''
Before George W. Bush came to the White House I would have expected our own government to act in a very similar manner: a public apology, the rolling of heads, a promise to exert tighter controls and due compensation to the victim.
Instead, we've responded to Arar by keeping him, his wife and his children on a government watch list so that they cannot travel in or over our country or its territories. We have stymied his lawsuit against the United States for abducting and deporting him, claiming that to allow it to go forward would jeopardize state secrets. And, perhaps most galling, even though it is an open secret that we send people to other countries for interrogation where they are sure to be tortured, we continue to claim that our actions are consistent with the Convention Against Torture - a treaty that explicitly bars such conduct.
The contrast between the model of responsible and responsive governance in Canada and the sniveling, defensive, fabulizing posture of the White House and Justice Department on this matter of national character is the answer to the question: Why does the rest of the world hate us?
The Arar case is the perfect storm of Bush administration arrogance, dishonesty and incompetence coalescing with its utter disregard for the principles of due process and human rights that once were the foundation of our republic.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff claim that there is reason to keep Arar on a watch list. But when Canada's minister of public safety, Stockwell Day, examined Arar's confidential U.S. files he announced that there was ''nothing new'' to justify any continued suspicion.
Arar is a terrorist the same way our Iraq adventure is full of ''enormous successes,'' as the vice president just declared. When reality doesn't fit the script, Team Bush ignores it.
Some of our nation's more responsible political leaders have tried to act more Canada-like. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has called on the White House to ''admit publicly that it was cruel to detain and transfer'' Arar for torture.
And it was a moment of national pride when Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., publicly called Gonzales on the carpet at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for claiming that assurances were given by Syria that Arar wouldn't be tortured.
''We knew damn well if he went to Canada he wouldn't be tortured,'' Leahy declared loudly. ''He'd be held. He'd be investigated.
''We also knew damn well, if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured.''
Gonzales could only reiterate the bald-faced lie that the United States tries to meet its anti-torture treaty obligations. How lame.
When Canada is better at demonstrating American values than we are, it's time our government took a refresher in Civics 101. Learn how to apologize and admit error and maybe our great nation will live up to its billing once again.
---
* ROBYN BLUMNER welcomes e-mail at blumner@sptimes.com.
The U.S. owes Maher Arar an apology and more
By Robyn Blumner
Tribune Media Services
Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:02/05/2007 12:48:54 AM MST
''On behalf of the United States, I wish to apologize to you and your family,'' President Bush told Maher Arar in a televised news conference, during which the president announced that the United States was also giving Arar $8.9 million in compensation for our role in sending the Canadian to a Syrian prison where he was tortured.
OK, now it's time to wake up from a dream. This scene happened all right, not in the United States but in Canada, and the nobly contrite politician was Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, not our own Decider-in-Chief.
Arar's ordeal is well known. The software engineer was detained during a stopover at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002. After being subject to days of interrogation in the United States, the Syrian-born Canadian was sent to Syria under the American program of extraordinary rendition. He spent 10 months in a cell the size of a grave and was tortured into signing a false confession that he was associated with terrorists and had trained in Afghanistan - a place he had never visited. He was eventually released without charge.
Since Arar's return to Canada, our neighbor to the north committed itself to investigating its role in this outrage. A two-year inquiry by Justice Dennis O'Connor concluded that there was no evidence linking Arar to terrorism, and that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were demonstrably wrong when they informed U.S. border agents that Arar was suspected of Islamic extremism. The head of the RCMP resigned over the incident.
Canada has now issued a very public apology, coming straight from its national leader, and the nation will compensate Arar for its hand in his terrifying ordeal. Harper has also promised increased oversight of Canada's intelligence agencies ''to lessen the likelihood that something like this will ever happen again.''
Arar responded to the prime minister's gesture by declaring, ''I feel proud as a Canadian.''
Before George W. Bush came to the White House I would have expected our own government to act in a very similar manner: a public apology, the rolling of heads, a promise to exert tighter controls and due compensation to the victim.
Instead, we've responded to Arar by keeping him, his wife and his children on a government watch list so that they cannot travel in or over our country or its territories. We have stymied his lawsuit against the United States for abducting and deporting him, claiming that to allow it to go forward would jeopardize state secrets. And, perhaps most galling, even though it is an open secret that we send people to other countries for interrogation where they are sure to be tortured, we continue to claim that our actions are consistent with the Convention Against Torture - a treaty that explicitly bars such conduct.
The contrast between the model of responsible and responsive governance in Canada and the sniveling, defensive, fabulizing posture of the White House and Justice Department on this matter of national character is the answer to the question: Why does the rest of the world hate us?
The Arar case is the perfect storm of Bush administration arrogance, dishonesty and incompetence coalescing with its utter disregard for the principles of due process and human rights that once were the foundation of our republic.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff claim that there is reason to keep Arar on a watch list. But when Canada's minister of public safety, Stockwell Day, examined Arar's confidential U.S. files he announced that there was ''nothing new'' to justify any continued suspicion.
Arar is a terrorist the same way our Iraq adventure is full of ''enormous successes,'' as the vice president just declared. When reality doesn't fit the script, Team Bush ignores it.
Some of our nation's more responsible political leaders have tried to act more Canada-like. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has called on the White House to ''admit publicly that it was cruel to detain and transfer'' Arar for torture.
And it was a moment of national pride when Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., publicly called Gonzales on the carpet at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for claiming that assurances were given by Syria that Arar wouldn't be tortured.
''We knew damn well if he went to Canada he wouldn't be tortured,'' Leahy declared loudly. ''He'd be held. He'd be investigated.
''We also knew damn well, if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured.''
Gonzales could only reiterate the bald-faced lie that the United States tries to meet its anti-torture treaty obligations. How lame.
When Canada is better at demonstrating American values than we are, it's time our government took a refresher in Civics 101. Learn how to apologize and admit error and maybe our great nation will live up to its billing once again.
---
* ROBYN BLUMNER welcomes e-mail at blumner@sptimes.com.
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.
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.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
An Update on the Arar Case
I really can't fathom Leahy. There is no reason on earth why he could not say whether he thought that Arar should remain on the no-fly list. Given his weasel words on this I would not have much confidence that there will be much of an investigation by congress into rendition but I hope I am wrong.
This article shows how Jordan is complicit in rendition. It shows too that they have little qualms about really telling whoppers about Arar!
U.S. senators won't let Arar case drop
PAUL KORING AND JEFF SALLOT
Globe and Mail Update
WASHINGTON AND OTTAWA — A top-secret briefing yesterday failed to convince two senior U.S. senators that the Bush administration was right to send Maher Arar to Syria.
Both Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate judiciary committee, said the briefing resulted in more questions than answers.
Neither would say whether they had been convinced of the merits of the U.S. government's position that Mr. Arar should remain on a no-fly list — effectively banned from entering the United States — despite being exonerated in Canada and paid $11.5-million in compensation by Ottawa.
"To respond to your questions would inevitably involve classified material," Mr. Specter said.
Related to this article
Maher Arar discusses the government's apology and compensation package at a news conference in Ottawa on Jan. 26. Mr. Arar was wrongfully deported to, detained, and tortured in Syria. (Tom Hanson/CP Photo)
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Mr. Arar was detained while in transit at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002 by U.S. agents acting on information provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that identified him as a suspected terrorist. He was sent to Syria after a special order signed by the deputy U.S. attorney-general and after assurances from Damascus that he would not be mistreated.
Mr. Leahy, who has championed the Arar case in the United States, has said that that kind of midnight rendition had sullied the reputation of the United States. (Extraordinary rendition is the term used for the grabbing terrorism suspects and sending them overseas for interrogation.)
"That has happened a number of times in the past five years," Mr. Leahy said in an angry exchange with U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez. "It is a black mark on us. It has brought about the condemnation of some of our closest and best allies."
He said after yesterday's briefing that his primary concern — an explanation as to why Mr. Arar, who is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen, was bundled aboard a chartered jet and sent to Damascus rather than returned to Canada — has not been given.
Yesterday's classified briefing came after Mr. Leahy publicly rebuked Mr. Gonzalez last month for failing to answer questions about Mr. Arar's treatment.
Asked if the senators had found out whether Canadian authorities were asked to take Mr. Arar back in 2002, before he was sent to Syria, but rebuffed the offer, Mr. Leahy said, "That's a excellent question," adding, "You should ask them."
The Pennsylvania Republican said he and Mr. Leahy were unable to provide details of what they had been told, but wanted "to give public assurance that this matter is under intensive congressional oversight."
Mr. Arar's lawyer, Lorne Waldman, said he is pleased that the two U.S. senators are not going to let the matter drop.
"There is no justification for sending anyone to Syria for torture, much less an innocent man like Maher Arar," he said.
Despite the Canadian government's apology to Mr. Arar last week and payment of $11.5-million in compensation, there are still a number of important, unfinished items of business in the case, Mr. Waldman said.
For instance, Canada should officially protest to the Jordanian government for its "bald-faced lies" to the United Nations about its involvement in Mr. Arar's deportation.
Mr. Arar was first taken to Jordan aboard a U.S. government flight before being transported overland to Syria. Senior Jordanian intelligence officials told a UN human-rights investigator that Mr. Arar arrived as a normal passenger aboard a commercial Royal Jordanian Airlines flight. The Jordanians said Mr. Arar could not remain in their country because he was on a terrorist watch list.
Mr. Arar, the Jordanians claimed, asked to be driven to Syria.
The UN human-rights investigators said in a recent report that the Jordanian claim that Mr. Arar wanted to go to Syria is "astonishing" and "is clearly contradicted" by well-established evidence. The UN report also said the Jordanian claim that it does not torture prisoners is also not credible.
Mr. Waldman said Canadian officials have to ask hard questions about whether they can co-operate with Jordan on anti-terrorism cases if Jordanian officials are so blatantly lying about their involvement in the Arar case.
This article shows how Jordan is complicit in rendition. It shows too that they have little qualms about really telling whoppers about Arar!
U.S. senators won't let Arar case drop
PAUL KORING AND JEFF SALLOT
Globe and Mail Update
WASHINGTON AND OTTAWA — A top-secret briefing yesterday failed to convince two senior U.S. senators that the Bush administration was right to send Maher Arar to Syria.
Both Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate judiciary committee, said the briefing resulted in more questions than answers.
Neither would say whether they had been convinced of the merits of the U.S. government's position that Mr. Arar should remain on a no-fly list — effectively banned from entering the United States — despite being exonerated in Canada and paid $11.5-million in compensation by Ottawa.
"To respond to your questions would inevitably involve classified material," Mr. Specter said.
Related to this article
Maher Arar discusses the government's apology and compensation package at a news conference in Ottawa on Jan. 26. Mr. Arar was wrongfully deported to, detained, and tortured in Syria. (Tom Hanson/CP Photo)
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Mr. Arar was detained while in transit at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002 by U.S. agents acting on information provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that identified him as a suspected terrorist. He was sent to Syria after a special order signed by the deputy U.S. attorney-general and after assurances from Damascus that he would not be mistreated.
Mr. Leahy, who has championed the Arar case in the United States, has said that that kind of midnight rendition had sullied the reputation of the United States. (Extraordinary rendition is the term used for the grabbing terrorism suspects and sending them overseas for interrogation.)
"That has happened a number of times in the past five years," Mr. Leahy said in an angry exchange with U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez. "It is a black mark on us. It has brought about the condemnation of some of our closest and best allies."
He said after yesterday's briefing that his primary concern — an explanation as to why Mr. Arar, who is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen, was bundled aboard a chartered jet and sent to Damascus rather than returned to Canada — has not been given.
Yesterday's classified briefing came after Mr. Leahy publicly rebuked Mr. Gonzalez last month for failing to answer questions about Mr. Arar's treatment.
Asked if the senators had found out whether Canadian authorities were asked to take Mr. Arar back in 2002, before he was sent to Syria, but rebuffed the offer, Mr. Leahy said, "That's a excellent question," adding, "You should ask them."
The Pennsylvania Republican said he and Mr. Leahy were unable to provide details of what they had been told, but wanted "to give public assurance that this matter is under intensive congressional oversight."
Mr. Arar's lawyer, Lorne Waldman, said he is pleased that the two U.S. senators are not going to let the matter drop.
"There is no justification for sending anyone to Syria for torture, much less an innocent man like Maher Arar," he said.
Despite the Canadian government's apology to Mr. Arar last week and payment of $11.5-million in compensation, there are still a number of important, unfinished items of business in the case, Mr. Waldman said.
For instance, Canada should officially protest to the Jordanian government for its "bald-faced lies" to the United Nations about its involvement in Mr. Arar's deportation.
Mr. Arar was first taken to Jordan aboard a U.S. government flight before being transported overland to Syria. Senior Jordanian intelligence officials told a UN human-rights investigator that Mr. Arar arrived as a normal passenger aboard a commercial Royal Jordanian Airlines flight. The Jordanians said Mr. Arar could not remain in their country because he was on a terrorist watch list.
Mr. Arar, the Jordanians claimed, asked to be driven to Syria.
The UN human-rights investigators said in a recent report that the Jordanian claim that Mr. Arar wanted to go to Syria is "astonishing" and "is clearly contradicted" by well-established evidence. The UN report also said the Jordanian claim that it does not torture prisoners is also not credible.
Mr. Waldman said Canadian officials have to ask hard questions about whether they can co-operate with Jordan on anti-terrorism cases if Jordanian officials are so blatantly lying about their involvement in the Arar case.
Friday, February 2, 2007
Der Spiegel interview with former CIA European division chief
Drumheller manages to say quite a bit considering he is not supposed to open his mouth about things! This is an interesting behind the scenes look at what was going on in the recent past particularly about the WMD affair.
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH CIA'S FORMER EUROPE DIRECTOR
"We Probably Gave Powell the Wrong Speech"
The former chief of the CIA's Europe division, Tyler Drumheller, discusses the United States foreign intelligence service's cooperation with Germany, the covert kidnapping of suspected terrorists and a Bush adminstration that ignored CIA advice and used whatever information it could find to justify an invasion of Iraq.
DPA
The US attack on Baghdad (2003): "No President on my watch has had a spotless record when it comes to the CIA."
SPIEGEL: Mr. Drumheller, do you still dare to travel to Europe?
Drumheller: Yes, absolutely. I was a great friend of the Europeans. I grew up in Wiesbaden. I love Germany very much.
SPIEGEL: Arrest warrants have been issued in Europe for a number of your former colleagues. They are suspected of involvement in the illegal kidnappings of suspected terrorists as part of the so-called "renditions" program. Doesn't this worry you?
Drumheller: No. I'm not worried, but I am not allowed to discuss the issue.
SPIEGEL: One of the cases is the now famous kidnapping of Khalid el-Masri, a German-Lebanese who was taken into custody at the end of 2003 in Macedonia and later flown to Afghanistan. How could the CIA allow an innocent person to be arrested?
Drumheller: I'm not allowed by the agency to comment on any of those cases or the so-called "secret prisons." I would love to, but I can't. We have a life-long secrecy agreement and they are very, very strict about what you can say.
SPIEGEL: The renditions program saw the kidnapping of suspected Islamist extremists to third countries. Were you involved in the program?
Drumheller: I would be lying if I said no. I have very complicated feelings about the whole issue. I do see the purpose of renditions, if they are carried out properly. Guys sitting around talking about carrying out attacks as they smoke their pipes in the comfort of a European capital tend to get put off the idea if they learn that a like-minded individual has been plucked out of safety and sent elsewhere to pay for his crimes.
SPIEGEL: We disagree. At the very least, you need to be certain that the targets of those renditions aren't innocent people.
Drumheller: It was Vice President Dick Cheney who talked about the "dark side" we have to turn on. When he spoke those words, he was articulating a policy that amounted to "go out and get them." His remarks were evidence of the underlying approach of the administration, which was basically to turn the military and the agency loose and let them pay for the consequences of any unfortunate -- or illegal -- occurences.
SPIEGEL: So there was no clear guidance of what is allowed in the so called "war on terrorism"?
TYLER DRUMHELLER
Martin H. SimonTyler Drumheller, 54, had a 25- year career working for the CIA. In 2001, he was promoted to become the American intelligence agency's chief of European operations. The spectacular kidnappings of suspected al- Qaida terrorists -- including the German- Syrian Mohammed Haydar Zammar and the German- Syrian Khaled el- Masri -- by CIA commandos happened under his watch. Drumheller, who retired in 2005, recently published his memoir, "On the Brink," in the United States.
Drumheller: Every responsible chief in the CIA knows that the more covert the action, the greater the need for a clear policy and a defined target. I once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation, and her chief concern was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it. I would have expected a big meeting, a debate about whether to proceed with the plan, a couple of hours of consideration of the pros and cons. We should have been talking about the value of the target, whether the threat he presented warranted such a potentially controversial intervention. This is no way to run a covert policy. If the White House wants to take extraordinary measures to win, it can't just let things go through without any discussion about their value and morality.
SPIEGEL: Perhaps the White House wanted to gloss over its own responsibility.
Drumheller: Let me give you a general thought: From the perspective of the White House, it was smart to blur the lines about what was acceptable and what was not in the war on terrorism. It meant that whenever someone was overzealous in some dark interrogation cell, President (George W.) Bush and his entourage could blame someone else. The rendition teams are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful. They are the men who went into Baghdad before the bombs and into Afghanistan before the army. If they didn't do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks. Perhaps the Bush Administration deliberately created a gray area on renditions.
SPIEGEL: Investigations in the European Parliament and the German parliament, the Bundestag, are trying to ascertain the extent to which European governments cooperated with the CIA after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. How close is the relationship?
Drumheller: On terrorist issues very closely -- we did some very good things with the Europeans. Two weeks after Sept. 11, August Hanning (the head of the German foreign intelligence service, the BND) came with a delegation to discuss how we can make cooperation better. Elements of the Bush administration developed the view that European personal privacy laws were somehow to blame, that the Europeans are too slow. We can be very frustrating to work with. I always said, 'Stop preaching to them.' The Europeans have been dealing with terrorism for years, we can learn from their successes and failures. Its not a good spy story, but it's actually how you do this.
SPIEGEL: How important is Europe to the CIA?
Drumheller: The only way we will ever be able to protect ourselves properly is if we can get a handle on the threat in Europe, since that is the continent where fanatics can best learn their most crucial lesson: How to disappear in a Western crowd. Europe has become the first line of defense for the United States. It has become a training ground for terrorists, especially since the war in Iraq has heralded an underground railroad for militants to go and fight there. It is being used for young fanatics in Europe to be smuggled into Iraq to fight Americans and, assuming they survive, to return home, where they present a more potent threat than they did before they left. Since the odds against penetrating the top of al-Qaida are phenomenally high, we must pursue the foot soldiers.
SPIEGEL: But given the uproar in Germany and all over Europe, it looks highly unlikely that they will cooperate fully with the CIA.
Drumheller: The guys who attacked the World Trade Center didn't fly from Kabul to New York. They came from Hamburg. So the value in befriending the local intelligence services in Europe instead of alienating them is clear: We need to ensure that they are telling us everything they know.
SPIEGEL: But it was your agency that was coming up with all the wrong information concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. To what degree is the intelligence community responsible for the disaster?
Drumheller: The agency is not blameless and no president on my watch has had a spotless record when it comes to the CIA. But never before have I seen the manipulation of intelligence that has played out since Bush took office. As chief of Europe I had a front-row seat from which to observe the unprecedented drive for intelligence justifying the Iraq war.
SPIEGEL: One of the crucial bits of information the Bush administration used to justify the invasion was the supposed existence of mobile biological weapons laboratories. That came from a German BND source who was given the code-name "Curveball." An offical investigation in the United States concluded that of all of the false statements that were made, this was the most damaging of all.
Drumheller: I think it is, it was a centerpiece. Curveball was an Iraqi who claimed to be an engineer working on the biological weapons program. When he became an asylum-seeker in Germany, the BND questioned him and produced a large number of reports that were passed here through the Defense Intelligence Agency. Curveball was a sort of clever fellow who carried on about his story and kept everybody pretty well convinced for a long time.
SPIEGEL: There are more than a few critics in Washington who claim that the Germans, because of Curveball, bear a large part of the repsonsibility for the intelligence mess.
Drumheller: There was no effort by the Germans to influence anybody from the beginning. Very senior officials in the BND expressed their doubts, that there may be problems with this guy. They were very professional. I know that there are people at the CIA who think the Germans could have set stronger caveats. But nobody says: "Here's a great intel report, but we don't believe it." There were also questions inside the CIA's analytical section, but as it went forward, this information was seized without caveats. The administration wanted to make the case for war with Iraq. They needed a tangible thing, they needed the German stuff. They couldn't go to war based just on the fact that they wanted to change the Middle East. They needed to have something threatening to which they were reacting.
SPIEGEL: The German government was convinced that "Curveball" would not be used in the now famous presentation that then US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave in 2003 before the United Nations Security Council.
AP
Then Secretary of State Colin Powell as he presented "evidence" of weapon of mass destruction in Iraq to the United Nations general assembly: "We probably gave Powell the wrong speech."
Drumheller: I had assured my German friends that it wouldn't be in the speech. I really thought that I had put it to bed. I had warned the CIA deputy John McLaughlin that this case could be fabricated. The night before the speech, then CIA director George Tenet called me at home. I said: "Hey Boss, be careful with that German report. It's supposed to be taken out. There are a lot of problems with that." He said: "Yeah, yeah. Right. Dont worry about that."
SPIEGEL: But it turned out to be the centerpiece in Powell's presentation -- and nobody had told him about the doubts.
Drumheller: I turned on the TV in my office, and there it was. So the first thing I thought, having worked in the government all my life, was that we probably gave Powell the wrong speech. We checked our files and found out that they had just ignored it.
SPIEGEL: So the White House just ignored the fact that the whole story might have been untrue?
Drumheller: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy. Right before the war, I said to a very senior CIA officer: "You guys must have something else," because you always think it's the CIA. "There is some secret thing I don`t know." He said: "No. But when we get to Baghdad, we are going to find warehouses full of stuff. Nobody is going to remember all of this."
SPIEGEL: After the war, the CIA was finally able to talk to "Curveball" -- something the BND had never allowed before. What was the result?
Drumheller: In March 2004, a fluent German-speaking officer, one of my best guys, who had a scientific background went to Germany and worked for about two weeks. Finally, at the end of it, Curveball just sort of sat back and said: "I don't have anything more to say." But he never admitted. People here always ask, was he polygraphed? Well, lie detector tests aren't used very much in Germany.
SPIEGEL: Do you think it would have make a difference if the Germans had allowed you to question Curveball earlier?
Drumheller: If they had allowed us to question him the way we did in March of 2004, it would have. Maybe the whole story would have turned out in a different way.
SPIEGEL: In your book, you mention a very high-ranking source who told the CIA before the war that Iraq had no large active WMD program. It has been reported that the source was Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri.
Drumheller: I'm not allowed to say who that was. In the beginning, the administration was very excited that we had a high-level penetration, and the president was informed. I don't think anybody else had a source in Saddam's cabinet. He told us that Iraq had no biological weapons, just the research. Everything else had been destroyed after the first Gulf War. But after a while we didn't get any questions back. Finally the administration came and said that they were really not interested in what he had to say. They were interested in getting him to defect. In the end we did get permission to get back to the source, and that came from Tenet. I think without checking with the White House, he just said: "Okay. Go ahead and see what you can do."
SPIEGEL: So what happened?
Drumheller: There were a lot of ironies throughout this whole story. We went on a sort of worldwide chase after this fellow, and in the end, he was in one place, and our officer was in another country asking for permission to travel. I called up people who were controlling operations, and they said: "Don't worry about it. It's too late now. The war is on. The next time you see this guy, it will be at a war crimes tribunal."
SPIEGEL: Should you have pressed harder?
Drumheller: We made mistakes. And it may suit the White House to have people believe in a black and white version of reality -- that it could have avoided the Iraq war if the CIA had only given it a true picture of Saddam's armaments. But the truth is that the White House believed what it wanted to believe. I have done very little in my life except go to school and work for the CIA. Intellectually I think I did everything I could. Emotionally you always think you should have something more.
Interview conducted by Georg Mascolo and Holger Stark.
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH CIA'S FORMER EUROPE DIRECTOR
"We Probably Gave Powell the Wrong Speech"
The former chief of the CIA's Europe division, Tyler Drumheller, discusses the United States foreign intelligence service's cooperation with Germany, the covert kidnapping of suspected terrorists and a Bush adminstration that ignored CIA advice and used whatever information it could find to justify an invasion of Iraq.
DPA
The US attack on Baghdad (2003): "No President on my watch has had a spotless record when it comes to the CIA."
SPIEGEL: Mr. Drumheller, do you still dare to travel to Europe?
Drumheller: Yes, absolutely. I was a great friend of the Europeans. I grew up in Wiesbaden. I love Germany very much.
SPIEGEL: Arrest warrants have been issued in Europe for a number of your former colleagues. They are suspected of involvement in the illegal kidnappings of suspected terrorists as part of the so-called "renditions" program. Doesn't this worry you?
Drumheller: No. I'm not worried, but I am not allowed to discuss the issue.
SPIEGEL: One of the cases is the now famous kidnapping of Khalid el-Masri, a German-Lebanese who was taken into custody at the end of 2003 in Macedonia and later flown to Afghanistan. How could the CIA allow an innocent person to be arrested?
Drumheller: I'm not allowed by the agency to comment on any of those cases or the so-called "secret prisons." I would love to, but I can't. We have a life-long secrecy agreement and they are very, very strict about what you can say.
SPIEGEL: The renditions program saw the kidnapping of suspected Islamist extremists to third countries. Were you involved in the program?
Drumheller: I would be lying if I said no. I have very complicated feelings about the whole issue. I do see the purpose of renditions, if they are carried out properly. Guys sitting around talking about carrying out attacks as they smoke their pipes in the comfort of a European capital tend to get put off the idea if they learn that a like-minded individual has been plucked out of safety and sent elsewhere to pay for his crimes.
SPIEGEL: We disagree. At the very least, you need to be certain that the targets of those renditions aren't innocent people.
Drumheller: It was Vice President Dick Cheney who talked about the "dark side" we have to turn on. When he spoke those words, he was articulating a policy that amounted to "go out and get them." His remarks were evidence of the underlying approach of the administration, which was basically to turn the military and the agency loose and let them pay for the consequences of any unfortunate -- or illegal -- occurences.
SPIEGEL: So there was no clear guidance of what is allowed in the so called "war on terrorism"?
TYLER DRUMHELLER
Martin H. SimonTyler Drumheller, 54, had a 25- year career working for the CIA. In 2001, he was promoted to become the American intelligence agency's chief of European operations. The spectacular kidnappings of suspected al- Qaida terrorists -- including the German- Syrian Mohammed Haydar Zammar and the German- Syrian Khaled el- Masri -- by CIA commandos happened under his watch. Drumheller, who retired in 2005, recently published his memoir, "On the Brink," in the United States.
Drumheller: Every responsible chief in the CIA knows that the more covert the action, the greater the need for a clear policy and a defined target. I once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation, and her chief concern was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it. I would have expected a big meeting, a debate about whether to proceed with the plan, a couple of hours of consideration of the pros and cons. We should have been talking about the value of the target, whether the threat he presented warranted such a potentially controversial intervention. This is no way to run a covert policy. If the White House wants to take extraordinary measures to win, it can't just let things go through without any discussion about their value and morality.
SPIEGEL: Perhaps the White House wanted to gloss over its own responsibility.
Drumheller: Let me give you a general thought: From the perspective of the White House, it was smart to blur the lines about what was acceptable and what was not in the war on terrorism. It meant that whenever someone was overzealous in some dark interrogation cell, President (George W.) Bush and his entourage could blame someone else. The rendition teams are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful. They are the men who went into Baghdad before the bombs and into Afghanistan before the army. If they didn't do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks. Perhaps the Bush Administration deliberately created a gray area on renditions.
SPIEGEL: Investigations in the European Parliament and the German parliament, the Bundestag, are trying to ascertain the extent to which European governments cooperated with the CIA after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. How close is the relationship?
Drumheller: On terrorist issues very closely -- we did some very good things with the Europeans. Two weeks after Sept. 11, August Hanning (the head of the German foreign intelligence service, the BND) came with a delegation to discuss how we can make cooperation better. Elements of the Bush administration developed the view that European personal privacy laws were somehow to blame, that the Europeans are too slow. We can be very frustrating to work with. I always said, 'Stop preaching to them.' The Europeans have been dealing with terrorism for years, we can learn from their successes and failures. Its not a good spy story, but it's actually how you do this.
SPIEGEL: How important is Europe to the CIA?
Drumheller: The only way we will ever be able to protect ourselves properly is if we can get a handle on the threat in Europe, since that is the continent where fanatics can best learn their most crucial lesson: How to disappear in a Western crowd. Europe has become the first line of defense for the United States. It has become a training ground for terrorists, especially since the war in Iraq has heralded an underground railroad for militants to go and fight there. It is being used for young fanatics in Europe to be smuggled into Iraq to fight Americans and, assuming they survive, to return home, where they present a more potent threat than they did before they left. Since the odds against penetrating the top of al-Qaida are phenomenally high, we must pursue the foot soldiers.
SPIEGEL: But given the uproar in Germany and all over Europe, it looks highly unlikely that they will cooperate fully with the CIA.
Drumheller: The guys who attacked the World Trade Center didn't fly from Kabul to New York. They came from Hamburg. So the value in befriending the local intelligence services in Europe instead of alienating them is clear: We need to ensure that they are telling us everything they know.
SPIEGEL: But it was your agency that was coming up with all the wrong information concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. To what degree is the intelligence community responsible for the disaster?
Drumheller: The agency is not blameless and no president on my watch has had a spotless record when it comes to the CIA. But never before have I seen the manipulation of intelligence that has played out since Bush took office. As chief of Europe I had a front-row seat from which to observe the unprecedented drive for intelligence justifying the Iraq war.
SPIEGEL: One of the crucial bits of information the Bush administration used to justify the invasion was the supposed existence of mobile biological weapons laboratories. That came from a German BND source who was given the code-name "Curveball." An offical investigation in the United States concluded that of all of the false statements that were made, this was the most damaging of all.
Drumheller: I think it is, it was a centerpiece. Curveball was an Iraqi who claimed to be an engineer working on the biological weapons program. When he became an asylum-seeker in Germany, the BND questioned him and produced a large number of reports that were passed here through the Defense Intelligence Agency. Curveball was a sort of clever fellow who carried on about his story and kept everybody pretty well convinced for a long time.
SPIEGEL: There are more than a few critics in Washington who claim that the Germans, because of Curveball, bear a large part of the repsonsibility for the intelligence mess.
Drumheller: There was no effort by the Germans to influence anybody from the beginning. Very senior officials in the BND expressed their doubts, that there may be problems with this guy. They were very professional. I know that there are people at the CIA who think the Germans could have set stronger caveats. But nobody says: "Here's a great intel report, but we don't believe it." There were also questions inside the CIA's analytical section, but as it went forward, this information was seized without caveats. The administration wanted to make the case for war with Iraq. They needed a tangible thing, they needed the German stuff. They couldn't go to war based just on the fact that they wanted to change the Middle East. They needed to have something threatening to which they were reacting.
SPIEGEL: The German government was convinced that "Curveball" would not be used in the now famous presentation that then US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave in 2003 before the United Nations Security Council.
AP
Then Secretary of State Colin Powell as he presented "evidence" of weapon of mass destruction in Iraq to the United Nations general assembly: "We probably gave Powell the wrong speech."
Drumheller: I had assured my German friends that it wouldn't be in the speech. I really thought that I had put it to bed. I had warned the CIA deputy John McLaughlin that this case could be fabricated. The night before the speech, then CIA director George Tenet called me at home. I said: "Hey Boss, be careful with that German report. It's supposed to be taken out. There are a lot of problems with that." He said: "Yeah, yeah. Right. Dont worry about that."
SPIEGEL: But it turned out to be the centerpiece in Powell's presentation -- and nobody had told him about the doubts.
Drumheller: I turned on the TV in my office, and there it was. So the first thing I thought, having worked in the government all my life, was that we probably gave Powell the wrong speech. We checked our files and found out that they had just ignored it.
SPIEGEL: So the White House just ignored the fact that the whole story might have been untrue?
Drumheller: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy. Right before the war, I said to a very senior CIA officer: "You guys must have something else," because you always think it's the CIA. "There is some secret thing I don`t know." He said: "No. But when we get to Baghdad, we are going to find warehouses full of stuff. Nobody is going to remember all of this."
SPIEGEL: After the war, the CIA was finally able to talk to "Curveball" -- something the BND had never allowed before. What was the result?
Drumheller: In March 2004, a fluent German-speaking officer, one of my best guys, who had a scientific background went to Germany and worked for about two weeks. Finally, at the end of it, Curveball just sort of sat back and said: "I don't have anything more to say." But he never admitted. People here always ask, was he polygraphed? Well, lie detector tests aren't used very much in Germany.
SPIEGEL: Do you think it would have make a difference if the Germans had allowed you to question Curveball earlier?
Drumheller: If they had allowed us to question him the way we did in March of 2004, it would have. Maybe the whole story would have turned out in a different way.
SPIEGEL: In your book, you mention a very high-ranking source who told the CIA before the war that Iraq had no large active WMD program. It has been reported that the source was Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri.
Drumheller: I'm not allowed to say who that was. In the beginning, the administration was very excited that we had a high-level penetration, and the president was informed. I don't think anybody else had a source in Saddam's cabinet. He told us that Iraq had no biological weapons, just the research. Everything else had been destroyed after the first Gulf War. But after a while we didn't get any questions back. Finally the administration came and said that they were really not interested in what he had to say. They were interested in getting him to defect. In the end we did get permission to get back to the source, and that came from Tenet. I think without checking with the White House, he just said: "Okay. Go ahead and see what you can do."
SPIEGEL: So what happened?
Drumheller: There were a lot of ironies throughout this whole story. We went on a sort of worldwide chase after this fellow, and in the end, he was in one place, and our officer was in another country asking for permission to travel. I called up people who were controlling operations, and they said: "Don't worry about it. It's too late now. The war is on. The next time you see this guy, it will be at a war crimes tribunal."
SPIEGEL: Should you have pressed harder?
Drumheller: We made mistakes. And it may suit the White House to have people believe in a black and white version of reality -- that it could have avoided the Iraq war if the CIA had only given it a true picture of Saddam's armaments. But the truth is that the White House believed what it wanted to believe. I have done very little in my life except go to school and work for the CIA. Intellectually I think I did everything I could. Emotionally you always think you should have something more.
Interview conducted by Georg Mascolo and Holger Stark.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
German court orders arrest of 13 US intelligence operatives
Interesting that the Bush administration claims it is legal to kidnap a German citizen from another country and ship him off for interrogation under US law! What about international law? It would seem that the German authorities probably knew what was going on as well.
German court orders arrest of U.S. intelligence operatives
The suspects are accused of being involved in a 2004 'extraordinary rendition.'
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Times Staff Writer
February 1, 2007
BERLIN — A Munich court has ordered the arrest of 13 U.S. intelligence operatives in connection with the kidnapping and beating of a German citizen who was interrogated for five months at a secret prison in Afghanistan, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The suspects are said to have been members of a CIA-sponsored team that allegedly flew Khaled Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, from Macedonia to Afghanistan in January 2004. Each of the accused, all but one of whom were identified only by aliases, was charged with kidnapping and causing serious bodily harm.
Police found a "strong suspicion" that the operatives were involved in Masri's disappearance, said a statement released by the Munich prosecutor's office. "According to the information we have, the suspects listed in the arrest warrants are believed to be so-called code names of CIA agents. The investigation will now focus on learning the actual names of the suspects."
Legal experts said it was unlikely the accused, including four pilots, a medic and members of an operations unit, would appear before a German court. CIA and State Department officials have refused to comment in detail about the Masri case, but the Bush administration has said that anti-terrorism laws allow for such covert operations, known as "extraordinary renditions." U.S. officials have denied allegations of torture.
"As far as I know, the German court has never issued an arrest warrant against 13 CIA officials all at once," said Hans-Christian Stroeble, a member of a parliamentary committee investigating the Masri case whose Green Party has criticized the renditions program. "This is a great success."
The intelligence operatives, most of whom are believed to be Americans, are suspected of having been involved in a mission that loaded a bound and drugged Masri onto a Boeing 737 that flew him from Skopje, Macedonia, to Afghanistan.
Masri had been detained weeks earlier by Macedonian security officials when he attempted to cross the Macedonian border with Serbia. He said that he was beaten while in Macedonian custody.
German prosecutors were initially skeptical of Masri's tale: that he disappeared into a hidden dimension in the anti-terrorism fight and was held for interrogation and abuse before being released in the mountains of Albania in May 2004.
But German authorities said they concluded that the car salesman and father of four was telling the truth. They believe Masri was the victim of mistaken identity: a man with the same name as a suspected terrorist linked to Al Qaeda.
Former Interior Minister Otto Schily has told a German government committee that U.S. officials privately apologized.
German officials allege that the operatives, many of whom live in North Carolina, work for Aero Contractors, a contract air carrier that has been linked by news reports and German investigators to the CIA. The company is connected to Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., which held the registration for the Boeing that transported Masri, according to European aviation documents.
The parliamentary committee is investigating whether German agents were involved in the abduction and why Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier did not immediately disclose his knowledge of the affair.
The improving relationship between Berlin and Washington has at times been affected. In 2005, after a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was pleased that the Bush administration "admitted this man had been erroneously taken," speaking of Masri. But a senior U.S. official quickly denied such a characterization, saying that Masri had been released because Washington "no longer had evidence or intelligence to justify" his detention.
*
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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
German court orders arrest of U.S. intelligence operatives
The suspects are accused of being involved in a 2004 'extraordinary rendition.'
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Times Staff Writer
February 1, 2007
BERLIN — A Munich court has ordered the arrest of 13 U.S. intelligence operatives in connection with the kidnapping and beating of a German citizen who was interrogated for five months at a secret prison in Afghanistan, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The suspects are said to have been members of a CIA-sponsored team that allegedly flew Khaled Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, from Macedonia to Afghanistan in January 2004. Each of the accused, all but one of whom were identified only by aliases, was charged with kidnapping and causing serious bodily harm.
Police found a "strong suspicion" that the operatives were involved in Masri's disappearance, said a statement released by the Munich prosecutor's office. "According to the information we have, the suspects listed in the arrest warrants are believed to be so-called code names of CIA agents. The investigation will now focus on learning the actual names of the suspects."
Legal experts said it was unlikely the accused, including four pilots, a medic and members of an operations unit, would appear before a German court. CIA and State Department officials have refused to comment in detail about the Masri case, but the Bush administration has said that anti-terrorism laws allow for such covert operations, known as "extraordinary renditions." U.S. officials have denied allegations of torture.
"As far as I know, the German court has never issued an arrest warrant against 13 CIA officials all at once," said Hans-Christian Stroeble, a member of a parliamentary committee investigating the Masri case whose Green Party has criticized the renditions program. "This is a great success."
The intelligence operatives, most of whom are believed to be Americans, are suspected of having been involved in a mission that loaded a bound and drugged Masri onto a Boeing 737 that flew him from Skopje, Macedonia, to Afghanistan.
Masri had been detained weeks earlier by Macedonian security officials when he attempted to cross the Macedonian border with Serbia. He said that he was beaten while in Macedonian custody.
German prosecutors were initially skeptical of Masri's tale: that he disappeared into a hidden dimension in the anti-terrorism fight and was held for interrogation and abuse before being released in the mountains of Albania in May 2004.
But German authorities said they concluded that the car salesman and father of four was telling the truth. They believe Masri was the victim of mistaken identity: a man with the same name as a suspected terrorist linked to Al Qaeda.
Former Interior Minister Otto Schily has told a German government committee that U.S. officials privately apologized.
German officials allege that the operatives, many of whom live in North Carolina, work for Aero Contractors, a contract air carrier that has been linked by news reports and German investigators to the CIA. The company is connected to Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., which held the registration for the Boeing that transported Masri, according to European aviation documents.
The parliamentary committee is investigating whether German agents were involved in the abduction and why Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier did not immediately disclose his knowledge of the affair.
The improving relationship between Berlin and Washington has at times been affected. In 2005, after a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was pleased that the Bush administration "admitted this man had been erroneously taken," speaking of Masri. But a senior U.S. official quickly denied such a characterization, saying that Masri had been released because Washington "no longer had evidence or intelligence to justify" his detention.
*
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
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