Times Online Europe 'colluded with web of CIA rendition flights'

"Fourteen European states including Britain colluded in a "global spider's web" of secret CIA flights ferrying terror suspects around the world, according to a report published today by Europe's top human rights body."

"Unveiling the report in Paris today, he said: "Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centres did indeed exist in Europe.""

The Village Voice CIA Secret Prisons Expose

"[In] an explosive, documented April 5 Amnesty International report—"Below the Radar: Secret Flights to Torture and 'Disappearance' "—there is direct testimony, for the first time, from three men who have been salted away in these secret CIA prisons.

This 41-page report, currently reverberating throughout Europe, also includes a wide range of detailed information about the CIA's kidnapping and "renditions" of suspects to countries known for torturing prisoners. But most revealing are Amnesty International's interviews with the three men from Yemen who were "held in at least four secret US-run facilities . . . probably in Djibouti, Afghanistan, and somewhere in Eastern Europe."

""None was charged with any terrorism-related offense; [and] the Chief of Special Prosecution in Yemen told Amnesty International that they were not suspected of any such involvement.""

redux [04.22.06]
The New York Times No Proof of Secret C.I.A. Prisons, European Antiterror Chief Says
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"The European Union's antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe.

"We've heard all kinds of allegations," the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. "It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.""

"Mr. de Vries said the European Parliament investigation had not uncovered rights abuses despite more than 50 hours of testimony by rights advocates and people who say they were abducted by C.I.A. agents. A similar investigation by the Council of Europe, the European human rights agency, came to the same conclusion in January — though the leader of that inquiry, Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said then that there were enough "indications" to justify continuing the investigation."

redux [12.20.05]
San Jose Mercury News Rights group says U.S. tortured prisoners in secret

"The United States operated a secret prison in Afghanistan as recently as last year, torturing detainees with sleep deprivation, chaining them to the walls and forcing them to listen to loud music in total darkness for days, a human rights group alleged Monday."

""We're not talking about torture in the abstract, but the real thing," said John Sifton, terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch. "U.S. personnel and officials may be criminally liable, and a special prosecutor is needed to investigate.""

redux [12.07.05]
The Independent 'Rendition' does not involve torture, says Rice

"Attempting to stem fierce European criticism of US treatment of suspected terrorists, the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, admitted that Washington had carried out "renditions" of suspects - but never in violation of other country's sovereignty, and never where it was believed that the individual might be tortured."

"A major part of the statement was aimed at dispelling the impression - fostered by Vice-President Dick Cheney recently - that Washington had an ambiguous attitude to the use of torture. The US, Ms Rice said, "does not tolerate, permit, or condone torture under any circumstances"."

Washington Post Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake

"Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations."

"Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe."

BBC News Rendition: Tales of torture

" Syrian-born Maher Arar, 34, was picked up by US immigration in September 2002 as he passed through New York's JFK airport. He was heading home to Canada after a family holiday in Tunisia. After days of questioning, he says he was placed on a private jet, shackled, bound, and flown to Syria.

Mr Arar has told the BBC that he was repeatedly tortured during 10 months' detention in Syria - often whipped on the palms of his hands with metal cables - before being released after intervention by the Canadian government."

ABC News AP Poll: Most Say Torture OK in Rare Cases

"Most Americans and a majority of people in Britain, France and South Korea say torturing terrorism suspects is justified at least in rare instances, according to AP-Ipsos polling."

""I don't think we should go out and string everybody up by their thumbs until somebody talks. But if there is definitely a good reason to get an answer, we should do whatever it takes," said Billy Adams, a retiree from Tomball, Texas."

redux [12.01.05]
The Seattle Times EU grows impatient on secret-prison issue

"European indignation over the CIA's alleged use of kidnappings, secret flights and clandestine prisons on European territory mounted Wednesday as leaders in Britain and Germany pressed the U.S. government for an explanation.

The European Union cited possible "violations of international law" by the United States in its request that the Bush administration clarify media reports and "allay parliamentary and public concerns" about secret CIA prisons and the transporting of al-Qaida suspects in Europe, according to a letter from British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."

redux [11.02.05]
Washington Post CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

"The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents."

"It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing."

redux [07.01.04]
NPR: All Things Considered Abuses Possible at Secret U.S. Prisons

"As horrific as the Abu Ghraib abuses were, experts say that at least they occurred at a facility that officially exists. That's in sharp contrast to the secret detention facilities that U.S. military and intelligence officials run for high-level terror suspects. They range from the notorious "Hotel California" in Afghanistan to floating detention facilities on U.S. warships. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports."

redux [06.14.04]
The Observer Secret world of US jails

"The United States government, in conjunction with key allies, is running an 'invisible' network of prisons and detention centres into which thousands of suspects have disappeared without trace since the 'war on terror' began.

In the past three years, thousands of alleged militants have been transferred around the world by American, Arab and Far Eastern security services, often in secret operations that by-pass extradition laws. The astonishing traffic has seen many, including British citizens, sent from the West to countries where they can be tortured to extract information. Anything learnt is passed on to the US and, in some cases, reaches British intelligence."

redux [05.28.04]
The New York Review of Books The Logic of Torture

"What is difficult is separating what we now know from what we have long known but have mostly refused to admit. Though the events and disclosures of the last weeks have taken on the familiar clothing of a Washington scandal—complete with full-dress congressional hearings, daily leaks to reporters from victim and accused alike, and of course the garish, spectacular photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib—beyond that bright glare of revelation lies a dark area of unacknowledged clarity. Behind the exotic brutality so painstakingly recorded in Abu Ghraib, and the multiple tangled plotlines that will be teased out in the coming weeks and months about responsibility, knowledge, and culpability, lies a simple truth, well known but not yet publicly admitted in Washington: that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of the United States, at various locations around the world, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo in Cuba to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have been torturing prisoners."