Daily archives: May 21, 2005

New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action

 in Rendition by | View Comments

By Craig Whitlock writing in the Washington Post

STOCKHOLM — The CIA Gulfstream V jet touched down at a small airport west of here just before 9 p.m. on a subfreezing night in December 2001. A half-dozen agents wearing hoods that covered their faces stepped down from the aircraft and hurried across the tarmac to take custody of two prisoners, suspected Islamic radicals from Egypt.

Inside an airport police station, Swedish officers watched as the CIA operatives pulled out scissors and rapidly sliced off the prisoners’ clothes, including their underwear, according to newly released Swedish government documents and eyewitness statements. They probed inside the men’s mouths and ears and examined their hair before dressing the pair in sweat suits and draping hoods over their heads. The suspects were then marched in chains to the plane, where they were strapped to mattresses on the floor in the back of the cabin.

So began an operation the CIA calls an “extraordinary rendition,” the forcible and highly secret transfer of terrorism suspects to their home countries or other nations where they can be interrogated with fewer legal protections.

The practice has generated increasing criticism from civil liberties groups; in Sweden a parliamentary investigator who conducted a 10-month probe into the case recently concluded that the CIA operatives violated Swedish law by subjecting the prisoners to “degrading and inhuman treatment” and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil.

“Should Swedish officers have taken those measures, I would have prosecuted them without hesitation for the misuse of public power and probably would have asked for a prison sentence,” the investigator, Mats Melin, said in an interview. He said he could not charge the CIA operatives because he was authorized to investigate only Swedish government officials, but he did not rule out the possibility that other Swedish prosecutors could do so.

The basic facts of the Stockholm rendition were reported last year; this article is based on newly released documents from the parliamentary probe that provide elaborate details about an operation that normally unfolds entirely out of public view and about the government deliberations that preceded it.

Swedish security police said they were taken aback by the swiftness and precision of the CIA agents that night. Investigators concluded that the Swedes essentially stood aside and let the Americans take control of the operation, moving silently and communicating with hand signals, the documents show.

“I can say that we were surprised when a crew stepped out of the plane that seemed to be very professional, that had obviously done this before,” Arne Andersson, an assistant director for the Swedish national security police, told government investigators.

At 9:47 p.m., less than an hour after its arrival at Bromma Airport, the jet took off on a five-hour flight to Cairo, where the prisoners, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Zery, were handed over to Egyptian security officials.

The CIA has not acknowledged playing any part in the expulsion of the two men. An agency spokesman in Washington declined to comment for this article, and U.S. Embassy officials in Stockholm also declined to answer questions.

CIA officials have testified that they have used rendition for years after tracking down suspected terrorists around the world. They say the U.S. government receives assurances of humane treatment from the countries where the suspects are taken. Human rights groups say that such pledges, from governments with long histories of torture, are worthless.

The two Egyptians later told lawyers, relatives and Swedish diplomats that they were subjected to electric shocks and other forms of torture soon after their forced return to their country.

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“We are in a real sense culpable” – Craig Murray on the aftermath of the Uzbek massacres

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The Financial Times Magazine – Comment piece from Craig Murray: I have lost count of the number of journalists who have asked me ‘Do you feel vindicated?’ My replies to that one have been unprintable. How can you feel vindicated by several hundred dead people? Mostly I just feel miserable. I think we are in a real sense culpable. It is Western support for Karimov that gives him such arrogant assurance in gunning down his opponents.

Ever since I heard ‘ by email about three weeks ago – that street protests were taking off in Andizhan ‘ I had been longing to be there. I would never get a visa, but was speculating about getting over from Kirghizstan on a smuggler’s route. Once the massacre happened sections of border were out of control for a few days. I desperately wanted to go. Annoyingly, I have to go into hospital tomorrow for a heart operation on Monday. I have been trying to convince myself that I have done more good by media work here.

That desire to be there did not entail a longing to be British Ambassador again. At least, not until Wednesday, when I saw reports of the pathetic trip by diplomats to inspect the scene. I had predicted on ITN that this would be ‘a nauseating propaganda charade’. It was. They travelled in a tightly controlled convoy on a sealed off route. The blood had been hosed away. The government dictated who they could meet. The only civilian was the father of a dead soldier. This charabanc trip ended an hour and a half before they expected ‘ Karimov doesn’t just get the buses to run on time, they even run early. The bulk of the time was taken in a formal banquet.

My successor, David Moran, bleated ‘Can we not meet some people?’ Of course you can. At that moment I wished I was back in his shoes. You just walk out, pushing past the soldiers, down to the bazaar, and talk to people. One of my more delightful memories was of Clare Short doing exactly that in May 2003, to the huge consternation of the regime. You, David, are one of the tiny number of people in Uzbekistan they can’t shoot. No-one physically forced you to spend the bulk of your precious time in Andizhan on your arse.

I have been keeping up with events both from phone and email contacts to Uzbekistan, and via the internet. I see The Australian has reported I had a habit of manhandling obstructive Uzbek officials (how did they know?). I wouldn’t call it a habit, but you do sometimes have to show in a totalitarian state that you are not going to be obstructed in your work. To be fair to David Moran, his semi-protest showed at least some backbone; it was more than most of my senior ex-colleagues would have done.

The next day we had the Uzbek Prokurator General announcing that 170 people had, after all, been killed but that they were all armed rebels. I did feel vindicated by the sheer disbelief that greeted this. Here is why.

In March 2004 there were a series of explosions and shootings in Tashkent, in which at least thirty people died. I dashed round to the scene of each incident, arriving within hours or even minutes, accompanied by Giles Whittell of the Times who had just walked in to the Embassy to interview me.

Suicide bombers from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, linked to Al Qaida, had carried out a series of attacks on security forces. That remains the internationally accepted version of events. But it isn’t true.

I attended the briefings the Prokurator General gave to journalists and diplomats. His claims were completely incompatible with the facts I observed. He said suicide belts had been used each with the force of two kilos of TNT. But at the sites there just wasn’t the physical damage. Not so much as a cracked paving stone, let alone a crater. The first ‘bomb’ had been in a roughly triangular courtyard thirty metres wide at maximum. Allegedly six soldiers and a suicide bomber had been killed. Not a pane of glass was broken in the buildings overlooking the courtyard, not a branch or sprig torn from the tree in the centre.

My reports that the Prokurator General was lying through his teeth brought me startled reproof from my management in London. You see, the attacks by Islamic terrorists fitted our narrative. So I feel a personal relief that the lies are at last being exposed.

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