By ANNE GEARAN in Netscpae News

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration acknowledged Tuesday that reports of secret U.S.-run prisons overseas for terror suspects have raised an outcry among European allies and said the U.S. will account for its actions.

Without confirming that any CIA detention sites exist in Europe, a State Department spokesman said the U.S. has not violated either its own laws or international treaties.

“The United States in its actions does not break U.S. law,” said spokesman Sean McCormack. “All its actions comply with the Constitution and we abide by our international obligations.

“And all we can do is do our best to try to explain that to publics around the world – to our own public and to European publics or wherever the question may arise.”

For full article go here

By AIDAN LEWIS in The News Sentinel

ROME – A judge has rejected an appeal by a former CIA station chief in Milan against an arrest warrant issued for his alleged role in the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, ruling that he was not protected by diplomatic immunity.

Italian judges have issued arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA agents, including the former station chief Robert Seldon Lady, accused of involvement in the kidnapping of cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr.

The judge on Monday rejected arguments by Seldon Lady’s lawyer, Daria Pesce, who claimed that he was protected under international treaty and Italian law, and that evidence of his involvement in any alleged abduction was weak.

Prosecutors claimed Nasr’s abduction was a serious violation of Italian sovereignty, and said it hindered Italian terrorism investigations. They reconstructed the alleged operation through cell phone traffic and other evidence, contending that Seldon Lady played a central role.

They have sought the extradition of the 22 suspects, and the Italian Justice Ministry is deciding whether to press the case with Washington.

Prosecutors claim that Nasr, believed to belong to an Islamic terror group, was abducted on a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003, before being flown to Egypt, where he was reportedly tortured. He is believed to still be there.

Pesce contended that Seldon Lady’s work as an intelligence officer accredited at the U.S. Consulate protected him.

But Milan Judge Enrico Manzi ruled that Seldon Lady lost immunity when he left his post in August 2004, and that in any case consular officials could be arrested for grave crimes, according to court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

He said that consular officials did enjoy protection, “but always within the limits of international law. Within these limits, naturally, is the principle of the sovereignty of the host state that cannot allow on its territory the use of force by a foreign state that outside every control of the political and judicial authorities.”

Neither Seldon Lady, who owns a home in Italy, nor any of the other suspects has been arrested, with all of them believed to be out of the country.

Pesce said Seldon Lady was in the United States. She said she planned to appeal Manzi’s decision.

Manzi noted in his ruling that there had been contacts between Seldon Lady’s phone and others used by suspects believed to have carried out the kidnapping.

The judge said evidence from a raid on Seldon Lady’s home, turning up among other evidence a photo of Nasr and records of Internet searches to plan the route of Nasr’s transfer from Milan, “have made the picture of evidence against him even more complete.”

Nasr’s alleged abduction was purportedly part of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program, in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, subjecting them to possible ill-treatment.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s government, a strong U.S. ally, has denied it had any prior knowledge of the alleged kidnapping. The United States has consistently declined comment on the case.

The US Vice-President Dick Cheney is facing fierce criticism over the Iraq war and prisnor abuse, even from within his own ranks. A BBC radio interview yesterday with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson brings out the issue of how the debate on the Geneva Conventions was conducted within the US administration and how Cheney and Rumsfeld implemented the anything-goes approach.

By Brigader General David R. Irvine writing in AlterNet

Remarkably, of the nation’s major newspapers, only the Wall Street Journal has editorialized in support of torture as a useful tool of American intelligence policy. Regrettably, that position does a huge disservice to the nation and its soldiers. There are really only three issues in this debate, and the Journal carefully turned a blind eye to all three: (1) is torture reliable, (2) is it consistent with America’s values and Constitution, and (3) does it best serve our national interests?

No one has yet offered any validated evidence that torture produces reliable intelligence. While torture apologists frequently make the claim that torture saves lives, that assertion is directly contradicted by many Army, FBI, and CIA professionals who have actually interrogated al Qaeda captives. Exhibit A is the torture-extracted confession of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al Qaeda captive who told the CIA in 2001, having been “rendered” to the tender mercies of Egypt, that Saddam Hussein had trained al Qaeda to use WMD. It appears that this confession was the only information upon which, in late 2002, the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state repeatedly claimed that “credible evidence” supported that claim, even though a now-declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from February 2002 questioned the reliability of the confession because it was likely obtained under torture. In January 2004, al-Libi recanted his “confession,” and a month later, the CIA recalled all intelligence reports based on his statements.

Exhibit B is the case of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi deemed a “high-value” target by the CIA. After being beaten to an extent that he had several broken ribs, he was subjected to a form of crucifixion known as “Palestinian hanging.” Forty-five minutes later, he was dead, never having revealed whatever vital, ticking-bomb information his American interrogator was seeking.

If there is reliable evidence that torture has, in fact, interrupted ticking time bombs and saved lives, the gravity of the crisis created by the administration’s free-wheeling torture policy demands straight answers which can be weighed and evaluated by a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission whose membership might include interrogators, jurists, theologians, national security specialists, military leaders, and political leaders. The damage to our national interests and the dismal record of war candor by this administration has made “trust us” an insufficient justification for such a profound change in American law and moral values.

The Journal claims that Abu Ghraib was an anomaly — that it has become a “torture narrative” that erroneously blames the CIA for the abuses depicted in the infamous photographs. The Schlesinger report was cited for the conclusion that the perpetrators were merely a group of sadistic, poorly trained Reservists. This argument, however begs the question; the rationale for the McCain amendment rests not upon Abu Ghraib, but upon the cascading stream of documented reports from other places in Afghanistan and Iraq in which brutal torture has been either authorized or winked at by several different military and civilian chains of command.

The Journal further distorts the facts by arguing that techniques such as waterboarding (which induces the sensation of drowning), leaving prisoners outdoors in freezing weather, and stress positions which can cause suffocation and collapse, are not really “torture,” but are just “psychological techniques designed to break a detainee.” There is, certainly, a psychological component to torture, but the real issue is whether what’s done causes severe physical or mental pain or suffering. Of the crucifixion form of “psychological” pressure which the CIA worked upon Jamadi, one of the soldiers who cut him down said he had never seen anyone’s arms positioned like that; “[I] was surprised they didn’t just pop out of their sockets.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has endorsed the McCain amendments, and declared, “In the face of this perilous climate, our nation must not embrace a morality based on an attitude that ‘desperate times call for desperate measures.’ There can be no compromise on the moral imperative to protect the basic human rights of any individual incarcerated for any reason.” Our embrace of torture is completely inconsistent with our commitment to equal justice and the rule of law.

The Journal assumes that only the worst of the worst will be subjected to torture when it comes to ticking time bombs. Not only is that assumption unfounded, based upon the widespread abuses in Iraq, it was tried and abandoned by the Israelis. Because it is impossible to confirm with advance certainty what any suspect actually knows, ticking bomb torture can be justified in virtually every interrogation. When Israel experimented with “torture lite,” supposedly reserved for ticking-bomb circumstances, it was not long before 85 percent of all Palestinian detainees were being given the harshest treatment allowed. The capability to finely calibrate torture has eluded every democratic government which has tried it.

The inescapable fact is that America’s standing in the world, and especially in the Middle East, has never been lower. The price we have paid for our misdirected torture policies has been incalculable. The Arab street may not always grasp the finer points of separation of powers or proportional representation; but everyone, everywhere, comprehends hypocrisy, and judges us for ours. If the torture advocates truly believe that the value of violently coerced information has been worth the plummeting drop in America’s world stature, or that such information is worth the clear and present endangerment of captured Americans, it’s time to justify the claimed value of torture to the nation in whose name it’s being done. Not assumptions, not generalizations, not, “I can’t explain because it’s classified.”

The president and vice president wish to chart a course of heretofore unacceptable savagery toward anyone even suspected of terrorism. If we are to become a nation where a president may torture anyone he wishes, it deserves a broad, sober, fact-based national debate.

Brigadier General David R. Irvine is a retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School. He currently practices law in Salt Lake City, Utah.

By David Lindsay in the Malta Independent

Following last week’s report that at least two planes, widely suspected of being used by the United States Intelligence Agency in its controversial practice of extraordinary rendition, had made stopovers in Malta, this newspaper can report the presence of yet another, larger, suspected aircraft at Malta International Airport on two occasions just last year.

With more European governments joining the protest over the CIA’s use of their airspace and airports in the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition, and with the Council of Europe also investigating the practice, the government of Malta has so far remained silent on the issue, undoubtedly otherwise absorbed by this week’s CHOGM activities.

The Malta Independent on Sunday last week reported flight records and photographs showed that at least two airplanes used by the CIA for the transport of suspected terrorists for interrogation in countries where the use of torture is condoned, had stopped over in Malta in December 2003 and December 2004.

Ongoing investigations by this newspaper into the use of Malta’s airport and airspace by the CIA have revealed the presence of another suspected plane ‘ a Lockheed L-100 Hercules with tail number N8213G, which stopped over in Malta on 31 March 2004 and again on 25 August of the same year.

The Hercules is the latest plane implicated in extraordinary rendition and has been reported to have made several stops in Scandinavia. The Hercules, the largest of the CIA planes spotted in Malta, has space for cargo and about 100 passengers.

While the Boeing 737 and the Gulfstream are relatively nondescript aircraft, the Hercules carries a large ‘Prescott’ logo on its side. The private planes being used by the CIA are owned by shell companies and the Prescott Support company is widely believed to be one of the several companies serving as covers for the CIA’s clandestine prisoner transports.

Extraordinary rendition refers to the controversial American procedure in which criminal suspects are apprehended, sometimes secretly, and sent for interrogation in countries where torture is used as a routine form of interrogation. Reports cite suspects being arrested, shackled, blindfolded and sedated, after which they are transported, usually by private jet, to countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Uzbekistan. Although the practice has been in use since the 1990s, its scope has been widened immensely since 11 September 2001.

Last Sunday this newspaper cited a Boeing 737, with tail number N313P, as the first suspected plane to have stopped over in Malta between 6 and 10 December 2003. The plane had arrived from the RAF’s Northolt air base on 6 December 2003 and left four days later on 10 December bound for Tripoli. A year later a second plane, a Gulfstream jet with tail number N227SV, arrived in Malta on 17 December 2004 and left later that day for Iceland, from where it flew to Washington DC.

“If the planes were suspected of carrying narcotics, as opposed to kidnapped human beings facing interrogation under torture, there is no doubt that the police would intercept these flights the minute they touched down in the UK.” – Craig Murray

By GARETH EDWARDS in the Scotsman

THE CIA is using Edinburgh Airport as a refuelling stop for “torture” flights carrying terror suspects. The secret flights are suspected of carrying Islamic militants from the US to Eastern European countries where torture can be used legally. Police have now been urged to investigate whether any crimes have been committed in Edinburgh after it emerged 14 of the “rendition” flights stopped in the Capital over the last four years.

Lothians Green MSP Mark Ballard said today: “I am sure that many people in Edinburgh will be revolted that such abuses of human rights could be taking place right in their own backyard.”

It had long been known that both Prestwick and Glasgow had been used as a pit-stop for the flights, but now Edinburgh, as well as RAF Leuchars, Inverness and Wick have been linked to the scandal. Mr Ballard has written to Lothian and Borders Police outlining his concerns that crimes may have been committed in Scottish airspace or on the ground in Edinburgh, and asking the Chief Constable to investigate.

Under UN conventions and the European Convention on Human Rights, torture, including acts which aid or abet torture, is illegal. Holyrood was told yesterday that the American government did not deny flying prisoners to Eastern Europe where they could employ what were described as aggressive interrogation techniques which are not allowed in the US.

The figures provided by the American authorities stated that Prestwick and Glasgow had been used for refuelling rendition flights 149 times since 2001, with RAF Leuchars used six times, Inverness five times and Wick twice.

It is not clear whether Lothian and Borders Police will have to investigate the complaint regarding Edinburgh Airport, however, and no-one from the police was available for comment.

Strathclyde Police refused to investigate the flights in Glasgow as they did not believe there was enough evidence of a criminal act being committed in Scotland. However, the Greens argued that police need only have “reasonable suspicion” that a crime has been committed. And they said this was provided by the documents provided by the US government detailing the many rendition flights which have stopped at Scottish airports.

Mr Ballard said: “Such activities are illegal and Lothians and Borders Police have a duty to uphold the law, so we have asked them to investigate the use of Edinburgh Airport by torture flights as a matter of urgency.

“I believe there is a very real risk that individuals’ human rights are being violated within our jurisdiction and that we have a duty to act. I’m sure the vast majority of Scots, including Edinburgh residents, expect our police to ensure that Scotland plays no part in torture.”

A former British ambassador said today that police had full power to board the flights. Craig Murray, who resigned from the Foreign Office over the Government’s role in the war on terror, said officers had a “duty” to intervene.

“If the planes were suspected of carrying narcotics, as opposed to kidnapped human beings facing interrogation under torture, there is no doubt that the police would intercept these flights the minute they touched down in the UK.” Mr Murray said he believed the flights were refuelling in Scotland because the UK was afraid of losing access to US intelligence.

A spokesman for BAA Scotland said: “As an airport we are not allowed to turn away any flight, unless the airport is full.”

The issue has already been taken up at Westminster by Sir Menzies Campbell, who has tabled a series of questions about planes using RAF bases, such as Northolt, in north London. He says the UK should have no part in the “illegal and immoral” torture flights.

Ministry of Defence sources have insisted that American flights can land anywhere in the UK if they have obtained diplomatic clearance. Officials have no way of knowing who or what was on those flights.

A question on Uzbekistan from Hansards parlimentary records of 15th November

John Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how regularly the Uzbek authorities provide the British security services with intelligence information; what assessment he has made of whether information provided by those authorities has been obtained by torture; and if he will assess the effect of that information on the maintenance of British security.

Mr. Douglas Alexander: It is not the Government’s policy to comment on intelligence matters.

Italy prosecutor, boss clash over CIA case

By John Crewdson in the Chigaco Tribune

NEW YORK – The chief anti-terrorism prosecutor for northern Italy says he intends to prosecute 22 past and present CIA operatives on kidnapping charges “in absentia,” an unusual though not unprecedented criminal proceeding that would likely lay bare some of the intelligence agency’s most sensitive inner workings.

In an interview while attending an anti-terrorism conference here last week, the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, vowed to push ahead with the trial even if, as seems increasingly likely, none of the defendants will ever be extradited.

Spataro has asked the Italian justice minister, Roberto Castelli, to formally request that the Bush administration extradite the 22 CIA defendants to Milan to stand trial. Spataro dismissed charges by Castelli on Tuesday that the actions were politically motivated.