By Rory Watson and Philip Webster for Times Online

Euro MPs are to launch an investigation into allegations that the United States is operating secret CIA prisons on European soil and illegally transferring terrorist suspects between countries.

The inquiry, which will begin next year and looks certain to sour relations between Washington and Brussels, was approved by the European Parliament’s political group leaders tonight after mounting pressure from backbenchers.

The investigation could embarrass Poland and Romania, which have been accused of acting as a base for interrogating terrorist suspects or as a transit point for moving them to other countries.

Any violation of human rights by an existing EU member could see it stripped of its voting rights, while Romania, a candidate country which is hoping to join the Union in January 2007, could find its accession hopes dashed.

The parliamentary inquiry, which will have three months to present its initial findings, is expected to have an unusually wide remit. It is likely be asked to examine alleged abuses such as kidnapping, false arrest or illegal transfers not just within the European Union, but also on the territory of all countries with which it is associated.

It will consider whether the activities contravene European law and the European Charter of Human Rights and assess the potential consequences of any illegal and unlawful practices. However, while its members may travel freely and will be able to request that witnesses give evidence, they will not have the power to insist they do so.

The Euro MPs will co-operate with the separate investigation headed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, that the 46-nation Council of Europe launched last month.

Mr Marty reported yesterday that his month-long study “reinforced the credibility of the allegations” surrounding the CIA – although he said that any prisoners formerly held in secret sites had by now probably been transferred to North Africa.

Mr Marty said that he had unearthed “clues” that both Romania and Poland were implicated, perhaps unwittingly, in the CIA’s interrogation of terrorism suspects.

“Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards. It had to be noted that the allegations had never been formally denied by the United States,” he said.

“While it was still too early to assert that there had been any involvement or complicity of member states in illegal actions, the seriousness of the allegations and the consistency of the information gathered to date justified the continuation of an in-depth inquiry.

“If the allegations proved correct, the member states would stand accused of having seriously breached their human rights obligations to the Council of Europe.”

A leading British legal expert yesterday urged the Government to find out more about the CIA’s alleged use of British airspace to carry out renditions, saying Britain could be breaking the law if it fails to ask whether the practice leads to torture.

Simply relying on American assurances that aircraft that are being used to carry terrorists to interrogation centres and which stop over in Britain are not so called “torture flights” is not enough to comply with legal obligations, according James Crawford, professor of international law at Cambridge University.

In a legal opinion for MPs investigating the flights, Prof Crawford wrote that the question that must be asked is “whether torture is likely to take place if a person is transported, irrespective of whether or not the Government claims that the answer is no, or what its hopes or beliefs may be.

“Where governments are using public power to transfer persons at risk to a given country, in circumstances where earlier practices support credible allegations of torture in that country, mere assurances by the government, unaccompanied by other action, will be insufficent,” he concluded.

Growing unease about the CIA’s rendition programme, which is believed to have transported 3,000 terrorist suspects for interrogation around the world since 2001, has prompted investigations in Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.

Allegations that the CIA abducted and illegally transported terror suspects across European borders are credible, an investigator for the Council of Europe has said. Swiss senator Dick Marty has submitted a report on the claims to a meeting of the human rights committee.

“From a general point of view, the rapporteur underlined that the information gathered to date reinforced the credibility of the allegations concerning the transfer and temporary detention of individuals, without any judicial involvement, in European countries.

Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards. It had to be noted that the allegations had never been formally denied by the United States. The rapporteur takes note of the situation and deplores the fact that no information or explanations had been provided on this point by Ms Rice during her visit to Europe.

The rapporteur urges all member governments to commit themselves fully to establishing the truth about flights over their territories in recent years by aeroplanes carrying individuals arrested and detained without any judicial involvement. The Rapporteur intends to ask the leaders of the parlementary delegations to the Assembly to take initiatives within their parliaments in order to obtain more precise information on this matter, either by putting questions to their governments or by proposing the setting up of committees of enquiry. In fact, the delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly can make use of their unique position to lobby national parliaments to shed light on the matter. Mr Marty welcomes the fact that steps have already been taken here by certain national parliaments.”

Needless to add, with the current weak and desperate attempts to deflect questions on extraordinary rendition and torture this should remain a hot topic for the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC).

In this context, the response that the FAC gets to their request for documents on British complicity in torture in Uzbekistan will be extremely interesting!

The Observer

An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies.

Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA’s network of ‘black sites’. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.

After his capture in Pakistan, Mohammed says British officials warned him that he would be sent to a country where torture was used. Moroccans also asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, which his lawyers believe came from British sources.

Western agencies believed that he was part of a plot to buy uranium in Asia, bring it to the US and build a ‘dirty bomb’ in league with Jose Padilla, a US citizen. Mohammed signed a confession but told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, he had never met Padilla, or anyone in al-Qaeda. Padilla spent almost four years in American custody, accused of the plot. Last month, after allegations of the torture used against Mohammed emerged, the claims against Padilla were dropped. He now faces a civil charge of supporting al-Qaeda financially.

A senior US intelligence official told The Observer that the CIA is now in ‘deep crisis’ following last week’s international political storm over the agency’s practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ – transporting suspects to countries where they face torture. ‘The smarter people in the Directorate of Operations [the CIA’s clandestine operational arm] know that one day, if they do this stuff, they are going to face indictment,’ he said. ‘They are simply refusing to participate in these operations, and if they don’t have big mortgage or tuition fees to pay they’re thinking about trying to resign altogether.’

Already 22 CIA officers have been charged in absentia in Italy for alleged roles in the rendition of a radical cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, seized – without the knowledge of the Italian government – on a Milan street in February 2003.

The intense pressure on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week, coupled with Friday’s condemnation of the use of evidence extracted under torture by the House of Lords, has intensified concerns within the CIA. The official said: ‘Renditions and torture aren’t just wrong, they also expose CIA personnel and diplomats abroad to enormous future risk.’

Mohammed arrived in Britain in 1994. He lived in Wornington Road, North Kensington, and studied at Paddington Green College. For most of this time, said his brother, he rarely went to a mosque. However, in early 2001 he became more religious.

The Observer has obtained fresh details of his case which was first publicised last summer. He went to Pakistan in June 2001 because, he says, he had a drug problem and wanted to kick the habit. He was arrested on 10 April at the airport on his way back to England because of an alleged passport irregularity. Initially interrogated by Pakistani and British officials, he told Stafford Smith: ‘The British checked out my story and said they knew I was a nobody. They said they would tell the Americans.’

He was questioned by the FBI and began to hear accusations of terror involvement. He says he also met two MI6 officers. One told him he would be tortured in an Arab country.

The interrogations intensified and he says he was taken to Islamabad; then, in July 2002, on a CIA flight to Morocco. His description of the process matches independent reports. Masked officers wore black. They stripped him, subjected him to a full body search and shackled him to his seat wearing a nappy.

In Morocco he was told he had plotted with Padilla and had dinner in Pakistan with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the planner of 9/11, and other al-Qaeda chiefs. ‘I’ve never met anyone like these people,’ Mohammed told Stafford Smith. ‘How could I? I speak no Arabic… I never heard Padilla’s name until they told me.’

During almost 18 months of regular beatings in Morocco, Mohammed says he frequently met a blonde woman in her thirties who told him she was Canadian. The US intelligence officer told The Observer this was an ‘amateurish’ CIA cover. ‘The only Americans who historically pretended to be Canadian were backpackers travelling in Europe during the Vietnam war. Apart from the moral issues, what disturbs me is that, as an attempt to create plausible deniability, this is so damn transparent.’

According to Mohammed, he was threatened with electrocution and rape. On one occasion, he was handcuffed when three men entered his cell wearing black masks. ‘That day I ceased really knowing I was alive. One stood on each of my shoulders and a third punched me in the stomach. It seemed to go on for hours. I was meant to stand, but I was in so much pain I’d fall to my knees. They’d pull me back up and hit me again. They’d kick me in the thighs as I got up. I could see the hands that were hitting me… like the hands of someone who’d worked as a mechanic or chopped with an axe.’

Later he was confronted with details of his London life – such as the name of his kickboxing teacher – and met a Moroccan calling himself Marwan, who ordered him to be hung by his wrists. ‘They hit me in the chest, the stomach, and they knocked my feet from under me. I have a shoulder pain to this day from the wrenching as my arms were almost pulled out of their sockets.’

Another time, he told Stafford Smith: ‘They took a scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Then they cut my left chest. One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute watching. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming… They must have done this 20 to 30 times in maybe two hours. There was blood all over.’

In September he was taken to Guantanamo Bay where he has been charged with involvement in al-Qaeda plots and faces trial there by military commission. Stafford Smith said: ‘I am unaware of any evidence against him other than that extracted under torture.’

The Foreign Office, the Moroccan Embassy and the CIA refused to comment yesterday.

From The Guardian

The practice of “extraordinary rendition” was today again in the spotlight with claims that the detainee who supplied the Bush administration’s pre-war claims linking al-Qaida to Iraq did so in Egyptian custody.

Unnamed US government officials, quoted in the New York Times, said Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan, made his most specific claims after the US handed him over to interrogators from a third country.

Claims from the officials that Al-Libi later admitted to inventing the allegations in order to avoid harsh treatment backed up earlier suggestions from Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the time of the war that al-Libi was possibly tortured.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Mr Powell’s senior aide, last month told the BBC that new information had suggested al-Libi’s statements “were obtained through interrogation techniques other than those authorised by the Geneva [conventions].”

The Bush administration has been on defensive in recent weeks over the “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorised for CIA agents off US soil and “extraordinary rendition” of detainees.

From Media Matters

Summary: L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post reported Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s statement that the United States “does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances,” without noting that the Bush administration’s definition of torture is at odds with international standards.

The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post all reported Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s December 5 statement that the United States “does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances,” without noting that the Bush administration’s definition of torture has been criticized as overly narrow. In contrast, The New York Times reported on December 7 that the administration’s circumscribed definition of torture is at odds with international standards. The New York Times noted that Rice’s statement has been criticized as misleading given that under the administration’s definition, U.S. interrogators are free to employ methods that fall outside of the narrow category of “torture” but that violate the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture. All three broadcast news outlets challenged directly or featured sources who challenged Rice’s misleading statement, noting that it rested on the administration’s limited definition of torture.

In a December 5 statement made before departing for a trip to Europe to meet with foreign government officials about concerns over reports of secret prisons operated on that continent by the CIA, Rice responded to recent criticisms of the United States’ treatment of detainees by saying “the United States does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances.”

In December 6 articles, two major newspapers — The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) — printed Rice’s statement but did not report that the administration’s definition of torture has been criticized by human rights groups, government officials, and members of Congress, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who authored an amendment defining torture that the White House has threatened to veto.

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