With the Bush administration attempting to redefine torture for the world we link here to the UN

‘Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment’

Two of the most relevant articles are given below:

Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Article 3

1. No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

And yes, really, the US did sign up and ratify! (21 Oct 1994)

Full article at Adnkronos International

Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has issued an indignant statement denying any involvement in the disappearance of Egyptian imam Abu Omar who Italian prosecutors say was kidnapped from Milan by CIA agents in February 2003. “I ask myself, if not even the official denials are picked up and instead are hidden under a mountain of falsities, what must we do to get it across that we had nothing to do with the kidnap of Abu Omar?” Berlusconi’s statement reads.

“I repeat, for the umpteenth time, that the government was not involved in any way in the matter, neither myself, nor my ministers, nor my undersecretaries, nor any Italian institution were ever advised or informed by anyone at all. I deny most emphatically every false version of events and I reject with disdain every attempt to falsify the truth,” the statement concludes.

Any comment Dr. Rice?

From The Guardian

Condoleezza Rice does not seem prepared to explain very much when she meets European leaders facing mounting pressure about the US policy of “extraordinary rendition” – flying terrorist suspects round the world to secret jails where they are allegedly tortured beyond the reach of any legal system. Broadly speaking, the message from the secretary of state as she embarked on her trip to Berlin, Brussels and points east yesterday was a blunt “trust and cooperate” on the basis that we are all in the same boat in the “war on terror”. The sovereignty of US allies is respected, Dr Rice insisted, adding that if they were failing to inform their own citizens that was a matter for them. If that clever hint is true there may be much embarrassment. The best Jack Straw could manage was to welcome her carefully-constructed denial of torture. The Foreign Office says it has “no evidence to corroborate media allegations about the use of UK territory in rendition operations.” But taken the strong circumstantial evidence about US executive aircraft owned by CIA front companies transiting this country (and Ireland) this smacks of lawyerly evasion. Is there really no information? Do British intelligence officers working with the US just look the other way or make sure no questions are asked when these aircraft (210 since 9/11) land? It will be the task of the all-party committee which began work yesterday to provide full and honest answers.

Such bland assurances will not now make this row go away – in Germany, where there are said to have been 400 rendition flights, Spain or Romania, the site of one of several alleged “black prisons”. The Council of Europe and the European Union are both investigating. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a former FCO legal adviser, insists any illegal acts must be investigated. David Sheffer, a former US ambassador for war crime issues, blames the “warped interpretation” of international law by the US since 9/11.

Dr Rice did not deny that rendition was taking place, only that the US does not knowingly send people to be tortured. So why are “enemy combatants” sent to countries like Egypt, Libya and Syria, with such bad records in this area? Rendition is damaging in other ways: innocent people have been detained and witnesses been unavailable for trials because the US will not admit it is holding them. Fighting terrorism isn’t easy. But legality and morality have to go hand in hand. How can democracies upbraid China, Syria, Iran or Zimbabwe if “our” unacceptable human rights abuses are unchecked. Dr Rice should address these concerns and speak the truth. So must our own government.

From The Independent

When Khaled al Masri took the bus from Ulm to Macedonia two years ago, his only objective was to cool off after a row with his wife.

But his troubles were only beginning. At the Serb-Macedonian border crossing he was hauled off the coach and handed over to three men in civilian clothes carrying handguns. His name – identical to one of the 11 September hijackers – had lit up a police computer.

The German citizen did not know it at the time, but he was starting out on a journey into the darkest heart of America’s war on terror. His ordeal would last five months, where, unknown to his family and friends, he would be trussed up, tortured and abused before being dumped in Albania, fearing he was to be shot.

The controversy over secret CIA flights, torture and illegal imprisonment, continues to rage across Europe. Yesterday saw the extraordinary spectacle of Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, acknowledging the CIA’s “mistake” to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

And in London, the former Law Lord and judge Lord Steyn said that “if British authorities knew the nature of these flights they would be guilty of war crimes”.

For the full article go here

An extended article form ABC describes some of the CIA’s interrogation techniques and some of the consequences of their use. While useful, the article keeps a fairly narrow focus on CIA procedures, uses somewhat euphemistic language (!) and does not address the full extent of prisoner abuse and deaths in US custody.

Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors.

They say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen. All gave their accounts on the condition that their names and identities not be revealed. Portions of their accounts are corrobrated by public statements of former CIA officers and by reports recently published that cite a classified CIA Inspector General’s report.

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

For the full article go to The Guardian

Last night MPs, who have formed a campaign group to challenge British support for the CIA’s so-called extraordinary renditions programme, met for the first time and demanded that the government come clean about the use of UK facilities. The all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary renditions was presented with a report by American legal academics which suggested that Britain may be breaking international law by “acquiescing” in torture.

The Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the parliamentary committee, questioned the value of the assurances sought from countries where suspected terrorists were sent that they would not be tortured.”We have to ask ourselves how valuable assurances of that type are from countries such as Egypt, Syria and Libya,” he said.” I think it is highly likely that some of these people will have been tortured.”

He said the committee would ask Mr Straw to give evidence to it, adding that the MPs were “not prepared to put up with vacuous replies”.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, described Ms Rice’s admission as disingenuous. “What possible purpose is served by rendition other than to subject individuals to harsher treatment than would otherwise be the case?” he asked.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said any suggestion from Ms Rice that the ends justified the means “would give dangerous ammunition to every dictator and terrorist around the world”.

By LILA RAJIVA in Counter Punch

The CIA’s Rendition Flights to Secret Prisons

Dana Priest’s recent Washington Post article, “Anatomy of a CIA ‘rendition’ gone wrong”(1) only confirms what those who have watched the torture scandal closely already know. Abu Ghraib was no anomaly but the most visible tip of a widespread but clandestine policy. Priest reveals details about a case in which the CIA used German, Macedonian, Albanian and Afghan authorities and European air space and terminals to “render” a German citizen snatched up abroad for interrogation and torture, without any material cause.

Here’s the case that’s now causing a furor in Europe:

Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen resident in Ulm, Germany, went on a trip to Macedonia, was arrested by local authorities on New Year’s Eve, 2003 and held for over 3 weeks in a motel. Then, he was handcuffed, blindfolded, stripped by masked men, drugged, diapered and flown to Afghanistan, on the basis of a “hunch” by a counter-terrorist chief in the CIA. The hunch was no more than the fact that Masri’s name resembled that of an associate of one of the 9-11 hijackers

Masri was imprisoned for five months by Afghans and possibly Americans and claims he was tortured. A bus driver confirms that Masri was snatched up by border guards on the date he alleges; forensic analysis of his hair shows malnutrition during the time he claims he was imprisoned; flight logs confirm that a CIA front company flew a plane out of Macedonia on the day he says he was abducted.

Back in the US, Masri’s passport and story held up and in May 2004, around the time when the Abu Ghraib scandal first burst into public view in America, the White House sent U.S. ambassador in Germany, Daniel R. Coats, on a special mission to German Interior Minister Schily, an ardent Bush supporter, to inform him of the error and tell him to keep the details secret should Masri go public.

Later in May, Masri claims he was visited in prison by a man he says was German, who told him that he was going to be released without documents that might confirm his story because the Americans would never admit to a mistake. He was released, flown out to Albania – Macedonia wouldn’t admit him – and dumped onto a narrow country road at dusk. From there he was escorted to the international airport at Tirana by armed men and rejoined his family in Lebanon where they’d gone.

Masri’s attorneys say they intend to file a lawsuit in U.S. courts this week. Neither the CIA nor the German ministry which was told about the case, is talking.

Masri’s story is given support by other news pouring in from all over Europe in the last week:

December 1: The British Guardian reports that over 300 CIA flights have landed at European airports and that CIA planes visited Germany and Britain over 200 times, if chartered flights are included. According to the NY Times, there were 94 flights in Germany, 76 in Britain, 33 in Ireland, 16 in Portugal, 15 in Spain and Czechoslovakia each and two chartered flights that made stopovers in France. French officials say they had no knowledge of the clandestine flights. If so, the flights certainly violated French sovereignty.(2)

December 2: Le Figaro in France adds that the first flight was made on March 31, 2002 by a Lear jet that stopped in Brest en route from Iceland to Turkey, via Rome. The crew was reportedly alone. The second flight, which stopped over near Paris on July 20, 2005, from Norway, was a Gulfstream III jet that landed six times at Guantanamo.(3)

December 3: Berliner Zeitung in Germany reports that CIA aircraft used European airports minimally 15 times this past year and says that America’s Ramstein Air Base (Germany) was a hub for the flights between 2002 and 2004. (4)

December 4: The Council of Europe, the foremost human rights watchdog in Europe, headed by Swiss senator Dick Marty and using satellite imagery, makes its first closed door report in Paris on “black sites” in eastern Europe and the flights in Europe. Marty also cites the illegal abduction in February 2003 of accused terrorist and Egyptian cleric Abu Omar from Milan to Germany and then Egypt, where he was reportedly tortured. (5)

Human Rights Watch identifies the Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania and Poland’s Szczytno-Szymany airport as probable sites based on flight logs of the CIA aircraft between 2001 to 2004. Other airports possibly used were Palma de Majorca in Spain’s Balearic Islands, Larnaca in Cyprus, and Shannon in Ireland. The CIA flight logs were analyzed by Mark Galasco, a senior military analyst with the organization who was formerly a civilian intelligence office with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Not someone who can be easily dismissed as anti-American. (6)

Meanwhile, Poland and Romania as well as another ten nations deny having CIA facilities in their territory while Austria and Denmark are investigating US violations of their air space. There are over six investigations into flights in various countries.

To all this the White House has tried outright denial. Stephen Hadley, the National Security Advisor, told Fox News Sunday on December 4,

“… we comply with U.S. law. We respect the sovereignty of the countries with which we deal. And we do not move people around the world so that they can be tortured.”

But when asked on CNN’s “Late Edition” specifically if the U.S. operates secret prisons in Europe, Hadley side-stepped a clear-cut denial, preferring to fudge, “there is a lot of cooperation at a variety of levels on the war on terror.”

Hadley is lying on all three counts he cites –

1. As the flight logs and investigative reports document, the US is moving people around the world to be tortured.

2. Since all 25 member states have signed the European Convention on Human Rights, and the International Convention Against Torture, secret torture cells would indeed be a violation of the laws of foreign countries. If officials in this country did not know about these flights, as seems to be the case, then the US did indeed violate their national sovereignty.

3. The United Nations Convention Against Torture was also ratified by the U.S in 1994, and it requires “substantial grounds for believing” that a detainee will be tortured abroad.

Since Syria, Jordan, Egypt and many of the other countries where suspects have been rendered have turned up all too frequently as violators in human rights monitoring and have been cited by the State Department itself, the US cannot plausibly argue as it has, that it does not have “substantial grounds for believing” rendered suspects would be tortured there. Its own officials are on record saying just the opposite. Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA’s former counterterrorism director, told Newsday about an al-Qaeda suspect taken to Egypt, “They promptly tore his fingernails out and he started to tell things.” (February 6, 2003). Former CIA agent Bob Baer told The New Statesman, “If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear — never to see them again — you send them to Egypt,”

Since CIA officials knew the fate in store of those rendered, the US is in utter

violation of international laws on torture which are binding on it.

It’s not necessary anymore to hedge discussion of the program with words like “alleged,” for Masri is only the latest in a long line of renditions without cause/due process of any kind: Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian citizen, seized by a CIA team in Pakistan in October 2001, sent to Egypt, burned, electrocuted and beaten till he bled in his sleep from his nose, mouth, and ears, was dumped in Guantanamo and then released without being charged; Mohamedou Oulad Slahi, a Mauritanian and former Canada resident, taken by the CIA to Jordan for interrogation for 8 months, was sent to Guantanamo and released; Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian imprisoned by Indonesia authorities in January 2002, flown to Egypt for interrogation, was returned to the CIA four months later, held for 13 months in Afghanistan, then sent to Guantanamo and later released; Maher Arar a naturalized Canadian citizen, kidnapped in New York in September 2002, was taken to Syria, held in a coffin and tortured with metal whips. He proved to have no ties to terrorism and was released.

Masri is telling the truth. There is just too much testimony from detainees that makes substantially the same charges, too many CIA admissions and leaks, too many eye-witness reports, the meticulously analyzed flight logs and even supporting medical evidence.

The Masri case is without any doubt an illegal operation involving authorities in at least five countries – Macedonia, Afghanistan, Germany, Albania, and the U.S.

Let me spell that out. In pursuit of the global war on terror, the U.S. government, apparently conspiring with foreign intelligence, has snatched a citizen of one country off the streets of another for no credible reason whatsoever, violating the sovereignty of several foreign countries in the process. It has then sent him to still another foreign country for torture for several months. And, having found itself mistaken, it has confiscated/withheld the documents necessary for the victim to substantiate a legal claim against the US government. There was no formal charge, there was no notification of the family, there were no witnesses called, there was no lawyer provided, there was no explanation or restitution offered.

Again, note. The CIA held these prisoners in contravention of the laws even of the torturing countries. Even Egypt, Syria or Jordan have legal systems – however harsh – that would have necessitated charges and a legal defense. But as ex-FBI agent Dan Coleman has stated, “We’re taking people, and keeping them in our own custody [my emphasis] in third countries. That’s an enormous problem….There was a process there [in Egypt],” Coleman says. “But what’s our process? We have no method over there other than our laws”and we’ve decided to ignore them. What are we now, the Huns? If you don’t talk to us, we’ll kill you?” (7)

What is also clamoring to be asked is if the black sites allegedly in Eastern Europe – and according to the Post article, also in Thailand – are really all that there are to the story?

Given the extraordinary sensitivity of the whole program, what are the chances that CIA leaks tell the whole story? What about Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Pakistan, and many other countries partnered with the US in the global war on terror who have dismal human rights records.

Uzbekistan has recently been in the news about just that. Craig Murray, the former British ambassador there, told 60 Minutes that Uzbek citizens, captured in Afghanistan, were flown back to Tashkent on an American plane operating on a regular basis. Uzbeki torture techniques include drowning, suffocation, rape, and immersion in boiling liquid. Murray calls these techniques “medieval” but there is not one that has not been used by the US, not only in the war on terror” but within US prisons. When Murray complained that British intelligence was using information elicited by torture, he was recalled and quit the foreign service.(8)

Indonesia is another strong candidate to have black sites, since the Asian tsunami last year provided the perfect justification and cover for US spy satellites and military to enter the area. Just this past November 23, the Bush administration announced it will lift a six-year arms embargo and resume full relations with the Indonesian military providing aid to “support US and Indonesian security objectives, including counterterrorism, [my emphasis] maritime security and disaster relief.” (9)

And what about Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean? The US has vehemently denied a black site there, but what credibility do such denials have? Could the focus on Eastern Europe turn out to be an elaborate feint or a secondary story, as so much else in the uncovering of this story?

Masri claims he was not tortured but beaten. How many unknown victims permanently “disappeared”?

Finally, let’s not forget that the Masri case was known at the highest level and concealed with the knowledge of then National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. And for good reason. At a time when the administration was frantically dismissing Abu Ghraib as a case of a “few rotten apples,” Masri’s case shows it for what it really was – a reckless policy put in place by the administration in violation of US and international laws.

Lila Rajiva is a free-lance journalist and author of “The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American media,” (Monthly Review Press). She can be reached at: [email protected]

Notes:

1. Dana Priest, “Anatomy of a CIA rendition gone wrong,” Washington Post, December 4, 2005. Also, Dana Priest, “CIA Hold Terror Suspects in Secret Sites,” Washington Post, November 2, 2005.

2. “Twist to terror suspects row as logs show 80 CIA planes visited UK,” Guardian, UK, December 1, 2005 and “Reports of Secret U.S. Prisons in Europe Draw Ire and Otherwise Red Faces,” Ian Fisher, NY Times, December 1, 2005.

3. “Paper: CIA flights made stopovers in France,” AP, December 2, 2005.

4. “CIA’s secret detainee flights concern Germany,” AP November 26, 2005.

5. “Many Hints of CIA prison flights,” AP, November 22, 2005.

6. “EU to probe reports of secret CIA prisons,” AP, November 3, 2005

7. “Outsourcing Torture,” Jane Meyer, New Yorker, February 7/14, 2005.

8. “CIA Flying Suspects To Torture?” CBS Sixty Minutes, March 6, 2005.

9. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/152214.

With CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights stopping off at European airports and British intelligence agencies relying on information extracted by cruel methods, Western governments have embraced torture with terrifying ease.

Neil Mackay from the Sunday Herald investigates

TO ELIZA Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, one of the biggest successes of British intelligence in recent years was the foiling of the so-called ricin plot, which she believes would never have been uncovered if it hadn’t been for vital pieces of information passed to British intelligence by the Algerian Secret Service.

The Algerians were able to alert the British in January 2003 to the existence of the plot after interrogating and torturing a suspected Islamic militant and former British resident called Mohammed Meguerba who said al-Qaeda affiliates in the UK were planning the mass poisoning of Britons.

The only trouble was, there was no plot. Four of the defendants were acquitted of terrorism and four others had the cases against them abandoned. Only one man, Kamal Bourgass, was convicted in relation to the claims after he murdered Special Branch Detective Constable Stephen Oake during a raid.

The Meguerba case provides an almost perfect snapshot of Britain’s complicity in the new global dirty war that the Western powers find themselves sucked into. While Meguerba was almost certainly living on the fringes of Islamic extremism in the UK ‘ and Bourgass was without doubt a dangerous fanatic ‘ Meguerba’s claims were fatally flawed because of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his captors.

The use of torture is again in the full glare of publicity after the European Union demanded information about CIA rendition flights. These rendition flights work like this: a suspect is captured in one country and then taken, or rendered (in CIA-speak), to friendly nations such as Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Uzbekistan which routinely use torture. Often the private CIA jets which transport the captives around the world stop off in the UK ‘ the two favoured airports being Glasgow and Prestwick. After the suspect is tortured, and inevitably confesses, the information is fed back to Western intelligence services like MI6 via the CIA.

As Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, says: torture contaminates the pool of British intelligence. It slips false information into the databanks of the UK’s intelligence services which diverts attention and resources away from real threats to fake ones. Claims extracted under torture also end up in the mouths of British politicians who then pour these false claims into the ears of the British public. A lie beaten out of someone in an Algerian prison, therefore, becomes a fixed fact in the mind of the British people.

But Britain’s complicity in torture is much more than simply receiving information from either the CIA or a friendly nation’s intelligence service which indulges in torture. Take the case of rendered suspect Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi. A British resident, born in Ethiopia, al-Habashi was seized in Pakistan and taken to Morocco where the worst of his torture involved a scalpel being taken to his penis. MI6 visited him in Pakistan and told him he was going to be ‘tortured by Arabs’.

In Morocco, he was told that British intelligence had been working with his Arab interrogators. Questions had been sent to Morocco by UK officers. In effect, says his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, MI6 may as well have been in the torture chamber while al-Habashi was being brutalised.

Then there is the case of another of Stafford Smith’s clients, Omar Deghayes. Deghayes became a British resident after fleeing Libya with his family following persecution at the hands of the Gaddafi regime. He was wrongly identified as appearing as a Chechen fighter in a video. Today, however, Deghayes is still in Guantanamo Bay, and blind in one eye after being tortured.

The US used a CIA rendition plane to fly Libyan agents to Guantanamo where they told Deghayes they would kill him. British intelligence visited Deghayes seven times during his detention. One British officer told Deghayes if he helped the Americans ‘you will be back home in the UK’.

MI6 even happily takes intelligence from regimes which literally boil people alive. Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, said rendered prisoners were tortured by the Uzbek secret police, and the confessions then sent to the CIA who sent the documents to MI6. The intelligence reports, Murray says, were ‘bollocks’ extracted under torture and not worth the ‘blood-stained paper’ they were written on.

The slide towards the kind of torture that men like al-Habashi and Deghayes suffered began within weeks of September 11. One of the first people to publicly advocate a return to the thumbscrews was Alan Dershowitz, the celebrity lawyer and Harvard law professor. With chilling prescience, he said that ‘torture warrants’ signed by a judge would help control ‘the inevitable’ use of torture by the USA.

Dershowitz is an advocate of ‘non-lethal torture’ an example of which, he says, would be slipping ‘a sterilised needle under the fingernails’ of a suspect. While he was mulling over torture publicly, the Bush administration was paving the way behind the scenes for it to become a part of US foreign policy.

The seeds of torture lie within the Bush post-9/11 philosophy of ‘pre-emption’. Just as Bush wanted to take out Saddam before Iraq turned its non-existent weapons of mass destruction on the USA, the thinking within the administration was terrorists needed to be taken out before they pulled off another attack that left thousands dead.

On February 7, 2002, Bush issued a memo to Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, the director of the CIA and the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff headed Humane Treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban Detainees. The memo said that Bush had taken a decision based on ‘the opinion of the Department of Justice dated January 22, 2002 and on the legal opinion rendered by the Attorney General’ that ‘none of the provisions of [the] Geneva [Conventions] apply to our conflict with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world’.

The memo spells out that al-Qaeda prisoners are not ‘legally entitled’ to humane treatment. The moral and legal effects of that still ripple through our world today. In August 2002 the Justice Department told the White House that international laws against torture ‘may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations’ of al-Qaeda operatives. A Justice Department memo, written following a CIA request for information on conducting interrogations, also added that a CIA officer who tortured an al-Qaeda terrorist ‘would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda network’ and that such ‘necessity and self-defence could provide justifications that would eliminate criminal liability’. This memo was written by the then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales who is now the US attorney general.

The torture memo goes on to water down its definition, saying that for an act to be torture it ‘must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions or even death’. Acts listed as torture included: severe beatings with truncheons, threats of death, burning with cigarettes, electric shocks to the genitals, rape and sexual assault and forcing one prisoner to watch the torture of another.

The memo continued: ‘For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, lasting months or even years.’

Gonzales also told Bush in January 2002 that the ‘new paradigm’ for fighting the war on terror ‘renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations’. He also recommended that the President dump the Geneva Conventions as ‘prosecutors and independent counsels ‘ may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges’ of war crimes. In August 2002, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel said that for an act to constitute torture it must be ‘specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain and suffering that is difficult to endure’. Such a loose definition became a torturer’s charter.

It was a short jump from here to the abuses that went on ‘ and still go on ‘ inside Guantanamo Bay and in US holding centres in Afghanistan, such as Bagram airbase. But there was more to come ‘ now torture was to be made a battlefield norm under Bush.

In March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon conducted a review of torture laws. The report was written by the defence department’s chief lawyer William J Haynes. He found that ‘in order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ‘ [laws forbidding torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority.

‘If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, [Department of Justice] believes that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.’

Until December 2002, the US army was only allowed to use 17 approved interrogation techniques with prisoners. These were all verbal. In effect, interrogators could scare the daylights out of the suspect and verbally insult them, but they couldn’t lay a finger on them; in fact, they could barely raise their voice and they were forbidden from lying.

But from December 2002, all that changed. That was when Donald Rumsfeld approved some 16 new interrogation techniques. Not only were yelling and lying allowed, but abusive, violent methods were greenlighted as well. These included: putting prisoners in stress positions ‘ such as being made to squat with your arms behind your head for hours on end ‘ isolation in total darkness in a sound-proof cell, hooding, stripping prisoners naked, using dogs in interrogations, removing religious items and blankets, ‘mild non-injurious contact’ such as grabbing, poking and pushing and forcing prisoners to have beards and hair shaved off. Rumsfeld later authorised sleep deprivation.

This was the start of the slippery slope to the horrors of Abu Ghraib; to a place where disappearances, extra- judicial executions and torture became an acceptable part of the war on terror.

When military commanders were deemed too soft on prisoners they were removed from their posts ‘ just as the first Guantanamo commander, Brigadier General Rick Baccus was because he had given the Koran to prisoners, allowed them special meals during Ramadan and a card explaining their rights. In place of Baccus, Rumsfeld appointed Major General Geoffrey Miller who brought in hooding, stripping and dogs. Miller was later sent to Iraq to oversee prisoner interrogations on Rumsfeld’s command. Miller once told Brigadier General Janis Karpinski that prisoners were ‘dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you’ve lost control of them’.

The poison of torture has now spread throughout the world’s greatest democracies. The United Nations recently damned Britain, Canada, France and Sweden ‘ as well as the USA ‘ for violating international human rights legislation by deporting suspected terrorists to countries like Egypt, Algeria and Syria. These deportations have been justified on the grounds of ‘diplomatic assurances’ the suspects would not be tortured. Human rights organisations say the promises are worthless.

Poland and Romania are also rumoured to be home to ‘black site’ secret CIA prisons where suspects are held completely incommunicado. At least 26 ‘ghost detainees’ are held in secret sites outside the USA. Vice President Dick Cheney even recently said he wanted the CIA to be exempt from a proposed ban on the torture of terrorist suspects in US custody.

The UN and the Council of Europe recently said that the behaviour of the western powers ‘ principally the USA and the UK ‘ was undermining democracy, making the world a more dangerous place and the way the war on terror has been prosecuted is now the biggest threat to the rule of law and human rights since the rise of Nazi Germany.

Alvaro Gils-Robles, the Council of Europe’s commissioner on human rights, said: ‘We display a lack of confidence in our values before those who are trying to undermine them. Respecting democracy and human rights does not make you vulnerable to terrorism. Democracy cannot be defended by resorting to the barbarism of torture. We can’t violate democracy in the name of democracy.’

From The Independent

Allegations about the use of British airports to refuel CIA planes carrying terrorist suspects to countries where they are to be interrogated and tortured raise the question whether this has anything to do with us. Why should the UK be involved or concerned?

First, we are involved because of our obligations under international law. The UK is a party to the Convention against Torture which imposes an absolute prohibition on torture, with no exceptions. So is the US. The ban on torture applies not just to the act itself but also prohibits sending people to countries where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being tortured.

General rules of international law describe ways in which a state may be responsible for the acts of another: a state which assists another in committing a breach of international law is itself breaking the law if it does so in knowledge of the facts.

There would be serious concerns about the UK’s own responsibility under the Torture Convention if the detainees are, as alleged, being flown to a country where they can be interrogated by methods amounting to torture, and if it were to be known by our Government that our airports were being used to assist with the flights.

Second, the allegations raise concerns under our own criminal law. The obligation under the Torture Convention has been translated into our law in the Criminal Justice Act 1988, an Act well known from its use in the Pinochet case. The Act creates the offence of torture and allows the courts to try it wherever the offence was committed and by a person of whatever nationality. Even if the persons concerned never leave a plane on the Tarmac at a British airport they are covered by the law.

The letters written on Tuesday by Liberty to various police constables claim that it amounts to torture to detain someone who is aware that the purpose of the detention is to bring them to a place where they will be subjected to torture, as that itself will undoubtedly inflict severe mental suffering. That is not an entirely fanciful claim. The Torture Convention requires states to begin an investigation wherever there is “reasonable ground” to believe that an act of torture has been committed in its territory.

Third, we must be concerned about these allegations because the relevant rules of international and domestic law reflect fundamental values of our society. No statement that “the rules of the game have changed” can apply to principles such as these. The Government’s condemnation of torture needs to come across clearly in all areas of its domestic and foreign policy. The policy of seeking diplomatic assurances that persons deported from this country will not be tortured, controversial as it is, should be matched by a determination to avoid any form of assistance with the outsourcing of torture by others.

It has to be asked whether there is anything that could have been done by the Government in relation to the alleged flights; should the Government have known about any detainees on board and could these flights have been stopped?

The rules are different for civilian and state aircraft. In principle, civilian aircraft operating for non-commercial purposes are entitled to enter a state’s airspace and land in its territory for reasons such as refuelling.

But are these civilian aircraft? If the allegations are correct, they are in use for reasons of the state, which would make them “state aircraft” for the purposes of international law. Governments can and do require permission before state aircraft land in their territory, and they are entitled to impose conditions for landing.

There is a need for the facts to come out. Reports about “extraordinary renditions” of persons to prisons abroad for coercive interrogation techniques are not new. The allegations about the use of British and other European airports have similarly been current for some months. If there is no truth in some of these claims, that should be said at once.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst is a former deputy head of the Foreign Office legal team and is now a fellow of Chatham House

By Colin Brown and Andrew Buncombe in The Independent

Pressure is mounting on the White House to answer claims that the CIA is using UK airports to fly terrorist suspects for torture in secret prisons in Europe. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the former Foreign Office lawyer who resigned over the Iraq war, warned Tony Blair last night that he cannot duck the questions crowding in about the flights which could mean Britain has been complicit in torture.

In The Independent, Ms Wilmshurst, now a fellow of Chatham House, said the Prime Minister could not justify breaking the international convention against torture by saying the “rules of the game have changed” because of the war on terrorism.

Britain’s European partners stepped up the pressure for details to be disclosed about hundreds of secret flights by CIA-operated jets.

Sarah Ludford, a British member of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee, said: “I am not at all reassured that there is sufficient determination by [member states] to establish the truth,” she said. “The allegations are now beyond speculation. We now have sufficient evidence involving CIA flights. We need to know who was on those flights, where they went.”

EU leaders are ready to follow up their request to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to challenge the White House. On Tuesday he wrote to Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, calling for details of the secret flights to be revealed. Mr Straw said yesterday he had raised the issue with Ms Rice. She is likely to face direct challenges about flights when she visits Brussels next week.

This month, prisoners were reported held in two eastern European countries, believed to be Romania and Poland, brought there on flights the CIA calls “extraordinary rendition”. Michael Ratner, director of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, said: “It’s a secret. No one knows what happens in the rendition process or in the gulag of secret CIA hellholes.”

But journalists and campaigners have tracked some of what is happening by monitoring the flight records of planes known to be used by the CIA. Plane-spotters have helped compile information on the aircraft – including one Gulfstream originally identified as N379P but now renumbered N44982 – and their movements.

Twenty-six planes apparently used by the CIA have made 307 flights in Europe since 9/11. Of these, 94 had stops in Germany and 76 in Britain, at Luton, Glasgow, Prestwick and Northolt. The UK government has denied prisoners are being held on a US-operated base on British-owned Diego Garcia.

John Sifton, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, which has released a list of 26 “ghost detainees” held by the US without access to lawyers, said probably only a few of the 307 flights involved moving prisoners. Most, he said, were likely transferring CIA personnel. “It’s impossible to know for sure how many are innocent,” he said.

There is a debate in the US about whether torture should be permitted for extracting information. A Bill tabled by Senator John McCain to outlaw torture passed the Senate but is being opposed by Vice President Dick Cheney, who wants special exemption for CIA agents.

Increasingly, politicians in Britain and Europe are showing a determination to find out whether the US has “black sites” in eastern Europe where harsh treatment of suspected terrorists would raise fewer questions. Alexander Alvaro, a German Liberal MEP and member of the European civil liberties committee, said Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, would raise the issue in talks with George Bush. “I think our Chancellor will point out that Germany would not tolerate secret camps in Europe.”

There are growing calls at Westminster for Mr Blair to block the CIA flights. The Labour MP Harry Cohen said: “It is not for the UK Government to connive in and facilitate people disappearance. The Government’s blind-eye approach to enforcing the law is not acceptable.”

An all-party group to challenge the UK and US Governments over the transport of suspected terrorists, was launched yesterday at Westminster. It will be chaired by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, former Labour foreign affairs minister, Chris Mullin, and Sir Menzies Campbell, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats.

With an European visit by Condaleezza Rice imminent, Robert Baer, a former CIA officer dealing with the Middle East, discusses “extraordinary rendition” and his views on what action European countries should take in order to combat this illegal practice.

Click here to listen to the BBC radio interview

The UK based human rights organisation Liberty, issued the following press release yesterday. Their letter to Jack Straw can also be read here

Liberty demands Government halt CIA ‘torture’ flight stops in Britain

Human rights group calls for USA assurances on extraordinary rendition

Today Liberty called on Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to seek assurances in the next 14 days from the USA that it is not using UK airports to transport suspects to countries that torture. Liberty fears that the UK is in breach of domestic and international law by allowing CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights to land and re-fuel in Britain.

Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti said:

‘It is troubling that our Government chases Algeria for anti-torture assurances but cowers from confronting the USA on the same issue. It is the abhorrence of torture that distinguishes all democrats from dictators and terrorists. What can we say to those who perpetrate atrocities in London and around the world if we allow ourselves to become complicit in the cheapening of human life?’

Liberty also requested that the Police Chief Constables of Bedfordshire, Cambridge, Dorset, Essex, Hampshire, the Metropolitan Police, the Ministry of Defence Police, Suffolk, Sussex, Thames Valley, and West Midlands investigate suspected extraordinary rendition flights at their local airports. They too have been asked to respond within 14 days.

Liberty’s call to action against extraordinary rendition marks the launch of its ‘No torture, no compromise’ campaign which seeks to make the UK government honour its positive obligation to stop torture and ill-treatment.