From BBC Online

Telegrams sent by the British security service led to the “extraordinary rendition” of two UK residents now in Guantanamo Bay, BBC News has learned.

Flight details sent to US authorities allowed Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna to be arrested in Gambia. The UK government has always said it opposes “extraordinary rendition” – secret flights taking terror suspects for interrogation in other countries. The Foreign Office denies requesting the men’s detention.

Mr al-Rawi and Mr al-Banna were arrested at Gatwick airport in November 2002, BBC2’s Newsnight has learned. British intelligence then sent US authorities a telegram saying one of them had been carrying an object that could have been used as part of an improvised explosive device.

The men were later released after MI5 found the device to be an innocent battery charger – but this time the US authorities were not informed. The following week the men continued their journey – a business trip to Gambia, west Africa.

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By Margaret Satterthwaite of the New York University School of Law, writing in the Jurist

Since 9/11, the U.S. government has used the discourse and authorizing rules of the laws of war while simultaneously flouting the limiting and protective rules of that regime, labeling them ‘quaint’ and inapplicable. At the same time, the Administration insists that human rights law is not applicable to this new ‘war,’ arguing alternatively that the relevant norms do not apply to extraterritorial conduct, that there is no relevant implementing legislation requiring the U.S. to abide by its international obligations, and that human rights law does not apply in situations of armed conflict. As to those standards it does concede applicability ‘ such as the prohibition on torture ‘ the Administration has largely defined away the practice. The effect is to take U.S. actions in the ‘War on Terror’ outside of both frameworks, dealing a blow to the rule of law.

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By Aleander Balzan in the EU Observer

“I have just learnt, to my regret, that the Macedonian Minister of the Interior, Ljubomir Mihailovski, does not want to meet the delegation of the European Parliament’s temporary committee,” said socialist MEP Claudio Fava in a statement. Claudio Fava is the rapporteur of the European Parliament committee created in January to investigate alledged CIA activities in Europe.

A group of EU lawmakers were planning to visit Macedonia in April, after a German citizen of Lebanese origin claimed that he was arrested by CIA agents in Macedonia.

On 13 March, Khaled el Masri gave his testimony during a sitting of the temporary committee on the alleged activities in European countries by the CIA. Khaled El- Masri said that he was arrested by CIA agents in Macedonia in December 2003, flown to Afghanistan and held there for months. Following five months of alleged torture he was than declared innocent and released in Albania.

In the European Parliament, members from the main conservative group challenged his allegations and insisted that he had no proof while liberal deputies accused the conservatives of trying to undermine the work of the committee.

“To find the truth about this case and about other likely cases of ‘extraordinary rendition’ is both political and moral obligation for our committee or for any European country,” added Mr Fava.

Allegations of illegal CIA activities in Europe were first voiced in November last year, after a Washington Post report said that the CIA used camps in Eastern European countries to interrogate terrorist suspects. Later on, the NGO, Human Rights Watch, reconfirmed the allegations, adding that interrogation methods amounting to torture could have been used.

Washington has neither confirmed nor denied the allegations over secret prisons in Europe but has denied using or condoning torture.

Dick Marty welcomes ‘important input’ of Venice Commission on member states’ legal obligations

“The Venice Commission has issued an excellent legal opinion that provides an important input for my inquiry on alleged secret detentions in Council of Europe member states,” said Dick Marty, Rapporteur and Chair of the Assembly’s Legal Affairs Committee, which requested the opinion in December 2005. Mr Marty said the 38-page text was “a thorough analysis of member states’ international law and human rights obligations, highlighting standards developed by the European Human Rights and Anti-Torture Conventions. Secret detentions, abductions and irregular transport of detainees from or through Europe to countries where persons are at risk of torture are flagrant violations of these human rights standards”. Mr Marty also indicated that he intends to present his report in June 2006.

Venice Commission opinion

Mr Marty’s second information memorandum

Secret detentions: Council of Europe action so far

By Jan Sliva in Globeandmail.com

Brussels ‘ Maher Arar told an investigative committee of the European Parliament on Thursday that he was kidnapped in New York and deported by U.S. authorities via Rome and Jordan to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months.

Mr. Arar, an Ottawa telecommunications engineer who holds dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship, was travelling on a Canadian passport when he was grabbed at a New York airport in September, 2002, during a stopover on his way home to Canada from vacation in Tunisia. He said he was sent to Syria for interrogation on suspicion of being a member of al-Qaeda, an allegation he denied.

‘I am a victim of extraordinary rendition,’ Mr. Arar told the EU committee. ‘I am not a terrorist, I don’t know anyone from al-Qaeda. I have never been to Afghanistan.’

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‘This illustrates how dangerously out of touch the US State Department is with most of Western opinion’ Andrew Tyrie, chairman of Britain’s all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary renditions

By Hannah Strange in London for ISN Security Watch (22/03/06)

As Europe probes allegations that US intelligence flights involved in renditions of terror suspects passed through its territory, Washington is moving to bolster the case for the practice, which it insists is an essential tool in the fight against terrorism.

The policy of extraordinary rendition – under which individuals suspected of terrorism are transferred to detention facilities abroad – has been denounced by critics as immoral, uncivilized, and counterproductive. But the US administration is now attacking what it calls the ‘recharacterization’ of the policy, which it says was for decades widely regarded as an acceptable, and even heroic practice.

Renditions were ‘an important tool for all countries in fighting terrorism’, a senior US State Department official told ISN Security Watch earlier this month. It had been practiced ‘for many decades, by many countries’, and until its recent recharacterization had been an ‘accepted practice and not a dirty word’, he said.

‘The purpose of rendition is not to send people where they could be tortured,’ he said. ‘It is to ensure that people who are wanted for terrorist acts around the world are brought to justice.’

The practice had been reviewed and upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, he said, specifically in the case of Carlos the Jackal, a terrorist captured in Sudan in 1994 and rendered back to France, where he is now imprisoned. It used to be that finding terror suspects and bringing them to justice ‘was a heroic thing to do [‘] people were applauding this’, he continued.

Asked why terror suspects would be transferred abroad for interrogation if it was not to evade human rights protections, the official said that in the majority of cases, renditions took place because an individual captured in one country was wanted by another country. ‘What happens is, all intelligence agencies around the world share information with each other and cooperate with each other,’ he said.

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From the Toronto Star

It’s not surprising that Maher Arar travelled with some trepidation from Toronto to Brussels early this morning.

The 35-year-old Ottawa telecommunications engineer had his flight plan rerouted in 2002 by American authorities who believed he was a terrorism suspect, becoming one of the most famous victims of the controversial practice of rendition, in which detainees are transferred for interrogation to a country known to use torture.

Instead of allowing him to return to Canada from a family vacation abroad, U.S. authorities detained Arar during a stopover in New York and put him on a private jet to Jordan. He was then driven to Syria, where he was tortured and held for a year without charges.

Arar said in an interview yesterday he felt he had to overcome his fears of flying and the possibility of still remaining on some type of watch list, so he could testify this week before a European Union committee. His Toronto lawyers, Marlys Edwardh and Lorne Waldman, made the trip with him.

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From Times Online

The United States has lost its moral compass and fallen out of step with the rest of the world in the wake of September 11, the former United Nations human rights commissioner has warned. Mary Robinson expressed sadness and regret at America’s erosion of human rights as part of its “War on Terror”. In a speech in central London, Mrs Robinson praised the British courts for taking a global lead on interpreting international human rights laws.

Highlighting the US’s opposition last week to the creation of a new UN Human Rights Council, Mrs Robinson said: “It illustrates the seismic shift which has taken place in the relation of the US to global rule of law issues. Today, the US no longer leads, but is too often seen merely to march out of step with the rest of the world.”

She added that she hoped it was a “temporary loss of moral compass”.

Speaking at an event organised by human rights and law reform group Justice, Mrs Robinson – who is also the former President of Ireland – criticised government’s use of Big Brother-style language to cover up their activities. “Misuse of language has also led to Orwellian euphemisms, so that ‘coercive interrogation’ is used instead of torture, or cruel and inhuman treatment; kidnapping becomes ‘extraordinary rendition’,” she said.

The former Irish leader disputed the argument that the post 9/11 world meant that human rights could be curtailed in the name of security. This would lead to democracies “losing the moral high ground”, she said. “Almost five years after 9/11, I think we must be honest in recognising how far international commitment to human rights standards has slipped in such a short time,” she told an audience at Middle Temple Hall.

“In the US in particular, the ambivalence about torture, the use of extraordinary rendition and the extension of presidential powers have all had a powerful ‘knock on’ effect around the world, often in countries that lack the checks and balances of independent courts, a free press and vigorous non-governmental organisation and academic communities.

“The establishment of an off-shore prison in Guantanamo (and) its retention in the face of the most principled and sustained criticism … are all aspects of this situation.”

Mrs Robinson went on: “The tables have turned, and it is UK rather than US courts which are taking a lead as interpreters of fundamental human rights, on the basis of the European Convention and – by extension – the body of international human rights treaty law.

“This new situation is well illustrated by recent House of Lords decisions, most notably their ruling that evidence obtained through torture is inadmissible in any proceedings before UK courts.” But she warned that “political decisions” in Britain – such as pre-trial detention periods or limiting the right to peaceful demonstration – could become examples used to justify the behaviour by the state in less democratic countries.