By Phillip Watts in Revolution Online

The McCain/Graham-Levin Amendment Legalizes Torture

In December the infamous McCain “anti-torture” amendment was signed in to law as part of a Defense Appropriations bill. But in reality “anti-torture” amendment and the negotiations behind it – ends up legalizing torture ‘ including setting new legal precedent. It not only makes it more possible for the US to utilize torture ‘ it insures prisoners at Guant’namo have no habeas rights ‘ the right to come before a court to determine the lawfulness of their imprisonment.

In the media John McCain was painted as standing up to Bush and bringing “reason” to the issue of torture. While McCain has voiced differences with the Bush Administration on torture, when the amendment was finally signed into law what was brought to light was the unity McCain ultimately has with the Bush torture program. As previously pointed out in Revolution, “McCain and Bush announced that they made a deal that gave both of them what they wanted: torture without worry about prosecution, and with deniability.”

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Martin Scheinin is the UN Human Rights Commission’s special rapporteur on human rights and counter terrorism. He was interviewed on BBC radio on Monday regarding UK involvement in the CIA extraordinary rendition flights scandal and the misleading of parliament by a Foreign Office minister. Encouragingly, he thinks that the ongoing investigations by the Council of Europe and the EU parliament will lead to the full truth gradually emerging.

You can listen to the interview here

From Amnesty International

Amnesty International’s reaction to the Council of Europe’s report on renditions and black sites:

Publication of the Council of Europe’s interim report on the issue of extraordinary renditions and secret detention centres in Europe is a step towards uncovering the truth about the extent to which US agents are carrying out renditions and related practices in Europe. However it makes clear that serious questions still need to be answered by a number of European governments.

The report recognizes that there is ‘a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ‘relocation’ or ‘outsourcing’ of torture’ ‘. What is needed now is the cooperation of all countries to ensure that they actively look at what is happening within their territory which may facilitate torture and take appropriate action.

‘European countries have the duty to fully collaborate in the investigations of gross human rights violations committed in their own territory. Not cooperating with those investigations is tantamount to collaborating with the abuses,’ said Claudio Cordone, Amnesty International’s Senior Director of Regional Programmes.

Amnesty International supports the call of Dick Marty, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly Rapporteur, for a full committee of inquiry, with extensive investigatory powers.

‘The allegations that secret detention centres have existed in Europe, as Dick Marty has pointed out, come from varied and credible sources. Not even the US government has denied their existence. The issue now is what will be done about it,’ said Claudio Cordone.

As you know, I gave evidence on Tuesday in Strasbourg before the Council of Europe Inquiry into Extraordinary Rendition. My evidence was on the willingness of the CIA to obtain information extracted under torture by foreign intelligence agencies, as the basis of the extraordinary rendition programme. I also provided documentary evidence of British government collusion with the CIA in obtaining torture intelligence.

On return from the Council of Europe, my suitcase has disappeared, including all my documents and notes and my laptop computer.

In dealing with the intelligence services, particularly in a situation which makes them hostile to you, there is a real danger of occasional paranoia. But it is a strange coincidence that on this particular occasion my computer and notes disappear, and a couple of factors make it stranger.

I flew Strasbourg to Paris Orly then Paris Orly to London City. This did not involve any change of terminal and there were a clear two hours between flights.

On arrival at London City, when my bag did not arrive, I went to the luggage desk to report it. The gentleman there affected surprise, waited for a while for the conveyor to clear, and then was taking down the details, including my name and the baggage check number. I spotted a handwritten piece of paper tucked under the keyboard of his computer – on which was already written my name and baggage check number. I challenged him on this, and he said that he had already received an email telling him my luggage was not on the plane.

Of course I wondered why he had not told me this, and why we had gone through the charade of waiting for the carousel to clear, and then asking me for details which he already had written down in front of him. Indeed, as he remained in front of his computer all the time, why would he have to copy down the email from his computer screen at all, and then lodge it under his computer, when he could just read the email off the screen?

When I returned home, I called the central Air France luggage number, and they told me that my suitcase had been located at Orly and was booked on the 7pm flight into London City. When it did not arrive, I phoned them again. They said that it had not been put on that flight, and was being held at the airport so it could not be rebooked on another flight. They could not tell me why it was being held, or who I might speak to about it.

An innocent explanation is not impossible, but it seems to me that the most probable explanation of these events is that the papers and computer of a witness to a Council of Europe inquiry have been intercepted by one member state, possibly acting in collusion with another State or States.

It is of course in the nature of such actions that it is difficult to prove, but I think the circumstances are such as to justify the CofE speaking to the French and British Ambassadors to make plain that the intimidation of witnesses before Senator Marty’s inquiry will not be accepted. They might ask them for a direct assurance that their employees have not intercepted or opened my baggage on the way back from Strasbourg, other than any search by customs etc not capable of being construed as in any way related to the subjects on which I gave evidence at the Council of Europe.

Craig Murray

By David Rennie in The Telegraph

An investigator for Europe’s leading human rights watchdog accused America yesterday of “gangster tactics” in its war on terrorism, notably the illegal transfer of terrorist suspects to countries likely to torture them.

Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, told the Council of Europe that the US, with European complicity, had shipped possibly more than 100 suspects to countries where they faced torture.

“The entire continent is involved,” Mr Marty told its parliamentary assembly. He presented colleagues with an interim report dominated by newspaper cuttings and buttressed with evidence from an Italian inquiry into the alleged 2003 kidnapping by the CIA of a radical Egyptian cleric, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, in Milan.

Mr Marty said it was “highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware” of such abductions. He accused Britain of particular complicity on the basis of a leaked secret memo from Sir Michael Wood, the chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office. In the 2003 memo Sir Michael asserted that there was no legal barrier to using foreign intelligence obtained under torture.

The document was handed to Mr Marty and the Council of Europe by Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who has become a fierce critic of British foreign policy. Giving evidence to the Strasbourg assembly, he said that, as envoy in Tashkent after September 11, 2001, he read CIA intelligence, shared with MI6, derived from torture sessions.

Later he said Britain was “much more deeply implicated” than other European nations in CIA extraordinary renditions, or the transfer of detainees outside normal judicial channels.

Several British members of the assembly, which gathers MPs from 46 countries, criticised Mr Marty’s report.

Michael Hancock, a Liberal Democrat, said it needed to have “more substance. . . many of the issues are clouded in myth and a desire to kick America.” Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, said the report had “more holes than a Swiss cheese”.

The Council of Europe, which is independent of the European Union, was set up in 1949 as a guardian of human rights in Europe.

See also The Times: Britain accused of turning blind eye to torture flights

From ePolitix.com

Number 10 has dismissed an official report into CIA ‘rendition’ flights and detentions in Europe, saying it contains “no new facts”.

European governments almost certainly knew about the secret American practices, according to the study conducted by Swiss MP Dick Marty for the Council of Europe. He concluded that ‘renditions’ in Europe were likely to have involved “more than a hundred persons in recent years”.

His report, however, largely appeared to be a summary of information already in the public domain, including media quotes attributed to unidentified sources. Number 10 said the prime minister had “no view” on the report.

“From what I have heard, it has no new facts therefore there are no new views,” added Tony Blair’s official spokesman..

Marty said that hundreds of CIA-chartered flights “have passed through numerous European countries”.

“It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware,” he argued. And the report said there was “a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ‘relocation’ or ‘outsourcing’ of torture”.

Marty said the outstanding questions “require plain, honest answers”.

He added that evidence from Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, “appear to be damning for the UK authorities, which seem to have knowingly continued to make use of information obtained under torture and supplied by the Uzbek intelligence services, thereby encouraging the practice of torture”.

But in a sign that claims of secret CIA prison camps, claimed to have been based in Poland and Romania, are not proven, Marty said: “At this stage of the investigations, there is no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret CIA detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other country.

“Nevertheless, there are many indications from various sources which must be considered reliable, justifying the continuation of the analytical and investigative work.”

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – The United States flew detainees to countries where they would be tortured and European governments probably knew about it, the head of a European human rights investigation said on Tuesday.

But Swiss senator Dick Marty said in a preliminary report for the Council of Europe human rights watchdog that he had found no irrefutable evidence to confirm allegations that the CIA operated secret detention centers in Europe.

His report kept pressure on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency over the charges that it flew prisoners through European airports to jails in third countries, but Washington denied any wrongdoing and critics said the report contained nothing new.

“There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ‘relocation’ or ‘outsourcing of torture’,” Marty told the 46-nation Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.

“It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware.”

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The debate on Extraordinary Rendition was broadcast live by the Council of Europe this morning.

The press conference that followed can be watched here

“The Council of Europe publish an interrim report this morning “It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware of the ”rendition” of more than a hundred persons affecting Europe, according to Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty, whose interim assessment was made public today in an information memorandum. Citing statements made by American officials and others, Mr Marty also said there was ”a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of ”relocation” or ”outsourcing” of torture”. He welcomed the arrival yesterday of detailed information he had requested from Eurocontrol and the EU’s Satellite Agency. The Parliamentary Assembly will hold a debate on this question today at 10 am.”

The information memorandum is available as a PDF or HTML file

The committee also held an exchange of views on suspected abductions on European soil, and alleged illegal transport of detainees from or through Europe to countries where the persons are at risk of torture, with:

– Craig Murray, former United Kingdom Ambassador to Uzbekistan

– Professor Manfred Nowak, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture

– John Sifton, Human Rights Watch, New York

From NY Newsday

A former general in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison during the 2004 abuse scandal there and England’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan were among several people to speak out against the Bush administration’s handling of the “War on Terror” Saturday at an anti-war hearing at Manhattan’s Riverside Church.

Craig Murray, ousted as Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan after he criticized the use of intelligence gained through torture, said Uzbek security forces supplying interrogation findings to the CIA used torture “on an industrial scale.” In two cases he said he documented that people were boiled alive.

“I would rather die than to have [innocent people] tortured to save my life,” Murray said, drawing applause from the crowd of more than 500 people.

His appearance followed a Friday radio interview in which he said, “We’re not talking about marginal definitions of torture. The U.S. knew this was happening and encouraged it by being prepared to accept and give credence to the results of it.”

Murray said in its quest to secure increasingly scarce oil and gas supplies, President George W. Bush is fanning anti-American sentiments in the Islamic world. “They are making America a much more dangerous place,” he said.

The hearing was held by a panel calling itself the Bush Crimes Commission, which has issued “indictments” against Bush and others for what it says are crimes against humanity perpetrated in America’s prosecution of the Iraq war. The commission, which has no legal standing, said it had invited the Bush administration to rebut the allegations.

A White House press officer declined comment Saturday.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski said photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison “opened a huge door on” America’s mishandling of the war, and that soldiers trained to handle prisoners of war were ill-suited for running Iraq’s civilian prisons.

Karpinski also said as many as 85 percent of the Iraqi detainees there were “guilty of nothing,” but were not released because interrogators “were afraid of releasing the next Osama bin Laden.”

The commission was organized by Not In Our Name, a New York-based activist group formed to challenge American military actions abroad, and alleged Bush administration erosions of civil liberties at home.

Beginning with a session in October and again on Friday, it has elicited testimony from legal scholars, Iraq veterans, former diplomats and activists. A final hearing is scheduled tomorrow at Riverside Church.

Many of the those who attended Saturday said it was persuasive to hear former insiders criticize the war. Bob Parsons, an auto worker from Detroit, said, “It’s incredibly moving for people who have served for so long to stand up and say what is really going on.”

With Jack Straw issuing a denial of any CIA rendition flights passing through the UK since 9/11, Jon Snow interviews the head of Liberty about the curious mismatch between CIA rendition flight activity and UK records.

Click here to watch the news report

From The Financial Times

European governments must take a principled stand on the issue of human rights as a key part of the global strategy for combating terrorism, Gijs de Vries, the European Union’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, said on Thursday.

He told a seminar organised by the Centre for European Reform that, while he had ‘no doubt’ violent extremists and terrorist recruiters could be beaten, an essential tool of the strategy had to be ‘winning the battle for hearts and minds’, and engaging the support of moderate Muslim opinion worldwide.

‘We need to engage with them [Muslims] on the basis of the values we share: respect for human life, respect for democratic standards, respect for individual liberty and dignity.’ He went on: ‘This means that our policies to combat terrorism must respect the rights and values we have pledged to defend, including the rights of prisoners.’

While he used his speech to refer also to the improved co-operation on intelligence and law enforcement between European governments and the US, Mr de Vries’s central comments underlined the extent to which alleged mistreatment of prisoners and the US strategy of rendition has provoked tension between the EU and the US.

Mr de Vries was pressed by delegates to comment specifically on the US strategy. He said: ‘If you look at the affect Abu Ghraib, Guant’namo and the policy of [extraordinary] rendition [has had] on public opinion, it is quite clear that it has been negative.’

His comments came as the UK government was accused of ignorance about the true nature and number of requests for rendition by the US following the leak of an official memo expressing uncertainty about the scale and legality of the practice of transporting terrorist suspects.

Tony Blair, UK prime minister, faced opposition demands that he seek immediate answers from Washington as to whether the US used British airspace or airports with or without the authorisation of the UK government. Mr Blair was advised by the British Foreign Office that officials were concerned there could have been more requests for rendition than previously revealed. ‘The papers we have unearthed so far suggest there could be more such cases,’ officials advised in the leaked memo, whose authenticity was confirmed by the government.

The memo also warned that the practice of rendition would rarely be legal under UK law. But the document did not contain the kind of specific information on abductees and flight records that has led authorities in Spain, Germany and Italy to start judicial investigations into the CIA’s activities.

Last week Dick Marty, the Swiss politician who is heading the main pan-European investigation into rendition, said he had no doubt the CIA had maintained illegal prisons in Europe, although he had yet to produce any clear proof. Next week he will present an update on his investigation to the Council of Europe, the 46-member human rights organisation.