CIA flights ‘must not reoccur’

From BBC Online

CIA flights have landed in European countries, Mr Marty says

Europe’s human rights body has called for steps to ensure terror suspects never again “disappear into thin air” from European soil.

The Council of Europe accused states of colluding with the CIA on secret flights transferring prisoners to third countries where they could be tortured.

It urged governments and parliaments in each state to hold their own inquiries.

The US admits renditions have taken place but denies that people sent overseas are subjected to torture.

“People should not be allowed to disappear into thin air, regardless of the crimes of which they accused,” said Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis.

“If we want to be safe we must be fair.

“The only effective measures against terrorism are those which stop more terrorists than they help to recruit.”

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ISN SECURITY WATCH (Monday, 19 June 2006: 09.48 CET) ‘ Bosnia and Herzegovina formally has acknowledged to the Council of Europe that it allowed US forces to seize six Algerian-born men and transfer them to Guantanamo even after a local court acquitted them due to lack of evidence.

Bosnia is the only one of the council’s 46 members to acknowledge it had breached the European Convention on Human Rights by participating in an extrajudicial seizure of individuals by the US.

The Council of Europe’s human rights committee has accused more than 20 countries of colluding with the CIA’s controversial “extraordinary rendition flights” and secret prisons.

On 7 June, the committee released a report saying that “European states played an active or passive role in the network run by the CIA and were not unwitting victims of the operation.’

The report named Poland and Romania for running secret CIA prison. It also said Germany, Turkey, Spain, and Cyprus were “staging points” for illegal CIA rendition flights. Ireland, Britain, Portugal, Greece, and Italy were named as being “stopovers” for flights involving the illegal transfer of detainees. The report named Sweden, Bosnia, Britain, Macedonia, Germany, and Turkey in connection to illegal CIA activities in relation to specific individual cases.

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From The Jurist

The ongoing detention without trial of over 400 individuals in the US base at Guantanamo Bay has rightly been decried as an ongoing human rights scandal by everyone from Amnesty International to the Vatican. The recent hunger strike and now the suicides of three prisoners have however raised the issue of the medical treatment of the Guantanamo detainees.

Dr. David Nicholl, a neurologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, says that the recent hunger strike and now suicides by prisoners held by the US at Guantanamo Bay highlight the need to accord the detainees not just due legal process, but also ethical medical treatment…

Go here to read the full article.

From Amnesty International

Europe’s governments have repeatedly denied their complicity in the US programme of “renditions” ‘ an unlawful practice in which numerous men have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional crimes including torture and enforced disappearance.

As evidence of this programme has come to light, however, it has become clear that many European governments have adopted a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ approach when it comes to rendition flights using their territory and that some states have been implicated in individual cases. These states include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Turkey and EU members Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK.

Without Europe’s help, some men would not now be held without charge or trial, in abusive conditions, in Egypt, Syria and Guant’namo. Without information from European intelligence agencies, some of the men may not have been abducted. Without access to Europe’s airport facilities and airspace, CIA planes would have found it harder to transport their human cargo. In short, Europe has been the USA’s partner in crime.

The impact on both the victims of renditions and their families has been devastating.

At the EU Summit 15-16 June in Brussels leaders of EU states must take a clear and public stance against renditions and at the EU-US Summit 21 June in Vienna they must ensure that the EU reiterate this stance with the USA.

To take action visit here

The following is a transcript of an unscripted talk given for the BUSH CRIMES COMMISSION at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. Spoken language often relies on inflection and even gesture, and when written down can look ungrammatical and even George Bush-esque!

BUSH CRIMES COMMISSION

CRAIG MURRAY

The Banality of Evil

MODERATOR: Our third witness this evening is Ambassador Craig Murray. Craig Murray was a career diplomat in the British Foreign Service. And as he will explain to you, his last position was the representative of Her Majesty’s government in Uzbekistan. And in that position some very disturbing documents began to cross his desk, which led him eventually to resign from the Foreign Service and to expose what was happening in that country and what the United States and the British governments’ attitude towards it was.

I give you Craig Murray.

(Applause.)

MURRAY: Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be here in the United States. I agree wholeheartedly with various points that it’s very, very necessary to radicalize the current generation of students.

I’m not quite sure about the means that, you know, we need to radicalize the students. Let’s find an upperclass retired ambassador and send him on a speaking tour. It — it’s not automatically the way I’d do it. But, well, we’ll give it a go and see what happens.

I’ve never been to Boston before except for Boston in England. And I’ve never been in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before. I’m dead impressed by this facility. From here I can see two different clocks. One of them is only about 20 meters east of the other, and yet the technology can detect it’s 8:00 o’clock there and still 7:59 over there (laughter). I tell you, I’m bloody impressed. Quite remarkable.

I was the British ambassador in a place called Uzbekistan. This came at the rather premature end of my diplomatic career. I’d been a career diplomat for 21 years. I’d served in a number of positions, including some senior positions.

I was also an expert in Iraqi weapons procurement, having led the British effort on monitoring Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement during the early 1990s and during the first Gulf War.

I was posted to Uzbekistan, and I didn’t have that much idea where it was at the time I was posted there. In fact I was — I was a British deputy high commissioner in Africa in Ghana in Accra, and I received a phone call from the office. Said, “Craig, you’ve been promoted to ambassador.”

And I said, “Great.”

And they said, “In Uzbekistan.”

And I said, “Yes, uh –” (laughter), and I put down the phone, and I shouted to my secretary, “Christina, go buy an atlas,” to see where I was going.

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Scotland Against Criminalsing Communities (SACC) welcomes the publication today of the report by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty on alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states. The report is scheduled to be debated by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 27 June. SACC joins with other peace and human rights groups in calling for vigils to be held at airports in the UK and the Republic of Ireland on Saturday 24th June to demand that our governments implement the recommendations made by Senator Marty and that governments and police forces take urgent action against torture and illegal detention.

While noting that the picture is still incomplete, Senator Marty documents a “global spiders web” of illegal activity. He particularly singles out Prestwick and Shannon as proven stopovers for aircraft involved in rendition and has been able to link specific visits of CIA-owned aircraft logged at these airports to specific instances of rendition. CIA-owned aircraft have also been logged at many other airports and, even if not involved in the transfer of prisoners, may be illegally providing logistical support for torture and kidnapping. We urge people to hold vigils on Saturday 24th June at any airports where illegal activity may have occurred.

Plans for vigils at Edinburgh and Prestwick airports have already been finalised; details of events planned at other airports will be announced in due course.

Prestwick – assemble Prestwick airport 12.30pm

Edinburgh – assemble Edinburgh airport 12.30pm. Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and representatives of the Scottish Green Party and the Scottish National Party will be speaking at the vigil.

Updates on the planned vigils will be available at www.sacc.org.uk/rendition/

More information 07719822164 [email protected]