andrew

Andijan five months on

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The bullet holes and bloodstains are gone, but for Uzbeks life is even worse

By Nick Paton Walsh in Andijan writing for The Guardian

Repression on a huge scale follows massacre of at least 500 protesters

Plaster covers up the bullet holes in the walls of Andijan, a city whitewashed into denial. Builders clamber around buildings, hastily repairing blast damage. Residents talk in code on the phone; the less cautious sometimes disappear. Thick-set men in sunglasses band together on street corners, their silver saloons conspicuously tailing outsiders. The veneer of normality, here in the authoritarian state of Uzbekistan, is brittle. Ola picks at her ice cream in one of Andijan’s pristine parks and says: “Everyone here has amnesia. Didn’t you know?”

In the centre, the tranquil Bobur Square yields no suggestion that five months ago it was, in the words of witnesses, awash with blood. Here troops shot dead at least 500 people protesting in support of 23 local businessmen charged with “extremism” but freed in a jailbreak. The troops walked among the wounded, finishing them off with a single shot to the head, before hoarding their corpses in a nearby school.

But while locals say between 1,500 and 2,000 people died on the square, the regime of President Islam Karimov insists that only 187 criminals were killed. They have tried to recast the massacre as a measured response to a coup by Islamists, a version of events repeated daily in the Uzbek supreme court in the capital, Tashkent.

In the court, 15 of the 23 businessmen are on trial for terrorism and may be executed. They have said they opened fire first, that the US embassy helped finance their attack, and the foreign media, including the BBC, advised them. Officials have testified that the militants refused an offer of safe passage, battered their captives and began shooting each other. State TV has replayed confessions from similarly repentant “organisers”.

This Orwellian conceit lapsed only once when a woman said troops had shot at people waving white flags. Makhbuba Zakirova, 33, who was interrupted by the judge, said: “Even Hitler did not do it that way.”

The charade is shattered behind the closed doors of Andijan’s homes. Survivors and relatives told the Guardian, the first western newspaper to gain access to Andijan since the massacre, of months of repression, arrest, and torture. Hundreds of survivors have been forced into confessing their “military involvement” to bolster the state’s case.

Disappeared

Many are in jail, up to 200 awaiting trial; others have disappeared from hospital. One police officer said 300 people had been arrested in Andijan since the massacre; Human Rights Watch suggests up to 4,200 have at some point been detained in the surrounding region. Knock on doors in a street in Andijan and it is clear the repression that hit the town of 450,000 after May 13 may eclipse the horrors of the massacre itself.

Udgarbek, 16, sits on a bed in his mother’s courtyard. On May 13 he was shot twice in the back. The first cut just past his upper spinal cord. The second is lodged in his lower back. He walks stiffly as if his back and thighs were strapped to a plank; urine stains his trousers, his nerve endings still damaged.

That day, he was left for dead near Bobur Square. Soldiers dragged him into the grounds of a school where he lay among hundreds of corpses. He saw nine injured people die before they put him on a bus to hospital at dawn. There, the security services visited him. “They beat me on the legs and the soles of my feet to make me sign a confession saying I was sniper,” he said. “They yelled at me: ‘Where are your guns and your friends?’ But I refused, fearing what they would do to me if I confessed.”

After 26 days, he was discharged. But at home convalescing and unable to walk, he was still seen as a threat. “They came again in June and took me to the regional police station,” he said. “They did not beat me that time, but fingerprinted, photographed and filmed me.”

Many did not return home from hospital. Saidkhan Saidhojayev, 27, left home excitedly on the morning of May 13. The businessmen had been busted out of prison. The local government building had been taken over. The town’s life would start anew. The president was coming to negotiate and so Mr Saidhojayev dressed in his best white shirt and trousers. By 8pm, he was staggering home after being shot in the left arm. He did not enter his mother’s house, but lay outside on a pile of gravel until 11pm, when friends took him to hospital. There his infected arm was cut off. Three days later he was moved by the police and has not been seen again.

No return

On the same day, Anvar Todjihanov,a father of four, was taken from hospital. His wife declined to be interviewed but told friends how her husband, 36, who was shot in the back on Bobur Square, had lost 10kg (22lb) in weight and is “on the borders of death” in jail. Plain-clothed security men, who last searched her flat 15 days ago, have told her to get a job as Mr Todjihanov won’t be returning.

The authorities’ reputation has heightened the anguish. The US state department says Uzbek police use “torture as a routine investigation technique”. Methods include crushing limbs, electric shocks, raping relatives before the accused, sexual abuse with a broken bottle, and in one case the boiling to death of a suspect. Others have been arrested by the National Security Service, as “hostages” to persuade relatives to give themselves up. Shurat Nuridinov, 24 and a student, was jailed for terrorism on May 26. His father Avas said the case was probably aimed at forcing his relative, one of the businessmen, Burkhoni Nuridinov, to return to Uzbekistan. Burkhoni is one of 400 Uzbeks who fled to Europe and gained asylum.

A human rights activist, Saidjahon Zainabitdinov, who spoke out about the death toll, was arrested on the Uzbek border after taking a wounded protester to Kyrgyzstan. He has been charged with criminal defamation and distributing leaflets that threaten national security. “We don’t know where he’s being held,” said his son, Ilhom. “I doubt they’ll release him. His lawyer says he’s already confessed and asked for the president’s forgiveness.” Ilhom was beaten up days after meeting the Guardian, a human rights worker said.

The crackdown has continued across Uzbekistan, as Mr Karimov hurries to ensure that any repeat of Andijan will not be as well publicised. Two weeks after the massacre, in the town of Jizzakh, a human rights worker was attacked at home by 70 people who gave him 24 hours to leave town. “They were all state employees,” Bakhtiyor Khamraev said. “They hit me over the head with a stick. For 50 minutes they screamed: ‘You are an American spy, a terrorist. You have sold yourself.'”

The next day they came back, but Mr Khamraev was with a US researcher from Human Rights Watch. The threat of publicity caused the crowd to flee, he said. Since then telephone calls have threatened his family, warning: “We will kill you. No foreigner can help you.”

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Outing CIA Agents

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Valerie Plame Meets Philip Agee

By Steve Weissman, posted at TomDispatch

As we approach the week when Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury will undoubtedly issue indictments against White House officials, the seldom considered 1982 CIA shield law under which the Plame case was first launched deserves some attention. When Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby, and possibly others decided to reveal the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, they clearly wanted to punish her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, for undermining administration claims that Saddam Hussein sought “yellowcake” uranium from Niger to build nuclear weapons. But by publicly ruining Plame’s undercover career, they were undoubtedly also sending a very personal message to CIA types and other insiders not to question Mr. Bush’s rush to war in Iraq.

As despicable as this White House treachery may have been, those of us who oppose it need to regain some lost perspective. Being bashed by Team Bush does not turn the Central Intelligence Agency into the home team or necessarily make Valerie Plame a modern-day Joan of Arc; nor should her outing stop journalists or anyone else from blowing the cover of her fellow agents when they are found engaging in kidnappings, torture, or attempts to overthrow democratically elected governments.

CIA Torturers

Among its many sins, the CIA has played a central role in the American torture machine. The agency created its “stress and duress” torture methods back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and then passed the techniques to the Pentagon and client regimes around the world. Now, to complete the circle, CIA squads kidnap those they consider terrorist suspects and secretly disappear them into the prisons and torture chambers of countries like Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and Uzbekistan.

The antiseptic name for this outsourcing of torture is “extraordinary rendition,” and — to be fair — the CIA does not do it on its own say-so. “Renditions were called for, authorized and legally vetted not just by the N.S.C. [National Security Council] and the Justice Department, but also by the presidents — both Mr. Clinton and George W. Bush,” former CIA official Michael Scheuer wrote last March in an op-ed in the New York Times (scroll down). “I know this because, as head of the C.I.A.’s bin Laden desk, I started the Qaeda detainee rendition program and ran it for 40 months.”

Author of the best-selling Imperial Hubris, Scheuer has become a leading critic of the war in Iraq, which he rightly sees as counterproductive in the fight against terrorists. Still a spook at heart, though, he rushes to defend the agency’s “snatch and grab” program, calling those of us who want to outlaw it either “woefully uninformed” or “horse’s asses.”

The program was “tremendously successful,” he told reporter Randy Hall of Cybercast News. “The amount of information we received that helped us better understand al Qaeda and formulate additional operations against them was invaluable, and the simple fact that, for example, we put one of bin Laden’s main procurers of weapons of mass destruction in prison is a good thing.”

Yes, jailing terrorists is good, but not by sidestepping formal charges, habeas corpus, independent judges, and fair trials — and certainly not by using torture. To trash civilization’s hard-won legal safeguards and let our secret police become judge, jury, and executioner is to do bin Laden’s work for him.

For CIA veterans, the ends too often justify the means, as long as the whole business does not become public (as it now has). The belief that an elite corps of CIA officers — and they alone — can keep self-corrupting means both under wraps and in check seems to be part of the job description.

The U.S. Senate appears to agree. In their admirable, bipartisan amendment to stop the American military from using torture, the Senators carefully refrained from extending the ban to cover the CIA, which continues to run its own secret prisons elsewhere. If torture is wrong for uniformed GIs, it should certainly be no less wrong for undercover agents.

But what does all this have to do with Valerie Plame?

I hope nothing at all. The CIA is a sizeable, complex bureaucracy, and only a relatively small number of its employees have anything to do with kidnapping, torture, and the like. The problem is that we know very little about what Ms. Plame did, and she has told us nothing about her views on anything at all. Her supporters — like former CIA and State Department officer Larry Johnson — tell us only that she worked undercover to protect Americans from nuclear proliferation.

As it happens, I was chief investigator on the BBC television team that first exposed the world’s worst nuclear proliferator, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb. We pursued Khan’s story back in 1980, and many of our best leads came from intelligence operatives like Ms. Plame — and not just on the American side.

The information invariably came through “cut-outs,” or intermediaries, and we took great pains to check every lead for ourselves, knowing that intelligence agencies miss few opportunities to spread disinformation. After we broadcast our film and published a book called The Islamic Bomb, one of our cutouts passed word from the CIA that our expos’ had set back the Pakistani nuclear program by three years.

I mention this to make clear how much I value the kind of intelligence work Ms. Plame is said to have done. But there’s a dark side to CIA work that none of us should ignore. A significant part of the Agency’s recent efforts against proliferation has rightly focused on stopping terrorists from getting nuclear materials. Given the history of the last few years, there can be little doubt that the Agency would be sorely tempted to ship off any credible suspects to be interrogated under torture in some foreign hellhole. As a result, we need to take a long, hard look at anyone who has worked in CIA covert operations, especially in the area of nuclear proliferation.

None of this should weaken our opposition to the way Team Bush has treated Ms. Plame. But eternal suspicion of our legal, military, and intelligence professionals is one of the prices we will increasingly have to pay if our government continues to insist on relying on torture.

Enter Philip Agee

The current scandal over Plame’s outing raises an even tougher issue for those of us who work as journalists. Do we have any obligation to refrain from publishing the identity of undercover CIA operatives engaged in such activities? Or, when we write about their dirty work, do we tell the whole story without leaving out the leading characters?

Back in 1975, former CIA officer Philip Agee published Inside the Company: CIA Diary, an international best seller in which he revealed what the CIA was doing, especially in Latin America where he had worked. He also named every CIA officer he knew — an indication of just how complete a break he had made with the Agency. The contrast with Michael Scheuer or Valerie Plame is obvious.

It was hardly surprisingly, then, that Agee’s former comrades saw what he had done as an utter betrayal, much as old lefties viewed the staged performances of those who named names for Senator Joseph McCarthy and other Congressional investigators. (The difference between the two situations was immense, of course, as Agee made his decision to go public without coercion and solely for reasons of conscience.)

A young idealist with a Jesuit education, he had believed all the apple-pie myths of American democracy and had joined the CIA to do what he thought was right. After twelve years “inside the Company,” he ended up loathing the dirty work he had seen and did, and so tried to disrupt the Agency’s operations by blowing the cover of its operatives. This clearly put CIA officers at increased risk, but — so he felt — the more time they had to spend ensuring their own safety, the less time they would have to put other people elsewhere on Earth at risk.

Several journalists in London at the time — and I was one of the most active — joined Agee in publishing the names of large numbers of CIA officers in dozens of countries, often as lead stories in widely read newspapers and magazines. Contrary to media accounts, however, Agee did not provide the names, as he had already named everyone he knew. The identifications came from the U.S. government’s Foreign Service Lists and its yearly Biographic Registers, using a time-consuming method that former State Department officer John Marks described in the November 1974 Washington Monthly. Marks called his method “How to Spot a Spook.”

No midnight mail drops from the Soviet KGB. No whispered messages from some Cuban Mata Hari. Just the hard slog of journalistic investigation.

Then came the crisis. Two days before Christmas in 1975, assassins shot and killed Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens. The agency quickly used the killing to escalate its attacks on Agee, even though he had never known Welch or identified him in his book (or anywhere else). No doubt Agee would have, but he played no part in the outing, as the CIA knew.

His only contact was peripheral. In January 1975, the American magazine CounterSpy identified Welch as the CIA station chief in Lima, and also carried an essay by Agee. But the magazine, which was funded by author Norman Mailer and his Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate, had found Welch’s identity in a Peruvian journal and then confirmed it with the spook-spotting techniques from the Washington Monthly.

Welch’s name also appeared in the English-language Athens News in November 1975, along with nine other CIA officers working in Greece. Many months later, the press revealed that the killers had stalked Welch even before the list appeared. The CIA had reportedly warned him not to move into the house which the stalkers knew as the CIA chief’s residence. For whatever reason, Welch refused to heed the warning.

But Agee’s vindication came nearly twenty years later when former First Lady Barbara Bush repeated the old libel that he had played a role in Welch’s death in her memoirs. Agee sued, and Mrs. Bush was forced to remove the passage from the paperback edition of the book. She also had to send him a letter of apology, acknowledging that her accusation had been false.

Now, with the outing of Valerie Plame, many pundits are again blaming Agee for revealing Welch’s identity. No doubt, they will check the facts and send their apologies as well.

The CIA Fights Back

In the meantime, the CIA continued to do to Agee far worse than Team Bush has done to Valerie Plame, using his notoriety to turn the spotlight away from the dirty work he was protesting. First they persuaded Britain to deport him; then they convinced France, the Netherlands, Norway, and Germany to keep him on the run. Though Germany later relented and let him live there, none of the countries ever presented a public case with specific charges that Agee could contest.

Then, in 1982, the CIA and its former director George Bush, who was by then Vice President, persuaded Congress to pass the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, one of several laws that the current Bush Administration appears to have broken in outing Valerie Plame. Often called “the Anti-Agee Act,” the law targeted those with authorized access to classified information, past or present. It also criminalized journalists and others who showed “a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents.”

Though poorly drafted and hard (but not impossible) for prosecutors to use, the “Anti-Agee law” acts as a gag on whistleblowers, journalists, scholars, and activists who might want to expose covert wrongdoing. Worse, in the wake of the Plame outing, several members of Congress want to extend the law, creating even more of a British-style Official Secrets Act.

Whatever Karl Rove or Lewis Libby did to reveal Plame’s identity, they should be punished, as should the President and Vice President they serve. But let’s not jump overboard. Making a bad law worse would prove exceedingly shortsighted, especially for anyone who cherishes a free press or fears the unchecked power of the FBI, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

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U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq

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From the American Civil Liberties Union (24.10.05)

CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence Personnel Implicated

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions.

‘There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths,’ said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. ‘High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal that has rocked our military.’

The documents released today include 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of individuals apprehended in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents show that detainees died during or after interrogations by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and ‘OGA’ (Other Governmental Agency) — a term, according to the ACLU, that is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees, in some instances, by the CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence personnel. The autopsy reports list deaths by ‘strangulation,’ ‘asphyxiation’ and ‘blunt force injuries.’ An overwhelming majority of the so-called ‘natural deaths’ were attributed to ‘Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease.’

While newspapers have recently reported deaths of detainees in CIA custody, today’s documents show that the problem is pervasive, involving Navy Seals and Military Intelligence too.

The records reveal the following facts:

A 27-year-old Iraqi male died while being interrogated by Navy Seals on April 5, 2004, in Mosul, Iraq. During his confinement he was hooded, flex-cuffed, sleep deprived and subjected to hot and cold environmental conditions, including the use of cold water on his body and hood. The exact cause of death was ‘undetermined’ although the autopsy stated that hypothermia may have contributed to his death. Notes say he ‘struggled/ interrogated/ died sleeping.’ Some facts relating to this case have been previously reported. (In April 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the use of ‘environmental manipulation’ as an interrogation technique in Guant’namo Bay. In September 2003, Lt. Gen. Sanchez also authorized this technique for use in Iraq. Although Lt. Gen. Sanchez later rescinded the September 2003 techniques, he authorized ‘changes in environmental quality’ in October 2003.)

An Iraqi detainee (also described as a white male) died on January 9, 2004, in Al Asad, Iraq, while being interrogated by ‘OGA.’ He was standing, shackled to the top of a door frame with a gag in his mouth at the time he died. The cause of death was asphyxia and blunt force injuries. Notes summarizing the autopsies record the circumstances of death as ‘Q by OGA, gagged in standing restraint.’ (Facts in the autopsy report appear to match the previously reported case of Abdul Jaleel.)

A detainee was smothered to death during an interrogation by Military Intelligence on November 26, 2003, in Al Qaim, Iraq. A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of General Mowhoush, lists ‘asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression’ as the cause of death and cites bruises from the impact with a blunt object. New documents specifically record the circumstances of death as ‘Q by MI, died during interrogation.’

A detainee at Abu Ghraib Prison, captured by Navy Seal Team number seven, died on November 4, 2003, during an interrogation by Navy Seals and ‘OGA.’ A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of Manadel Al Jamadi, shows that the cause of his death was ‘blunt force injury complicated by compromised respiration.’ New documents specifically record the circumstances of death as ‘Q by OGA and NSWT died during interrogation.’

An Afghan civilian died from ‘multiple blunt force injuries to head, torso and extremities’ on November 6, 2003, at a Forward Operating Base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Facts in the autopsy report appear to match the previously reported case of Abdul Wahid.)

A 52-year-old male Iraqi was strangled to death at the Whitehorse detainment facility on June 6, 2003, in Nasiriyah, Iraq. His autopsy also revealed bone and rib fractures, and multiple bruises on his body. (Facts in the autopsy report appear to match the previously reported case of Nagm Sadoon Hatab.)

The ACLU has previously released autopsy reports for two detainees who were tortured by U.S. forces in Bagram, Afghanistan, believed to be Mullah Habibullah and an Afghan man known as Dilawar.

‘These documents present irrefutable evidence that U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogations,’ said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. ‘The public has a right to know who authorized the use of torture techniques and why these deaths have been covered up.’

The documents were released by the Department of Defense in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.

As part of the FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU, a federal judge recently ordered the Defense Department to turn over photographs and videotapes depicting the abuse of prisoners held by the United States at Abu Ghraib. That decision has been stayed until October 26. The government has not yet indicated whether it is going to appeal the court’s decision.

The FOIA lawsuit is being handled by Lawrence Lustberg and Megan Lewis of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C. Other attorneys in the case are Singh, Jameel Jaffer, and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

To date, more than 77,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has been posting these documents online at http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/.

The documents released today are available online at http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/

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Police to probe US ‘torture flights’ landing in Scotland

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In a follow-up to his previous series of articles Neil Mackay looks at attempts by the Scottish police to confront the CIA…

SCOTTISH police are to launch an investigation into CIA ‘torture flights’ which fly in and out of Glasgow and Prestwick airports, ferrying kidnapped war on terror suspects around the world.

The police action is a result of last week’s disturbing investigation by the Sunday Herald into the so-called ‘extraordinary rendition flights’, which see suspects kidnapped overseas by the CIA, drugged and then flown to ‘friendly states, such as Egypt, Uzbekistan and Morocco, where they are tortured on behalf of British and American intelligence.

Following our reports , the Green Party wrote to the chief constable of Strathclyde Police, Sir William Rae, asking for a full inquiry into the torture flights. A police spokesperson confirmed that the force would now launch an investigation.

Last week, we revealed that the British government was to be sued by human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith for complicity in the torture of his client Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi.

Also exposed was the fact that international human rights experts and lawyers believe the UK is breaking the Geneva Conventions by collaborating with the USA on the transit of the flights through Britain.

Further, the UK allows British airports to be used for refuelling by the CIA’s jets ferrying suspects around the world. Glasgow and Prestwick airports are the two most favoured CIA stop-overs.

Chris Ballance, the Green Party MSP who represents the Prestwick area, said he lodged the complaint with Strathclyde Police after reading the Sunday Herald’s investigation because it appeared that ‘Scotland is complicit in these gross acts of torture’.

Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said : ‘Once these planes land on British soil, they have no immunity. If they touch down at a civilian airport they are under civilian jurisdiction. This would allow the police to do their job fully and to board the plane and question those on board.’

Beyond saying that an investigation would take place, Strathclyde Police said it could not comment on how the inquiry would proceed.

The CIA refused categorically to comment. One CIA official merely laughed when told that Scottish police were to investigate.

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Medialens

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MediaLens describe themselves as a “response to the unwillingness, or inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing us, such as human rights abuses, poverty, pollution and climate change.” A recent article looks at why ‘Real Men go to Tehran‘

You can visit them at Medialens

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Amnesty International Alert

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Amnesty International have issued an alert for Student Marsel Isaev who was forcibly returned to Uzbekistan on 12 October, from Tatarstan, in the Russian Federation. He has not been seen or heard from since he was put on the plane, and the authorities in Uzbekistan have refused to confirm or deny that he is in custody. He is thought to be held incommunicado in a detention centre in the capital, Tashkent, and he is at grave risk of torture.

AI Index: EUR 62/029/2005

If you wish to help with the appeal please contact your local AI office.

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Sanjar Umarov arrested in Tashkent?

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PRESS-RELEASE from Sunshine Uzbekistan Coalition

October 23, 2005 (13:55 Tashkent time)

Sanjar Umarov gone missing in Tashkent

Yesterday, October 22 a massive attack by General-Prosecutor’s Office was unleashed on members of Sunshine Coalition.

As the result 5 people were detained by the General-Prosecutor’s Office, including the Coordinator of Sunshine Uzbekistan, Ms. Nadira Khidoyatova.

That same day, since 10pm October 22nd, Chairman of Sunshine Coalition Sanjar Umarov has gone missing. Although unconfirmed reports have pointed that he is being detained in the General Prosecutor’s Office in Tashkent, officials from General-Prosecutor’s office have told that he is held in Tashkent City Police Department. Search is continuing.

This attack by Uzbekistan’s authorities came right after Sanjar Umarov wrote a letter of compassion to Russian Foreign Minister during his visit to Tashkent.

Update Pravada has published an article today which says that the government has arrested Sanjar Umarov on embezzlement charges.

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Minister ‘misled Commons’ over attacks by Islamic group

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By Jon Ungoed-Thomas writing in the Times Online

HAZEL BLEARS, the Home Office minister, has been accused of misleading parliament by presenting ‘false’ intelligence over the threat posed by an alleged Islamic terrorist group. Blears told MPs this month that an Uzbek organisation, the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), was a threat to British interests overseas and announced that it was to become a proscribed organisation.

MPs questioned the wisdom of banning a group with the stated aim of bringing democracy to Uzbekistan, a dictatorship with one of the worst human rights records in central Asia.

It was pointed out that in May Uzbek government troops killed about 700 people when they opened fire on crowds in the eastern city of Andijan following an uprising.

To make her case against the IJU, Blears told MPs that information on the group had been received directly from British intelligence sources which showed it to have been responsible for a series of bombings in Uzbekistan in March 2004.

Her account was accepted at the time by MPs but has now been challenged by Craig Murray, who was British ambassador in Uzbekistan until 2004.

He said that while he was ambassador he had warned the British government over accounts of bomb attacks connected to the IJU. He suspected they may have been concocted by the Uzbek government to justify local police killing a number of dissidents.

‘The official accounts were not credible,’ he said. ‘I went to one of the sites where a suicide bomber was meant to have launched an attack. It was a triangular courtyard and not one of the windows was blown out and there was no sign of significant damage.

‘I sent a telegram to London ‘ copied to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) in MI5, to the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence ‘ about the inconsistencies of the accounts.

‘JTAC agreed with my assessment that the official version of events was not credible. I am amazed to find it being repeated in the House of Commons by Hazel Blears.’

Murray said an organisation calling itself IJU also claimed responsibility in 2004 for attacks on the Israeli and American embassies, but there was no convincing evidence that such a group existed.

The former ambassador was squeezed out of his post by the Foreign Office after criticising the human rights record of the Uzbek government. He says MI6 has no staff in central Asia and was relying on information from other sources ‘ possibly the Uzbek government itself.

MPs were concerned at the inclusion of IJU when its name first appeared on the list of banned groups. Blears was repeatedly questioned in parliament whether it was right to ban the organisation.

Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru MP, said: ‘Should we not tread very carefully before proscribing an organisation that has less blood on its hands than a government with whom we still maintain diplomatic relations?’ Blears assured MPs she had taken a ‘particular look’ at the IJU. She said she was satisfied that it posed a threat and cited the attacks in 2004.

A Home Office spokeswoman said Charles Clarke, the home secretary, who took the final decision to ban the IJU, had been provided with a detailed intelligence assessment.

‘IJU is a proscribed organisation by the United Nations and there was a clear case for the government to follow suit,’ she said. Blears had presented accurate information to parliament and was drawing on the ‘full intelligence picture’.

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White House seeks exception to allow CIA to continue abuse

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By Eric Schmitt writing in the New York Times

“They are explicitly saying, for the first time, that the intelligence community should have the ability to treat prisoners inhumanely”

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 – Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists.

The Senate defied a presidential veto threat nearly three weeks ago and approved, 90 to 9, an amendment to a $440 billion military spending bill that would ban the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of any detainee held by the United States government. This could bar some techniques that the C.I.A. has used in some interrogations overseas.

But in a 45-minute meeting last Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney and the C.I.A. director, Porter J. Goss, urged Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who wrote the amendment, to support an exemption for the agency, arguing that the president needed maximum flexibility in dealing with the global war on terrorism, said two government officials who were briefed on the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the discussions.

Mr. McCain rejected the proposed exemption, which stated that the measure “shall not apply with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense and are consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and treaties to which the United States is a party, if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.”

Spokesmen for Mr. McCain, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Goss all declined to comment on the matter Monday, citing the confidentiality of the talks.

Human rights organizations said Monday that it was unclear whether the language in the changes proposed by the White House meant that the president would decide exemptions case by case or whether there would be more of a blanket authority. But they said the administration’s proposal would seriously undermine Mr. McCain’s measure.

Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First, formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said the administration had interpreted an international treaty banning torture to mean that a prohibition against cruel and inhumane treatment did not apply to C.I.A. actions overseas.

“That’s why the McCain amendment is important, and that’s why this language they’re floating now would gut it,” said Ms. Massimino, who provided a copy of the administration’s proposed changes to The New York Times.

Human rights advocates said that creating parallel sets of interrogation rules for military personnel and clandestine intelligence operatives was impractical in the war on terrorism, where soldiers and spies routinely cross paths on a global battlefield and often share techniques

“They are explicitly saying, for the first time, that the intelligence community should have the ability to treat prisoners inhumanely,” Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said. “You can’t tell soldiers that inhumane treatment is always morally wrong if they see with their own eyes that C.I.A. personnel are allowed to engage in it.”

Mr. McCain’s provision faces stiff opposition in the House, which did not include similar language in its version of the spending bill.

The White House has threatened to veto any bill that includes the McCain provision, contending that it would bind the president’s hands in wartime.

But Mr. McCain has kept the pressure on as the issue moves to a House-Senate conference committee, perhaps later this week or next. Shortly after the Senate vote on Oct. 5, Mr. McCain’s staff sent members of the conference committee letters endorsing the provision signed by more than two dozen retired senior military officers, including former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and John M. Shalikashvili, both former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The matter will probably be settled in a private meeting in the next week or two among four senior lawmakers: Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, both Republicans; and Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii and Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, both Democrats. All are on the conference committee.

Mr. McCain originally offered his measure earlier this year, when the Senate was working on a bill setting Pentagon policy. But Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, scuttled that bill, partly because of White House opposition to the amendment.

Now it appears that senators have struck a deal to revive the budget bill for Senate floor debate and action. One of the principal amendments that Democrats are expected to offer, sponsored by Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, would create an independent commission to review accusations of prisoner abuse by American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere. The White House has also threatened a presidential veto if any bill comes to Mr. Bush’s desk that contains the provision.

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The Security Services Support Torture: That is Why We Have a Judiciary

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Before the House of Lords this week the government has been arguing for the right to act on intelligence obtained by torture abroad. Channel 4 has obtained the statement to the Law Lords by the head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Butler. In effect she argues that torture works. It foiled the famous ricin plot.

She omits to mention that no more ricin was found than is the naturally occurring base level in your house or mine ‘ or indeed that no poison of any kind was found. Nor does she recall that there has never been a successful large scale poisoning with ricin. But let us leave that for now.

She argues, in effect, that we need to get intelligence from foreign security services, to fight terrorism. And if they torture, so what? Her chief falsehood is our pretence that we don’t know what happens in their dungeons. We do. And it is a dreadful story. Manningham-Butler is so fastidious she even avoids using the word ‘Torture’ at all in her evidence. Let alone the reality to which she turns such a carefully blind eye.

Uzbekistan is one of those security services from whose ‘friendly liaison’ services we obtained information. And I will tell you what torture means. It means the woman who was raped with a broken bottle in both vagina and anus, and who died after ten days of agony. It means the old man suspended by wrist shackles from the ceiling while his children were beaten to a pulp before his eyes. It means the man whose fingernails were pulled before his face was beaten and he was immersed to his armpits in boiling liquid. It means the eighteen year old whose knees and elbows were smashed, his hand immersed in boiling liquid until the skin came away and the flesh started to peel from the bone, before the back of his skull was stove in.

These are all real cases from the Uzbek security services which we viewed as friendly liaison, and from which we obtained regular intelligence, in the Uzbek case via the CIA. A month ago that liaison relationship was stopped ‘ not by us, but by the Uzbeks. But as Manningham-Buller sets out, we continue to maintain our position as customer to torturers in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and many other places.

The key point is that none of the above Uzbek victims were terrorists at all. The great majority of those who suffer torture at the hands of these regimes are not terrorists, but political opponents. And the scale of this torture is vast. In Uzbekistan alone thousands, not hundreds, of innocent men, women and children suffer torture every year. Across Manningham-Buller’s web of friendly intelligence agencies, the number may reach tens of thousands. Can our security really be based on such widespread inhumanity, or is that not part of the grievance that feeds terrorism? Every year the Uzbek government kills many times more innocent people than would realistically have died, even if someone had been able to scrape ricin out of their saucepan. Do those deaths not matter?

How many foreign Muslim lives is one British life worth?

These other governments know that our security services lap up information from their torture chambers. This practical condoning more than cancels out any weasel words on human rights which the Foreign Office may issue.

In fact, the case for the efficacy of torture intelligence is not nearly as clear-cut as Manningham-Buller makes out. Much dross comes out of the torture chambers. History should tell us that under torture people would choke out an admission that they had joined their neighbours in flying on broomsticks with cats. The narrative we get is the precise narrative that the foreign intelligence agency wishes us to hear. They often have their own agenda to plug.

A final thought. Manningham-Buller is arguing from the efficiency of torture in preventing a terrorist plot. If that argument is accepted, then in logic there is no reason to rely on foreign intermediaries. Why don’t we do our own torturing at home? James VI and I abolished torture ‘ New Labour are making the first attempt in English courts to justify Government use of torture information. Why stop there? Why can’t the agencies work over terrorist suspects?

I seem to recall that we tried that approach with the Birmingham 6 and the Guildford 4, and look where that got us.

The Security Services want us to be able to use information from torture. That should come as no surprise. From Sir Thomas Walsingham on, the profession attracts people not squeamish about the smell of seared flesh from the branding iron. That is why we have a judiciary to protect us. I pray that they do.

Craig Murray

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Foreign Affairs Select Committee

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The UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its associated public bodies”.

In March 2005 the committee published damning criticism of Jack Straw’s FCO and its policies and practice on torture and extraordinary rendition. The week begining 24th October they will be hearing evidence on the ‘War on Terror’ and later in November will be holding an inquiry into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s 2005 Human Rights Annual Report.

With new evidence available on the brutality of extrodinary rendition and admissions by MI5 of its use of torture evidence, will Jack Straw’s continued obfuscation be tolerated? Will he be called to account for his previous misleading statements and quasi rebuttals?

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MI5 officially admits they use torture evidence

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Channel 4 News has published a MI5 statement on the use of information extracted by torture.

Channel 4 News has obtained evidence from the boss of MI5, submitted to the House of Lords, which lawyers say makes the claim that ‘torture works’ in obtaining evidence against suspected terrorists.

Eliza Manningham-Buller gave her submission to hearing on the use of torture to obtain evidence.

“In some cases, it may be apparent to the Agencies that the intelligence has been obtained from individuals in detention (“detainee reporting”), though, even then, the Agencies will often not know the location or details of detention. ”

“… experience proves that detainee reporting can be accurate and may enable lives to be saved.”

Citing a specific case, Manningham-Buller said;

“No inquiries were made of … the precise circumstances that attended their questioning of [Mohammed] Meguerba. In any event, questioning of Algerian liaison about their methods of questioning detainees would almost certainly have been rebuffed and at the same time would have damaged the relationship to the detriment of our ability to counter international terrorism.”

The full document can be read and downloaded here: Statement of Elizabeth Manningham Buller (pdf).

The news report can be watched here

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Scotland’s answer to Walter Wolfgang

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By David Lister writing in the Times online

WITH her year-round tan, long blonde hair and designer clothes, Sally Cameron does not look like a threat to national security. But the 34-year-old property developer has joined the ranks of Britain’s most unlikely terrorist suspects after being held for hours for trespassing on a cycle path.

Ms Cameron was being hailed yesterday as Scotland’s answer to Walter Wolfgang, the 82-year-old heckler manhandled out of the Labour Party conference last month. She was arrested under the Terrorism Act for walking along a cycle path in the harbour area of Dundee.

Yesterday, after receiving a letter from the Tayside procurator fiscal’s office informing her that she would not be prosecuted, Ms Cameron said: ‘It is utterly ridiculous that such an inoffensive person as myself should be subject to such heavy-handed treatment.’

She was walking from her office in Dundee to her home in the suburb of Broughty Ferry when she was arrested under new anti-terrorist legislation and held for four hours.

She said: ‘I’ve been walking to work every morning for months and months to keep fit. One day, I was told by a guard on the gate that I couldn’t use the route any more because it was solely a cycle path and he said, if I was caught doing it again, I’d be arrested.

‘The next thing I knew, the harbour master had driven up behind me with a megaphone, saying, ‘You’re trespassing, please turn back’. It was totally ridiculous. I started laughing and kept on walking. Cyclists going past were also laughing.

‘But then two police cars roared up beside me and cut me off, like a scene from Starsky and Hutch, and officers told me I was being arrested under the Terrorism Act. The harbour master was waffling on and (saying that), because of September 11, I would be arrested and charged.’

Ms Cameron, who said that at one stage one of the officers asked her to stop laughing, described the incident as ‘like a scene from the movie Erin Brockovich, with all the dock workers cheering me and telling me to give them hell’. She said: ‘I was told that the cycle path was for cyclists only, as if walkers and not cyclists were the only ones likely to plant bombs. There are no signs anywhere saying there are to be no pedestrians.

‘They took me to the police station and held me for several hours before charging me and releasing me.’

She said that she was particularly galled by the letter from the procurator fiscal’s office, which said that she would not be prosecuted even though ‘the evidence is sufficient to justify bringing you before the court on this criminal charge’.

Keith Berry, the harbour master at Forth Ports Dundee, said yesterday that Ms Cameron had been seen as a ‘security risk’. Speaking about the incident, which took place in May, he said: ‘We contacted the police in regards to this matter because the woman was in a secure area which forbids people walking. It was seen as a security risk. We were following guidelines in requirement with the port security plan set up by the Government.’

A spokesman for Forth Ports said: ‘We will robustly prosecute anyone who breaches these new security measures because they have been introduced by the Government and we are obliged to enforce them.’

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Mothers of dead British soldiers camp out at Downing Street

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Rose Gentle and Susan Smith are two mothers whose sons were killed in the war in Iraq. Although they have been refused legal aid by the British government they are pursuing legal action to demand an inquiry as to why Tony Blair took this country into war against Iraq.

They are currently camping outside No 10 for 24 hours to directly confront Tony Blair with their case. The protest is scheduled for 15:00 on Tuesday 18 – through to 15:00 on Wednesday 19 October.

For further information see MFAW

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Extraordinary rendition and torture – not just an American problem!

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Award wining journalist Neil Mackay has just published a series of articles on extraordinary rendition and torture. We are posting them here on the site today along with additional material and comment from Craig Murray. This takes place in the context of the British high court currently considering the fate of the Belmarsh detainees, who may of been detained on the basis of evidence gained under torture, and the British government actively and publicaly seeking to justify the use of such evidence on a continuing basis (Real Player).

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Torture Flights: The Inside Story

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By Neil Mackay writing in the Sunday Herald

THEY could be walking the streets of Sweden, Italy, Albania, Indonesia or Pakistan. They are kidnapped in broad daylight, hooded, drugged, shackled and placed on a jet operated by the CIA. When they wake they find themselves in a country such as Morocco, Egypt or Uzbekistan ‘ where torture is the currency of the interrogation room. The CIA hand the captive to the local secret police, and the prisoner disappears off the face of the Earth. If they are lucky, they will emerge a few years later in a cage in Guantanamo Bay, broken by beatings, rape and electrocution … if they are unlucky, they are never seen again.

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Two experts on extraordinary rendition: one invented it, the other has seen its full horrors

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An excellent report from Neil Mackay. There is one important error – in the penultimate para MI6 head of station should read CIA head of station – there was no MI6 station in Tashkent.

Uzbekistan withdrew intelligence co-operation from the US and UK three weeks ago – it is worth noting that we didn’t stop, they did. Bush has announced that Uzbekistan should be given “One last chance” to restore intelligence co-operation before the US considers sanctions similar to those undertaken by the EU. So it is not the torture the US objects to, it is the new Uzbek refusal to share the results of it.

Extraodrdinary rendition, however, goes on elsewhere. I happened to be in Uzbekistan and blew the whistle on our cooperation with torture there. In Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and many other destinations, extraordinary rendition continues unabated.

This War on Terror. Remind me, who are the good guys?

Craig

By Neil Mackay in the Sunday Herald

These two men are experts on rendition: one invented it, the other has seen its full horrors

IF there are two men in the world who know about ‘extraordinary renditions’ then they are Michael Scheuer, the CIA chief who invented the programme, and Craig Murray, the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who saw first-hand the devastating consequences for British intelligence of using renditions.

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One victim’s story

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By Neil Mackay in the Sunday Herald

ON each stage of his journey, as he descended further and further into the gulags and torture chambers of the war on terror, Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi was shadowed by British intelligence. The British were there in Karachi when Americans interrogated him and Pakistanis tortured him; they were feeding questions to the Moroccan torturers who took a scalpel to his penis; they stood back and watched as he was dragged to an American torture chamber in Afghanistan and then to the gulag of Guantanamo, where he languishes to this day.

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Jack Straw: fully informed, fully culpable

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In the context of the series of articles by Neil Mackay, we re-post the text of a telegram from Craig Murray to Jack Straw. The communication complains about the use of intelligence obtained under torture and was sent in July 2004 while Craig was still British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

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Britain sued for ‘complicity’ in torture

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By Neil Mackay in the Sunday Herald

One of the world’s leading human rights lawyers is to sue Britain for its ‘complicity’ in the torture of terror suspects who have never been convicted of a crime. The news comes as a former leading British diplomat has accused the government of basing its anti-terror policies on information from torture victims that was ‘bollocks’.

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