From the Globe and Mail

WASHINGTON — Facing sharp criticism at home and abroad, President George W. Bush signed an executive order giving interrogators new rules on the treatment of suspected terrorists in the U.S. detention program, but the measures failed to quell criticism that the White House condones torture.

The order, which the White House said is in compliance with the Geneva Conventions, was criticized by human-rights groups as vague. And the guidelines, which will continue to allow harsh, if unspecified interrogation techniques, may breathe new life into the interrogation program by removing the uncertainty that has hung over it since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year cast doubt on its legality.

The new rules set out conditions that interrogators are not allowed to impose on detainees held at U.S. Central Intelligence Agency prisons and other locations, including the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It includes prohibitions against sexual humiliation, religious denigrations, and deprivation of basic necessities.

The move comes 10 months after Mr. Bush, who has repeatedly denied that the United States practises torture, was forced to suspend its secret-prison system. This decision came after a Supreme Court ruling in June of 2006 that undermined the legality of the program.

In response to the executive order, Christopher Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office said:

“The order takes some steps in the right direction, particularly where it explicitly bans CIA practices such as induced hypothermia and prohibits specific acts of humiliation. It also includes broader bans on torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, as defined in the War Crimes Act. But of course, the Executive Order is only as good as the people applying it. If any of the recent past presidents, Republican or Democrat, were applying this order, we wouldn’t have any doubt that it means an end to torture and abuse by the CIA. However, with President Bush’s record of playing word games with anti-torture laws, we do not have the same confidence that the torture and abuse has stopped and will not start up again.”

From COE

Dick Marty presents his second report on secret detentions in Europe

Strasbourg, 04.06.2007 ‘ Following several months of additional investigation, Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE), rapporteur of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), is due to present his second report on ‘Alleged secret detentions and illegal inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states’ to the Assembly’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in Paris on Friday 8 June 2007.

The meeting is closed to the press, but if the report is approved by the committee, it will be made public on this occasion. Mr Marty will also give a press conference at 2 p.m.

Commenting on the draft, Mr Marty said: ‘My first report focused mainly on illegal inter-state transfers and extraordinary renditions. This second report will focus mainly on the other part of my mandate ‘ secret detentions.’

The report, if approved, is scheduled for debate by the 318-member Assembly, bringing together parliamentarians from all 47 Council of Europe member states, on Wednesday 27 June 2007, during its June plenary session in Strasbourg.

From BBC Online

The first criminal trial over the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” of terror suspects has opened in Italy. Twenty-six Americans and six Italians are accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.

The Americans – most believed to be CIA agents – will be tried in absentia. Italy has not announced if it will seek their extradition to the Milan trial. US President George W Bush will arrive in Italy hours after the trial opens.

Meanwhile, the head of a European investigation into the rendition process is due to present more findings on Friday.

Surprise witness

Italy’s government has asked the country’s highest court to set aside the rendition trial, saying prosecution documents will break state secrecy laws and damage relations with the CIA. The Constitutional Court is due to rule on that appeal by September, and defence lawyers are expected to ask that the trial be adjourned until the high court makes its ruling.

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr – also known as Abu Omar – was snatched from a Milan street in February 2003. Italian prosecutors say Nasr was taken to US bases in Italy and Germany before being taken to the Egyptian capital of Cairo. Nasr says he was tortured during his four-year imprisonment in Cairo.

At the time of his arrest he was suspected of recruiting fighters for Islamic groups but had not been charged. He was released by Egypt earlier this year, his lawyer said.

A senior US official has said that the 26 Americans accused of Nasr’s kidnapping would not be sent to Italy even if Rome made an extradition request.

One of the surprise witnesses in the case will be Philip Morse – one of the minority owners of the US baseball team the Boston Red Sox, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Rome. It is alleged that his Gulfstream jet was used by the CIA to fly Abu Omar out of Italy, says our correspondent.

‘Web of abuse’

Also on Friday, Swiss senator Dick Marty, leading an inquiry on behalf of the Council of Europe, is due to release more of his findings. Last year, he accused 14 European nations of colluding with US intelligence in a “spider’s web” of human rights abuses, and specified Romania and Poland as suspected locations for CIA “black sites”, where terror suspects are secretly held.

President Bush acknowledged the existence of such centres last year, but did not say where they were. Mr Bush will arrive on Friday for talks with Pope Benedict XVI and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

Mr Prodi has already said that the extraordinary rendition case will not be on the agenda.

Last night BBC 2 showed “This World: Mystery Flights“, which did a good job of bringing together much of the available evidence on the illegal activites of the CIA extraordinary rendition programme. It included some brief but priceless footage of Jack Straw attempting to obfuscate before a parliamentary select committee. In constrast, Dick Marty cooly laid out the case against European government denials of culpability, an ex CIA boss passed the buck up the chain to the very top, and Clive Stafford Smith stated his intention to sue into the next generation until responsibility is accepted.

From BBC Online

“This World: Mystery Flights” pieces together the jigsaw of “extraordinary rendition”, the alleged illegal CIA transfer of terror suspects to secret prisons in Europe.

In far eastern Poland in 2002 and 2003 strange planes landed on an old disused runway in a secluded forest – nine times. The airport was closed but Mariola Przewlocka, the airport facilities manager, was told to accept the planes or “heads would roll”.

Airport staff were told to stay away while the passengers were unloaded out of sight. Mini-vans with blacked-out windows drove them away to a former Soviet military intelligence base, where it is believed the CIA has its own zone.

Extraordinary rendition

Was Poland a staging point in the network of secret prisons established by the United States in their “extraordinary rendition” programme? Did these mystery flights bring al-Qaeda suspects to Poland?

“It didn’t occur to anyone then that it might have something to do with transporting prisoners,” says Mariola Przewlocka. “All the rigmarole surrounding the flights – now I think it may have been possible.”

“Extraordinary rendition” is the CIA term for taking prisoners abroad for interrogation, a policy the US administration defends as a necessary tool in the “war on terror”. It denies that prisoners are taken to be tortured. But it offers no explanation for transporting them around the world to countries that are known to use torture, such as Uzbekistan, Morocco, Egypt and Syria.

Torture denials

Binyam Mohammed, a British resident from Ethiopia was “rendered” to Morocco in a Gulfstream N379P after he was arrested in Pakistan.

He says he was tortured there until he agreed to sign a statement his captors had prepared. The statement said that he was a member of al-Qaeda; that he had met Osama bin Laden and that he was part of a plot to explode a radioactive bomb in America. His lawyer Clive Stafford Smith believes US denials on torture cannot be true.

“He was taken by the Americans to Morocco,” he said. “He’s not Moroccan so there’s only one purpose and that’s for him to go through a little bit of extraordinary interrogation.”

Another rendition flight – this time a Boeing 737 – which stopped in Mallorca on its way to Afghanistan, was photographed by plane-spotters. When human rights organisations, journalists, lawyers and plane-spotters compared notes, and when the dates were matched with flight logs and other prisoners’ testimonies, the extent of the rendition programme began to be revealed.

It is alleged that the CIA flew their planes to 29 different countries and that there were 300 CIA landings in Europe alone, 80 in Britain. How many prisoners were rendered is still not known. Nor is it known whether many were subjected to torture.

Damaging

European governments continue to deny they were involved. Joseph Manchado, the plane-spotter who photographed the Boeing in Mallorca, is sceptical.

“I think the Spanish authorities knew that there were flights from Palma to Guantanamo. Clearly businessmen don’t fly to Guantanamo. I don’t suppose the authorities investigated – they just prefer to keep quiet and turn a blind eye to what was going on right under their noses”.

Few people in America or Europe have cried for the fate of these Muslim men who may or may not be guilty, but who have never been tried or given a chance to defend themselves in court. Some will think they deserve no mercy, in revenge for al-Qaeda’s crimes committed in their religion’s name.

But the former head of the CIA in Europe Tyler Drumheller admits the policy has been damaging. In an exclusive interview with the BBC he says: “It’s a mess, and it’s going to get worse. A lot of things were done after 9/11 that are going to be looked at for years to come. There are going to be commissions, inquiries, court cases.”

Mr Drumheller was head of clandestine operations between 2001 and his resignation in 2005. He cannot speak of the secret prisons, for fear of prosecution himself, but he believes the buck stops with the US President.

ANTI- RENDITION ACTION

Germany: Parliamentary investigation; arrest warrants issued by Munich court for 13 suspected CIA agents

Italy: Judge to decide on whether to try suspects in case of kidnapped imam

Portugal: Investigation opened in January by public prosecutor

Romania: Parliamentary investigation into secret prison claims

Spain: Judge investigating whether CIA flight stopovers violated human rights law

Switzerland: Criminal probe into use of Swiss airspace to fly kidnapped imam from Italy to Germany

By September 2006, the White House was forced to admit that “a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war had been held and questioned outside the United States in a separate programme operated by the Central Intelligence Agency”. But the president would not say where detainees had been held, or divulge details of their confinement.

Slowly Europe’s democracies are cranking into action in a belated attempt to hold their own governments to account. In Italy, a former chief of military intelligence is in court. Warrants are out for the arrest of CIA agents formerly based there and the government is being accused of a cover-up.

The former President of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, and the former Polish Defence Minister, Radoslaw Sirkorski, have denied that Poland and the military airbase in question were involved.

The UK Government has said it does not know and has no way of finding out who was aboard the 80 CIA flights that landed on British soil.

This World: “Mystery Flights” was broadcast on Thursday 24 May 2007 at 2100 BST on BBC Two.