The case for impeachment of the US President and Vice President is argued by Ted Fertik at Yale Daily News

From the International Herald Tribune

The Bush administration’s tendency to dodge accountability for lawless actions by resorting to secrecy and claims of national security is on sharp display in the case of a Syrian- born Canadian, Maher Arar, who spent months under torture because of U.S. action. A federal trial judge in Brooklyn has refused to stand up to the executive branch, in a decision that is both chilling and ripe for prompt overturning.

Arar, 35, a software engineer, was detained at New York’s Kennedy Airport in 2002 while on his way home from a family vacation. He was held in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn detention center and interrogated without proper access to legal counsel. Finally, he was shipped off to a Syrian prison. There, he was held for 10 months in a rat-infested underground dungeon and brutally tortured because officials suspected that he was a member of Al Qaeda. All this was part of a morally and legally unsupportable U.S. practice known as “extraordinary rendition,” in which the federal government outsources interrogations to regimes known to use torture and lacking fundamental human rights protections.

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Two years ago, David Rose was the first journalist to interview the Tipton Three after their release from Guantanamo Bay. Now he applauds Michael Winterbottom’s award-winning film of their ordeal – and finds out what has happened to the men since.

Using terror to fight terror

From The Guardian (23.02.2006)

MPs will today chastise ministers over their stance on the US practice of “extraordinary rendition” amid the first official admission that 200 suspect CIA flights had used British airspace.

In a report highly critical of the government’s attitude towards human rights abuses, the Commons foreign affairs committee accuses ministers of failing in their duty to find out whether Britain has been complicit in the US policy of secretly transferring detainees to places where they risked being tortured.

Members of the committee say they have not been told the full story despite months of trying. They are to summon the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to give evidence again on an issue which has serious political and legal implications. The move was agreed after Mr Straw suggested he would be questioned in private only by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, Paul Keetch, a Liberal Democrat member of the Commons foreign affairs group, said yesterday.

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Now that information is starting to come out about the hundreds of CIA rendition flights in UK airspace, at least scores refuelling at UK airports, the government’s refusal to give details to MPs of CIA flights landing at military airports is an appalling denial of democracy.

The government claims that this information would be “too expensive” to collect.

Earlier in my career, I was the number 2 in the FCO’s Aviation and Maritime Department. I can tell you for certain that, even by Jack Straw’s standards, the “too expensive” claim is an appalling lie.

When these planes touch down in the UK, they no longer have flag immunity. Which means that UK law applies rather than the law of the country in which the plane is registered. So when someone is being held against their will without legal authority- usually shackled to the floor – and the plane is on the ground at Prestwick, RAF Northolt or elsewhere, a serious crime is being committed.

I can tell you for certain that if these planes were carrying heroin, rather than beaten and degraded human beings, it would be technically very simple to track them, given we know the physical planes used. It would also be no problem at all to board them at the airport.

If parliament and the courts allow Straw and Blair to get away with this foul abuse, then the rule of law is finished and we no longer live in a democracy.

I shall be testifying before the European Parliament’s Committee on Extraordinary Rendition in Brussels on 23 March.

Craig

From The Guardian (22.02.2006)

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, today again denied the government had any knowledge of CIA “extraordinary rendition” flights, after it was revealed last night that the suspected planes involved had flown through UK airspace around 200 times in the past five years.

The row over possible British government collusion in the controversial US practice re-erupted last night after Channel Four news revealed new figures from the National Air Traffic Service relating to the aircraft thought to be involved.

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From BBC Online

Five European countries have not given information about allegations of covert CIA prison transport flights, Europe’s human rights watchdog has said. Belgium, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Italy, San Marino and Georgia were all in breach of European human rights law, according to the Council of Europe.

The head of the council had asked all 46 members to detail any involvement. A recent council inquiry said the CIA flew more than 100 terror suspects through Europe, possibly for torture.

In a series of questions distributed in November 2005, Council of Europe Secretary-General Terry Davis asked member states to detail what measures they had taken to ensure that people were not subject to “forced disappearances, secret detentions and extraordinary renditions”.

The deadline for responses expired on Tuesday.

Mr Davis said: “I remind all five countries that their failure to reply is a clear breach of the Convention, which underpins the defence of human rights across the continent.” The breach should be rectified “as a matter of urgency”, he added.

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From Mainichi Newspapers

“Suspect of terrorism might have been secretly handed over to

the related countries by US”. Interview with former UK diplomat.

Summary

“Mr. Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, has told to Mainichi that “US and UK have utilized, or admitted to use, the information which have been obtained by torture”. In addition, he asserted that the opinion of then a legal advisor for the UK government was; “receiving or possessing information under torture does not create any offense against the UN convention on Torture”. Mr. Murray has testified at the Council of Europe with having submitted the documents which confirm these remarks. He also points out that, according to his experience in Uzbekistan, while US might not construct any “secret prison” in European Continent, it seems to be quite probable that US would hand over these suspects to the third countries.”

Audio of the witness speeches and other evidence submitted to The Second Session of the Bush War Commission can now be accessed here

UK judge slams US over prisoner torture claims

US military planes criss-cross Europe using bogus call sign

Shameful: This is the world’s view on Guantanamo. But Tony Blair still calls it ‘an anomaly’

From The Independent

CIA jets suspected of flying terrorist suspects to secret prisons for torture have landed at commercial British airports and received help from UK air traffic control, the authorities have admitted for the first time.

National Air Traffic Services (Nats) confirmed that three planes with CIA tail numbers have travelled through Britain “on a number of occasions”.

MPs last night seized on the letter as the first formal acknowledgement that British authorities were aware that CIA flights associated with “extraordinary rendition” have travelled through UK airspace.

They said it showed that ministers could no longer claim they had no knowledge of CIA flights that have been linked to the policy of sending terrorist suspects for interrogation in countries that carry out torture.

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By Ben Russell in The Independent

Ministers are facing fresh pressure for an independent inquiry into claims that Britain has been involved in secret CIA torture flights.

Tony Baldry, the chairman of the Commons International Development Committee, called on the Foreign Office to demand answers from the US about claims that British airports had been used as stop-off points for flights transporting terror suspects to countries across the world.

He told a parliamentary debate that so-called extraordinary rendition was “well documented… There is compelling testimony from people who claim to have been shipped abroad by the US and tortured. The UK government shows no inclination to investigate reports of US aircraft using UK airports or airspace for rendition purposes.”

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From Forbes.com

A European Parliament committee investigating allegations that the CIA had secret prisons in Europe will contact senior CIA and Bush administration officials in the next few days – and ask them to testify on the matter, an official said Tuesday.

Italian Socialist deputy Giovanni Claudio Fava said the committee will start its work by questioning non-governmental and human rights organizations such as the New-York based Human Rights watch, which said it has circumstantial evidence indicating that the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania.

Fava said EU lawmakers would then seek to speak to high-ranking CIA officials, including director Porter Goss, probably by mid-April, before drafting a preliminary report on their findings.

Other people on the list include former CIA director George Tenet, U.S. Senator John Kerry and U.S. Senator John McCain. Previously, EU deputies suggested U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could be asked to testify.

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Five independent investigators of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights are calling on the United States to close immediately the detention centre in Guant’namo Bay and bring all detainees before an independent and competent tribunal or release them.

The press release is here

The PDF of the full report can be read here

From the American Civil Liberties Union

NEW YORK – In response to newly released images of abuse at Abu Ghraib, the American Civil Liberties Union today renewed its call for an independent investigation into widespread and systemic abuse in U.S. detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guant’namo Bay.

“We continue to see undeniable evidence that abuse and torture has been widespread and systematic, yet high level government officials have not been held accountable for creating the policies that led to these atrocities,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “We need to look up the chain of military command, because when the rule of law is not followed all of our personal freedoms are threatened. President Bush should appoint an independent counsel to uncover the full truth about the extent of the abuse and who is ultimately responsible.”

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Join Jumana Musa on Wednesday, February 15th from 1:00-2:00 PM EST for the first of a three-part online discussion series on the impact of indefinite detention and extraordinary rendition on detainees and their families.

Jumana Musa is Amnesty International USA Advocacy Director for Human Rights and International Justice and has traveled to the Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in August and November 2004 and January 2006 as part of a delegation of rights groups observing preliminary proceedings for detainees facing trial by military commission.

Submit questions and join the discussion here

By Bronwen Maddox in Times Online

A UNITED NATIONS investigation has declared that the US committed acts amounting to torture at Guantanamo Bay and has called for it to close its holding pen for suspected terrorists…

‘The legal regime applied to these detainees seriously undermines the rule of law and a number of fundamental universally recognised human rights, which are the essence of democratic societies,’ the report said.

The UN team calls on the US to revoke all special interrogation techniques authorised by the Defence Department.

The full article can be read here

By Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith, in The Times Online

The CIA’s top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as ‘water boarding’, intelligence sources have claimed.

Robert Grenier, head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, was relieved of his post after a year in the job. One intelligence official said he was ‘not quite as aggressive as he might have been’ in pursuing Al-Qaeda leaders and networks.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: ‘It is not that Grenier wasn’t aggressive enough, it is that he wasn’t ‘with the programme’. He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists.’

Grenier also opposed ‘excessive’ interrogation, such as strapping suspects to boards and dunking them in water, according to Cannistraro.

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By Phil Stewart from Reuters

Milan prosecutors expect to launch procedures within a month that could put 22 CIA agents accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan on trial in absentia, a senior judicial source said.

The source, who asked not to be named, said prosecutors were growing tired of perceived foot-dragging by Washington and Rome over requests that would advance their investigation — one of several European probes into suspected U.S. covert operations.

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