US ‘must end secret detentions’

From BBC Online

The US should close any secret “war on terror” detention facilities abroad and the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba, a United Nations report has said. The UN Committee against Torture urged the US to ensure no one was detained in any secret facility.

The report followed the first US appearance before the committee since the 11 September 2001 attacks. A legal spokesman for the US state department said the report contained “factual and legal inaccuracies”.

John Bellinger admitted that some “acts of abuse” had occurred in the past, but insisted the US was taking steps to prevent any repeat. “I think without a doubt our record has improved over the last few years,” he told the AFP news agency. “We take our obligations under the convention seriously.”

During the hearing in early May, the US neither confirmed or denied the existence of secret prisons. The US has been holding hundreds of terror suspects arrested since 11 September at facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba. It has been accused of operating secret prisons and transporting some detainees to states which use torture.

The committee also recommended in its 11-page report that the US should:

– Register all those it detains in territories under its jurisdiction

– Eradicate torture and ill-treatment of detainees

– Not send suspects to countries where they face a risk of torture

– Enact a federal crime of torture

– Broaden the definition of acts of psychological torture

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From EUOBSERVER

CIA officials have corroborated reports that extraordinary renditions – transfers of prisoners from one country to another bypassing due judicial rule – have taken place on European soil with the blessing of EU governments.

A delegation from the European Parliament committee investigating allegations of US kidnappings and secret prison camps in Europe, on Wednesday (17 May) reported the information after a recent visit to the US.

“More than one source in the CIA…told us that between 30 and 50 people have been transported by extraordinary rendition,” Italian Socialist MEP and committee rapporteur Giovanni Claudio Fava told reporters in Strasbourg.

According to Mr Fava, the information MEPs received when meeting with the US state department’s top legal advisor, John Bellinger, assistant secretary of state Daniel Fried, members of the US Congress, lawyers and NGO representatives had been “patchy and inconsistent.”

But one clear point did emerge from the conversations, MEPs said.

“The only point in common from the officials we spoke to was that it was not possible to organise extraordinary rendition such as this without the active complicity of European governments,” said Carlos Coelho MEP, chair of the temporary committee.

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From the Jurist

Martin Scheinin, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism, said Tuesday that US officials have been stonewalling investigations into allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency flew terrorism suspects through Europe to countries where they could be tortured. Scheinin expressed concern that as a result of US reluctance to cooperate with investigators it could take several years to determine the truth of the allegations.

Members of a European Union delegation investigating the practice known as rendition also complained of a lack of cooperation from the State Department during its visit to Washington last week. The EU visit was part of a European Parliament inquiry into whether European countries were involved in clandestine CIA prisons or flights moving suspected terrorists.

Reuters has more.

The break with their usual quiet diplomacy illustrates the Red Cross’s level of frustration at the intransigence of the US administration.

From The Guardian

WASHINGTON (AP) – Taking issue with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the State Department said Friday the United States is not obliged under the Geneva conventions to give the committee access to all prisoners under U.S. jurisdiction.

Department spokesman Sean McCormack commented in response to criticism about U.S. policies by ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger.

Setting aside his normal practice of keeping his views confidential, Kellenberger said in a statement Friday that he deplored the Bush administration’s refusal to allow ICRC access to prisoners being held in secret facilities.

”No matter how legitimate the grounds for detention, there exists no right to conceal a person’s whereabouts or to deny that he or she is being detained,” Kellenberger said.

He said the ICRC would continue to seek access to these people ”as a matter of priority” despite the ”the disappointing lack of results and the current U.S. position.”

Kellenberger issued his statement through the ICRC’s Geneva headquarters after meetings here with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials.

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From the American Civil Liberties Union (08/05/2006)

The ACLU’s report to the Committee Against Torture is available here

The ACLU’s petition is available here

GENEVA — Today the American Civil Liberties Union delivered a petition with more than 51,000 signatures calling for the enforcement of the universal prohibition against torture to the U.S. State Department delegation at the meeting of the U.N. Committee Against Torture in Geneva. The ACLU has been monitoring the committee proceedings and providing information about U.S. sponsored policies and practices of torture and abuse at home and abroad. The U.S. delegation denied on Friday that incidents of detainee abuse are systemic.

“Instead of denying the systemic abuse of detainees confirmed by its own documents, the U.S. government must own up to the truth and take full responsibility,” said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project who is currently observing the committee’s examination of the U.S. report in Geneva. “We hope that the Committee Against Torture will hold the government accountable for the torture and abuse of detainees both within the United States and abroad.”

Addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and delivered to John Bellinger, a Department of State legal advisor who is heading the U.S. delegation, the petition states: “Torture. Government kidnapping. Indefinite detention. These are not ideas we associate with the United States of America. They do not represent who we are as Americans. By promoting and condoning these practices in our military and intelligence forces, your administration has broken faith with the American values of freedom and fairness.”

The ACLU also expressed deep concern with many of the responses of the U.S. delegation to questions posed by committee members. In particular, the ACLU is concerned about the inadequacy of the measures taken to prevent torture and abuse, and the failure to hold military and civilian leaders accountable for the torture and inhuman treatment of persons in U.S. custody. In addition, the U.S. said that it can kidnap persons from outside the U.S. and transport them to third countries without violating the Convention. The ACLU charges that the U.S. has illegally rendered detainees to countries and places where torture and abuse are common, and that diplomatic assurances have failed to prevent their torture.

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From Amnesty International

Critical loopholes in the McCain amendment show that the once-clandestine practice of torture is now an official weapon in the War on Terror.

Click for multimedia presentation

BY ALFRED W. MCCOY

Alfred W. McCoy is professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of several books, including the recently published “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror,” “Closer Than Brothers” and “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.” He is also a member of Amnesty International USA.

Just before Christmas last, President Bush and Senator John McCain appeared in the Oval Office to announce an historic ban on torture by any U.S. agency, anywhere in the world. Looking straight into the cameras, the president declared with a steely gaze that this landmark legislation would make it ‘clear to the world that this government does not torture.’

This meeting was the culmination of a tangled legislative battle that had started six months before when Senator John McCain introduced an amendment to the must-pass Defense Appropriation Bill, calling for an absolute ban on ‘cruel, inhumane and degrading’ treatment. The White House fought back hard, sending Vice President Cheney to Capitol Hill for a wrecking effort so sustained, so determined that a Washington Post editorial branded him ‘The Vice President for Torture.’ At first, Cheney demanded that the amendment be dropped. The senator refused. Next, Cheney insisted on an exemption for the CIA. The senator stood his ground. Then, in a startling rebuke to the White House, the Senate passed the amendment last October by a 90-9 margin, a victory celebrated by Amnesty International and other rights groups. With the White House still threatening a veto, the appropriation gridlocked in an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff.

Then came that dramatic December 15th handshake between Bush and McCain, a veritable media mirage that concealed furious back-room maneuvering by the White House to undercut the amendment. A coalition of rights groups, including Amnesty International, had resisted the executive’s effort to punch loopholes in the torture ban but, in the end, the White House prevailed. With the help of key senate conservatives, the Bush administration succeeded in twisting what began as an unequivocal ban on torture into a legitimization of three controversial legal doctrines that the administration had originally used to justify torture right after 9/11.

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From Amnesty International

Amnesty International today made public a report detailing its concerns about torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees both in the US and in US detention sites around the world.

The report has already been sent to members of the UN Committee Against Torture, who will be examining the US compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on 5 and 8 May in Geneva. The Convention against Torture prohibits the use of torture in all circumstances and requires states to take effective legal and other measures to prevent torture and to provide appropriate punishment for those who commit torture.

The US is reportedly sending a 30-strong delegation to Geneva to defend its record. In its written report to the Committee, the US government asserted its unequivocal opposition to the use or practice of torture under any circumstances — including war or public emergency.

“Although the US government continues to assert its condemnation of torture and ill-treatment, these statements contradict what is happening in practice,” said Curt Goering, Senior Deputy Executive Director Of Amnesty International USA. “The US government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish — including by trying to narrow the definition of torture.”

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From Expatica

“This all looks like a poor B-movie,” said German Green MEP Cem Oezdemir, adding: “It doesn’t seem to be an appropriate behaviour for a country which wants to become an EU member.”

BRUSSELS – European Union lawmakers Thursday accused Macedonia of giving “very contradictory information” on what it knew about the alleged abduction by the CIA of a Lebanese-born German national on its territory.

“Macedonian officials had a well-prepared official version, but there were many contradictions, and many new questions arose during our trip,” said Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann, a German member of the European Parliament.

Members of a European Parliament committee investigating alleged CIA activities in Europe last week went to Macedonia to quiz top government officials on what they knew about – and if they were involved – in a high-profile case of the US-practice of extraordinary rendition or the secret transfers of a suspect to a third country for interrogation, often under torture.

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Gabor Rona, International Legal Director for Human Rights First, is in Geneva observing the United States’ presentations to the Committee and will also brief the Committee on several issues of concern.

His daily bog on the proceedings can be read here

From the Financial Times

Washington to defend record on torture before UN

Washington will on Friday be called upon to defend its record on torture before an international forum for the first time since the September 11 attacks on the US sparked the ‘war on terror’.

The US has sent a 30-strong delegation to Geneva to answer questions from the United Nations committee against torture concerning abusive treatment of detainees in Guant’namo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In what one UN human rights official said was ‘the longest list of issues I have ever seen’, the committee has also asked the US to supply detailed information about secret detention centres, ‘extraordinary renditions’ and other apparent violations of the UN convention on torture it ratified in 1994.

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From BBC Online

European MPs have flown to Macedonia to investigate claims by a German citizen that he was seized by US agents and taken to Afghanistan for interrogation. The MEPs are members of a committee probing allegations about secret CIA flights and prisons in Europe.

On Wednesday, MEPs said the CIA had run more than 1,000 flights within the EU since 2001, often transporting terror suspects for questioning overseas. The US admits to some of the flights but denies condoning torture.

‘Extraordinary rendition’

The MEPs are in Macedonia until Friday in order to investigate the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin. He was arrested in Macedonia in 2003. After that, what happened to him is not clear. He says he was handed over to the Americans and taken to Afghanistan, where he was interrogated and mistreated.

After several months he was taken to Albania and released without charge, he says. American officials did later acknowledge Mr Masri was mistaken for someone else and had been wrongly detained. He is now suing the CIA and the Bavarian state prosecutor is investigating his claims.

The MEPs will meet the Macedonian prime minister and other senior officials. However, the BBC’s Alix Kroeger in Brussels says Macedonia is balancing its interests. It has begun applying for EU membership but it is also keen to show itself to be an ally of the US in the war on terror, she says.

MEPs’ investigation

A European parliament report said many EU states had ignored the hundreds of CIA flights that had used their airports. The report’s author, Italian Socialist MEP Claudio Fava, singled out Sweden, Italy and Bosnia, which is not an EU member, for particular criticism. A string of former detainees have come forward with stories alleging kidnap and transport by the US for interrogation in third countries – a process known as “extraordinary rendition”. Some have provided detailed accounts of alleged torture carried out in secret prisons outside EU or US jurisdiction.

Mr Fava accused European governments of breaching the Chicago aviation convention, under which all flights used for police purposes have to declare their route, destination, the names of crew and passengers. None had been asked to do so by any European government. Moreover, the flight paths, confirmed by the European air safety organisation Eurocontrol, “seem rather bizarre”, he told the BBC.

According to Eurocontrol, the Boeing plane used for the abduction of Mr Masri flew on another occasion, between September 22-23, 2003, from Kabul to Poland to Romania to Morocco and to the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Mr Fava said. “It is hard to think that those stopovers were used simply to refuel,” he said.

The committee has until next January to complete its investigation.

The BBC’s Oana Lungescu in Brussels says the focus of the investigation will now shift to the possible existence of secret detention centres in Europe. The European Parliament has uncovered no evidence so far, and neither has the Council of Europe, the human rights body also investigating the allegations.

Last year, Human Rights Watch said such centres were based in Poland and Romania – but both countries have strenuously denied any involvement, as have all the other European governments.

From the New York Times

BRUSSELS, April 26 ‘ Investigators for the European Parliament said Wednesday that data gathered from air safety regulators and others found that the Central Intelligence Agency had flown 1,000 undeclared flights over European territory since 2001.

Sometimes the planes stopped to pick up terrorism suspects who had been kidnapped to take them to countries that use torture, the investigators added.

The operation used the same American agents and the same planes over and over, they said, though they could not say how many flights involved the transport of suspects.

The investigation, by a committee looking into C.I.A. counterterrorism activities in Europe, also concluded that European countries, including Italy, Sweden and Bosnia and Herzegovina, were aware of the abductions or transfers and therefore might have been complicit.

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From the New York Times

BRUSSELS, April 20 ‘ The European Union’s antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe.

“We’ve heard all kinds of allegations,” the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. “It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.”

But Mr. de Vries came under criticism from some legislators who called the hearing a whitewash. Kathalijne Buitenweg, a Dutch member of Parliament from the Green Party, said that even without definitive proof, “the circumstantial evidence is stunning.”

“I’m appalled that we keep calling to uphold human rights while pretending that these rendition centers don’t exist and doing nothing about it,” she said.

Many European nations were outraged after an article in The Washington Post in November cited unidentified intelligence officials as saying that the C.I.A. had maintained detention centers for terrorism suspects in eight countries, including some in Eastern Europe. A later report by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch cited Poland and Romania as two of the countries.

Both countries, as well as others in Europe, have denied the allegations. But the issue has inflamed trans-Atlantic tensions.

Mr. de Vries said the European Parliament investigation had not uncovered rights abuses despite more than 50 hours of testimony by rights advocates and people who say they were abducted by C.I.A. agents. A similar investigation by the Council of Europe, the European human rights agency, came to the same conclusion in January ‘ though the leader of that inquiry, Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, said then that there were enough “indications” to justify continuing the investigation.

A number of legislators on Thursday challenged Mr. de Vries for not taking seriously earlier testimony before the committee of a German and a Canadian who gave accounts of being kidnapped and kept imprisoned by foreign agents.

The committee also heard Thursday from a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said: “I can attest to the willingness of the U.S. and the U.K. to obtain intelligence that was got under torture in Uzbekistan. If they were not willing, then rendition prisons could not have existed.” But Mr. Murray, who was recalled from his job in 2004 after condemning the Uzbek authorities and criticizing the British and American governments, told the committee that he had no proof that detention centers existed within Europe.

He said he had witnessed such rendition programs in Uzbekistan, but he seemed to back up Mr. de Vries’s assertion when he said he was not aware of anyone being taken to Uzbekistan from Europe. “As far as I know, that never happened,” he said.

While he was ambassador, Mr. Murray made many public statements condemning the government of President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan for its poor human rights record.

At the time, the Bush administration was using Uzbekistan as a base for military operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Murray, who has remained an outspoken critic of American and British policy toward Uzbekistan, has since been criticized by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain for breaching diplomatic protocol.

From Deutche Weller

A former British ambassador to Uzbekistan turned up the heat on Germany Thursday when he told a European Parliament committee that Germany had received information “most certainly obtained under torture” in Uzbekistan.

The allegations emerged when the European Parliament committee, currently investigating allegations of CIA human rights abuses made last year by human rights groups and the media, questioned former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray.

Murray’s 21-year diplomatic career came to an end two years ago, when he accused the United States and Britain of endorsing torture by using confessions obtained through torture from prisoners in Uzbekistan.

Speaking in Brussels Thursday, Murray reiterated that the CIA transported prisoners from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan to obtain confessions in former Soviet jails by using torture.

The US has acknowledged secret renditions but has denied endorsing torture.

Asked about allegations of secret flights operated by the CIA from Europe, Murray said he had no evidence proving flights from EU countries but categorically knew that flights had transported ethnic Uzbeks from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan.

Murray went on to claim that the German secret service worked in close proximity with the Uzbeks and continues to do so, stressing that he had no doubt that Germany used information “most certainly obtained under torture,” by the Uzbek secret service, and insisting that he had seen with his own eyes prisoners who had clearly been victims of brutal mistreatment.

As far as he knew, neither Americans not Europeans were actually present during torture sessions, but the information elicited was passed on both to the CIA and Britain’s MI6.

Asked by the committee at the European Parliament who, apart from the CIA and MI6, had been working together with Uzbekistan, Murray replied that the only embassy with which the Uzbeks have had full co-operation was the German embassy.

He also said he had the impression that many officials at the German embassy were very concerned by the co-operation, a conclusion he reached after “private conversations,” which he was not prepared to discuss with the committee.

German parliamentarians have demanded an immediate investigation into Murray’s claims, with one member of parliament for the Green party, Hans-Christian Str’bele, also advising that the enquiry should take place in the public eye.

Wolfang Kreissl-D’rfler of the SPD party, says that Murray’s claims raised serious questions that demanded answers.

The European Parliament’s committee has heard several cases by alleged victims of CIA secret flights. One such victim was the German citizen Khaled Al-Masri, who was flown to Afghanistan and held for several months as a terrorist suspect by the United States.

The European Union’s anti-terrorism co-ordinator says that there is no proof yet that the CIA organised secret flights and ran detention centers for terror suspects. But a group of EU lawmakers is set to travel to Washington DC in May to meet with the CIA chief Porter Goss and further investigate the allegations.

From The International Herald Tribune

Maher Arar, a wireless technology consultant and a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin, goes on holiday with his family to Tunisia. On his way home to Canada he transits via New York’s JFK airport. There, he is detained by U.S. officials and interrogated about alleged links to Al Qaeda. Twelve days later, he finds himself chained, shackled and flown aboard a private plane to Jordan and from there transferred to a Syrian prison.

In Syria, he is held in a tiny grave-like cell for 10 months and 10 days before he is moved to a better cell in a different prison. He is beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession.

This is “extraordinary rendition” – the unlawful transfer of people from one country to another. It is part of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” with other governments turning a blind eye.

Planes associated with rendition flights have landed and taken off from dozens of destinations around the world, including Britain, Germany, Jordan, Afghanistan and Albania. Flight logs and airport records show that nearly 1,000 flights directly linked to the CIA have used European airspace.

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From ANSA.it

Lawyer confirms Abu Omar is in Egyptian jail

(ANSA) – Cairo, April 7 – A Muslim cleric allegedly kidnapped by the CIA in Milan in 2003 has asked authorities in Egypt, where he is incarcerated, to be allowed to return to Italy .

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who is usually known as Abu Omar, claims he has Italian citizenship and has requested legal assistance from Italy, his Egyptian lawyer Montasser el Zayat told ANSA .

Abu Omar, the former imam of Milan’s main mosque, lived in the northern city with his Albanian wife and their two children until disappearing mysteriously on February 17, 2003. At the time he was being probed by Milan prosecutors for suspected links to international terrorism .

Prosecutors say he was abducted by the CIA as part of its covert program – called ‘extraordinary rendition’ – in which suspected terrorists are transferred without court approval to third countries for interrogation .

Although Abu Omar has long been assumed to be in Egypt, this was only confirmed in recent days, when Cairo daily El Masri el Yom cited Egyptian security sources as saying that he was currently being interrogated.

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From The Guardian

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) – Binyam Muhammad, who has been accused of plotting al-Qaida attacks in the United States, was tortured with a scalpel after American authorities handed him over to Moroccan interrogators, according to an account provided by his lawyer.

Muhammad made his first appearance in the U.S. military courtroom in Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, charged with conspiring with Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders to attack civilians and other crimes.

Wearing a long, orange collarless shirt and a black skullcap, the 27-year-old detainee told the judge that he has been tortured. He criticized U.S. authorities for getting his name wrong, claimed he was not the person they sought and bitterly suggested the court refer to him as Count Dracula.

“After four years of torture and rendition, you have the wrong person in the stand,” Muhammad said. Military documents spell his name variously as Muhammad and Mohammad. The judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, told Muhammad it was the prosecutor’s job to establish his identity during trial.

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From BBC Online

A Canadian teenager accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan has told a Guantanamo Bay tribunal he will boycott his trial, claiming unfair treatment. Omar Khadar told a pre-trial hearing he had been kept in solitary confinement and said he would not participate until he was “treated humanely and fair”.

The 19-year-old’s defence lawyer argued the military trial rules were unclear and not based on any legal framework.

Mr Khadr is one of 10 Guantanamo detainees charged with war crimes.

“I am boycotting these procedures until I am treated humanely and fairly,” Mr Khadr said, adding he had been held in solitary confinement since 30 March.

An angry exchange followed between his defence lawyer, Lt Col Colby Vokey, and the military officer presiding over the tribunal. He complained that his client was being treated unfairly and that the conditions at the prison and the tribunal’s procedures undermined the defence team’s ability to carry out its work.

Lt Col Vokey said just as he was trying to prepare his client’s case, “they move him to solitary confinement for no apparent reason whatsoever”.

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From Amnesty International

To see an animated map of CIA rendition flights go here

Amnesty International today released a new report which exposes a covert operation whereby people have been arrested or abducted, transferred and held in secret or handed over to countries where they have faced torture and other ill-treatment. The report describes how the CIA has used private aircraft operators and front companies to preserve the secrecy of “rendition” flights.

Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and ‘disappearance’, shows that the CIA has exploited aviation practices that would otherwise require their flights to be declared to aviation authorities. The report lists dozens of destinations around the world where planes associated with “rendition” flights have landed and taken off — and lists private airlines with permission to land at US military bases worldwide.

Amnesty International has records of nearly 1,000 flights directly linked to the CIA, most of which have used European airspace; these are flights by planes that appear to have been permanently operated by the CIA through front companies. In a second category, there are records of some 600 other flights made by planes confirmed as having been used at least temporarily by the CIA.

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By Chip Pitts in SacBee.com

“We are convinced that once people living in America understand the scope of abuses taking place, these unlawful actions will end and our government’s actions will again be brought within the rule of law.”

[This] month marks the second anniversary of the now-iconic images of torture emerging from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. While Amnesty International would like to report that the situation for detainees being held by agents of the U.S. government has improved, it cannot. Contrary to the Bush administration’s claim that the abuses in U.S.-run prison facilities in Iraq were the work of a few bad apples, Amnesty International has documented a systemic pattern of abuses by agents of the U.S. government that spans the globe.

The use of torture and other inhuman treatment is firmly outlawed in both U.S. and international law. There is arguably no other principle of law more established than the absolute prohibition on torture. Perhaps this partly explains why the Bush administration shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, set out to redefine policies and practices in ways that pushed the limits on the prohibition against torture and inhuman treatment. In a series of memos composed between August 2002 and April 2003, the Justice Department, the White House counsel’s office and counsel to the secretary of defense attempted to redefine what constitutes physical and mental torture.

Widespread allegations reveal that torture and other inhuman treatment of detainees is occurring through the use of extraordinary rendition, in Department of Defense custody and in secret CIA detention facilities called black sites. Extraordinary rendition or outsourcing torture is the process by which the United States outside court purview transfers a person to another country for the purposes of interrogation and detention, often by first kidnapping them.

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From The Herald

The first official admission Scottish airports have been used for refuelling of US rendition flights has sparked calls for more openness and police involvement.

Chris Ballance, the Green MSP who has campaigned on the issue, seized on the revelation that the Americans transported a terror suspect through Prestwick airport in 1998.

Ahead of publication this week of an Amnesty International report that is expected to detail extensive US aircraft movements thought to be so-called “torture flights”, Mr Ballance said that the position of the government is at last shifting.

On Friday, the government admitted a suspect in a civilian aircraft bombing in 1982 was sent to the US via Prestwick in June 1998. The only previous admission has been a refuelling at Stansted airport, when the US was returning a suspect in the 1998 Nairobi bombings.

Since 2001 and the start of the war on terror, it is claimed American activity in “extraordinary rendition” ‘ transporting suspected terrorists to countries with reputations for use of torture ‘ has led to frequent use of Scottish airports.

However, it is also claimed by the government that it has received no applications to let British airports be used for these flights. Mr Ballance echoed the Scottish National Party, saying last week’s admission raises more questions than it provides answers. “The government has previously attempted to deny all knowledge of any rendition flights using Scottish airports,” he said. “Now ministers are changing their tune.”

He said he was glad if terrorists are brought to justice, as appears to be the case with Mohammed Rashed, who was found guilty in the US after being transported via Prestwick, but added: “Hundreds of other flights may have stopped in Scotland and it’s high time the public knew the full facts.”