Rice defends illegal "renditions," threatens to reveal European complicity

By Chris Marsden
6 December 2005

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has responded to Europe's appeals for
information regarding Washington's illegal practice of rendition by making
clear that the practice will continue. In an attempt to turn the tables on
European critics, she has implied that should Europe continue to make such
demands, Washington will expose the complicity of the European governments,
which allowed their airports to be used by CIA planes transporting prisoners
to third countries and secret CIA-run prisons.

Renditions involve the moving of alleged terrorists, without any judicial
process, to countries where, according to the US government, American law
does not apply. Washington routinely sends these prisoners to countries
which have been cited by the US State Department for practicing torture.
"Extraordinary rendition" refers to the kidnapping of terrorist suspects on
foreign soil before they are spirited away to detention centres overseas.

Rice begins her tour of Europe in Berlin and is to visit Brussels for a
meeting with NATO foreign ministers. Prior to her visit, at least eight
European countries, as well as the European Union itself, requested
clarification over whether the CIA had landed planes involved in rendition
operations. German and British airports are alleged to have been used most
frequently.

Speaking Monday at Andrews Air Force Base before departing for Germany, Rice
stated that the US had indeed moved suspects by plane overseas and had done
so for decades. She claimed this was not in order to facilitate torture and
was permissible under international law. She refused to say whether the CIA
ran secret prisons abroad, stating, "We cannot discuss information that
would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement, and military
operations. We expect other nations share this view." Poland and Romania
have both been identified as likely sites of such CIA facilities, along with
six other nations.

Rice then turned her fire directly on Europe. She stressed that European
countries often benefited from, and assisted in, US intelligence-gathering,
declaring, "Some governments choose to cooperate with the United States in
intelligence, law enforcement, or military matters. That cooperation is a
two-way street."
She added, "The United States has respected-and will continue to respect-the
sovereignty of other countries."

This seemingly innocuous phrase is, in fact, a threat levelled against
Europe. In saying the US respects the sovereignty of other nations, Rice is
implying that European governments were informed about the CIA flights. More
generally, she is reminding Europe that it has collaborated with the US in
every aspect of the so-called war against terror, including renditions and
other practices that openly violate international law.

Speaking on December 4, President Bush's national security advisor Stephen
Hadley sounded the same theme, saying that to speak publicly about
renditions "would put countries who are cooperating with us at risk." His
remarks were designed to go beyond the eight countries that are said to be
directly involved in the detention and torture of prisoners "rendered" by
the CIA.

Such threats will not be lost on Europe's capitals, and Rice will no doubt
be even more explicit in her private meetings with European officials. One
European diplomat told Reuters, "It's very clear they want European
governments to stop pushing on this... They were stuck on the defensive for
weeks, but suddenly the line has toughened up incredibly."

There is little wonder that Europe's governments want to formally distance
themselves from their US ally, and at the same time fear the possibility of
the US exposing their own complicity. Public anger over renditions is
growing.

In Britain, for example, the human rights group Liberty is to table an
amendment to the Civil Aviation Bill that would oblige the Home Secretary to
force any aircraft travelling through UK airspace suspected of extraordinary
rendition to land and be searched by police and customs. The American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), acting on behalf of an unnamed man who was allegedly
flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan and tortured, is threatening to
sue the CIA for breaching US and international law. The ACLU is also
threatening to name corporations that own or operate the aircraft used to
transport detainees.

Most worrying of all, Britain's all-party parliamentary group set up to
investigate the renditions scandal has commissioned a report from the Centre
for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University's School of Law.
The report finds that the British government of Prime Minister Tony Blair
would be guilty of breaking international law if it allowed CIA rendition
planes to land at British airports.

The report concludes: "A state which aids or assists another state in the
commission of an internationally wrongful act by the latter is
internationally responsible for doing so... Accomplice liability has been
recognised in international criminal law since at least the Nuremberg
trials."

Evidence that Britain and many other European governments are indeed
accomplices in a criminal conspiracy continues to be made public. Many of
these stories originate in the US media.

Germany is where CIA flights are known to have landed most frequently-on at
least 437 occasions. It is not credible that so many flights could have
occurred without the knowledge of the government. Such suspicions are
highlighted in a report in the December 4 Washington Post alleging that
Germany kept silent when one of its citizens was captured, rendered and
wrongfully detained by the CIA. The CIA later admitted that the man had been
innocent of any crime.

Khaled el Masri was arrested in Macedonia on December 31, 2003, handed over
to US officials, and flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan. According to
the Post, flight logs show that a plane registered to a CIA-front company
flew out of Macedonia on the day Masri says he was sent to Afghanistan. He
was returned to Europe five months later when the CIA realised they had the
wrong man.

The newspaper reports, "Masri was held for five months largely because the
head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit 'believed he was
someone else,' one former CIA official said. 'She didn't really know. She
just had a hunch.'"

In May 2004, prior to Masri's release, Daniel Coats, then-US ambassador to
Germany, told German Interior Minister Otto Schily that Masri had been
wrongfully detained. "There was also a request: that the German government
not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public," the Post
writes. This request was honoured by German officials, including by the
prosecutor charged with investigating the case.

Time magazine also makes the telling point: "Countries that may publicly
poke a finger in Uncle Sam's eye can still work with him hand-in-glove
behind the scenes. France, whose opposition to Washington's Iraq policy
requires no précis, hosts a secret joint operations center with the CIA in
Paris called Alliance Base, and has a relationship with the Agency that
would astonish the 'freedom fries' crowd."

The Washington Post's article serves to emphasise the enormity of the crimes
carried out by Washington, with which the European powers are complicit.

It estimates that the CIA and other intelligence agencies have captured some
3,000 people in their anti-terror operations. Many of those detained were
innocent of any crime and were arrested on the flimsiest of pretexts. There
is no way of verifying who they are because there is no machinery to check
the evidence against them, other than the say-so of the CIA. An official
told the Post that one man wrongfully detained was a college professor who
had given an Al Qaeda member who subsequently fingered him a bad grade.

The CIA operation is run by the Counter Terrorism Center (CTC). According to
the Post, kidnappings and disappearances are carried out by the "Rendition
Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists.
Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a
remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities
wait.

"Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure:
Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the
clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs.
They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long
trip."

The numbers of CIA officers involved in anti-terror operations quadrupled
after 9/11 from 300 to 1,200. The CTC was headed initially by J. Cofer
Black, who was in direct contact with President Bush and the White House.

The Post explains, "Bush had signed a top secret presidential finding six
days after the 9/11 attacks. It authorized an unprecedented range of covert
action, including lethal measures and renditions, disinformation campaigns
and cyber attacks against the al Qaeda enemy, according to current and
former intelligence officials. Black's attitude was exactly what some CIA
officers believed was needed to get the job done."

http://wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/rice-d06_prn.shtml


--
Doomed to defeat by the superior Allied forces, it was thought that the
forces of fascism had been routed and that the world was safe for democracy.
The irony is that the intelligence apparatus of the U.S. government saved
many of the most hardened Nazi war criminals from a certain execution in
order to recruit them as scientists, spies and guerrilla warriors in the
anticipated war with the Soviet Union. And this had dire effects on our
country's democracy.

Many Americans may not be aware of this wide spread recruitment of SS and
Gestapo alumni into our intelligence agencies but it has had a profound
effect on the shaping of our domestic and foreign policy, often with ruinous
consequences. The legacy of this incorporation of Nazis into the CIA and
U.S. military has been a half a century of support for fascist regimes,
juntas, death squads, torture and the overthrow of democratically elected
governments around the world.

http://archive.democrats.com/view2.cfm?id=9099