| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Tuttles Almanac" |
| Date: |
04 Apr 2006 10:17:38 PM |
| Object: |
U.S. Accused of Using Front Companies for Torture Flights |
U.S. uses front companies for "rendition" -Amnesty
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-04-04T232905Z_01_L04615956_RTRUKOC_0_UK-SECURITY-RENDITION.xml&archived=False
LONDON (Reuters) - Human rights group Amnesty International
accused the United States on Wednesday of using front companies
to transfer individuals to countries where they have faced torture or
ill-treatment.
The fresh charges come after months of allegations by
campaigners who say the Central Intelligence Agency
transports terrorism suspects outside normal legal channels
to countries where they could be tortured under interrogation.
Washington says it does sometimes transfer suspects outside
normal extradition procedures -- a practice known as rendition --
but denies sending them to countries that use torture.
Amnesty said in a report it has records of nearly 1,000 flights
directly linked to the CIA, mostly using European airspace,
which were made by planes that appear to have been permanently
operated by the CIA through front companies.
It also said it had records of about 600 other flights made by
planes confirmed as having been used at least temporarily by the CIA.
"The latest evidence shows how the U.S. administration is
manipulating commercial arrangements in order to be able to
transfer people in violation of international law," said
Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan in a statement.
"It demonstrates the length to which the U.S. government
will go to conceal these abductions."
Critics say it is difficult to prove what such flights were
used for and point out that flights used by the CIA may have
been simply carrying officials.
Amnesty said it has linked the aircraft to people who have
been illegally transferred. It cites one plane known to have made
over 100 stops at Guantanamo Bay.
Another took suspect Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known
as Abu Omar, to Egypt from Germany after he was caught
in Italy, said the group.
Amnesty called on the aviation sector to take action to
ensure companies do not lease their aircraft in circumstances
where they may be used in renditions.
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| User: "Republicans Hate America" |
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| Title: Re: U.S. Accused of Using Front Companies for Torture Flights |
04 Apr 2006 10:34:00 PM |
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On Wed, 05 Apr 2006 03:17:38 -0000, Tuttle's Almanac
<Harry.Tuttle@brazil.plumbing.gov> wrote:
Washington says it does sometimes transfer suspects outside
normal extradition procedures -- a practice known as rendition --
but denies sending them to countries that use torture.
His Year In Hell
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/21/60II/main594974.shtml
Jan. 21, 2004
(CBS) Is it possible the United States sent an innocent man out of the
country to be tortured?
That's the disturbing question at the heart of a case that may reveal
a secret side of the war on terrorism -- one that the government does
not want to talk about.
It involves an accusation that the justice department sent a man from
the U.S. to Syria to be interrogated and tortured.
The man making the claim is a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was
taken into custody, under suspicion of being connected with al Qaeda,
while changing planes in New York.
Now, Maher Arar tells Correspondent Vicki Mabrey about what became his
year in hell, which began when federal agents stopped him for
questioning at JFK International Airport.
"I cooperated with them 100 percent. And they always kept telling me,
'We'll let you go on the next plane,'" says Arar. "They did not."
It would be more than a year before Arar would see his family again.
In September 2002, he'd taken his wife and two children on a beach
vacation in Tunisia. But he flew home alone early for his job as a
software engineer.
What he didn't know is that he'd been placed on the U.S. immigration
watch list. So when the agents began questioning him, he tells 60
Minutes II that he wasn't concerned - at least not at first.
"The interrogation lasted about seven or eight hours, and then they
came, and shackled me and chained me," recalls Arar. "I said, 'What's
happening here?' And they would not tell me. They said, 'You are gonna
know tomorrow.'"
He spent the night in a holding cell. The next day, he was shackled,
driven to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and locked in
solitary confinement. Agents told him they had evidence that he'd been
seen in the company of terrorist suspects in Canada.
"What they accused me of being is very serious. Being a member of al
Qaeda," says Arar, who denies any involvement with the organization.
Arar wasn't allowed to make a phone call, so when his wife, Monia,
didn't hear from him, she called the Canadian embassy.
"Nobody knew at that time where he was. He vanished," says Monia, who
didn't hear from him for six days. Then, American officials
acknowledged they were holding Arar in Brooklyn. A Canadian consular
official visited and assured Arar he'd be deported home to Canada.
But the justice department had a different plan. After two weeks in
U.S.custody, Arar was taken from his cell by federal agents in the
middle of the night.
"They read me the document. They say, 'The INS director decided to
deport you to Syria,'" recalls Arar. "And of course, the first thing I
did was I started crying, because everyone knows that Syria practices
torture."
Arar says he knows because he was born in Syria. He emigrated to
Canada with his parents as a teenager. But, returning to Syria as an
accused terrorist, he had good reason to be afraid. Torture in Syrian
prisons is well-documented. The state department's own report cites an
array of gruesome tortures routinely used in Syrian jails. And in a
speech last fall, President Bush condemned Syria, alongside Iraq, for
what he called the country's "legacy of torture and oppression."
Nevertheless, deportation agents flew Arar on a specially chartered
jet to Jordan, and the Jordanians drove him to Syria.
"When I arrived there, I saw the photos of the Syrian president, and
that's why I realized I was indeed in Syria," says Arar. "I wished I
had a knife in my hand to kill myself."
The next morning, Arar says a Syrian intelligence officer arrived
carrying a black electrical cable, two inches thick and about two feet
long.
"He said, 'Do you know what this is?' I said, I was crying, you know,
'Yes, I know what it is. It's a cable.' And he said, 'Open your right
hand.' I opened my right hand … and he beat me very strongly," says
Arar. "He said, 'Open your left hand.' And I opened my left hand. And
he beat me on my palm, on my left palm. And then he stopped, and he
asked me questions. And I said to him, 'I have nothing to hide.'"
Arar says the physical torture took place during the first two weeks,
but he says he also went through psychological and mental torture:
"They would take me back to a room, they call it the waiting room. And
I hear people screaming. And they, I mean, people, they're being
tortured. And I felt my heart was going to go out of my chest."
But Imad Moustapha, Syria's highest-ranking diplomat in Washington,
says Arar was treated well. He also told Mabrey that Syrian
intelligence had never heard of Arar before the U.S. government asked
Syria to take him.
Did the U.S. give them any evidence to back up the claim that Arar was
a suspected al Qaeda terrorist?
"No. But we did our investigations. We traced links. We traced
relations. We tried to find anything. We couldn't," says Moustapha,
who adds that they shared their reports with the U.S. "We always share
information with anybody alleged to be in close contact with al Qaeda
with the United States."
The Syrians allowed Canadian officials six short visits with Arar. But
Arar says he was warned not to tell them about the torture or how he
was being held - in an underground cell 3 feet wide, 6 feet long and 7
feet high. It was his home for a full 10 months.
"It's a grave. It's the same size of a grave. It's a dark place. It's
underground," says Arar.
He says the Syrians were pressing him to confess he'd been to an al
Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan: "They just wanted to find
something that the Americans did not find -- and that's when they
asked me about Afghanistan. They said, 'You've been to Afghanistan,'
so they would hit me three, four times. And, if I hesitate, they would
hit me again."
Arar says he signed a confession because he was "ready to do anything
to stop the torture." But he claims that he had never been to
Afghanistan, or trained at a terrorist camp. "Just one hit of this
cable, it's like you just forget everything in your life. Everything,"
he says. Back in Canada, Monia was fighting for her husband's life.
She marched in front of parliament, and protested in front of the U.S.
embassy.
Eventually, she got the ear of then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean
Chretien. On the floor of parliament, Chretian voiced mounting
frustration with the U.S. The job eventually went to Gar Pardy, then
one of Canada's top diplomats, to get answers from the Americans.
"The American authorities acknowledged this was a Canadian citizen
that they were dealing with. He was traveling on a Canadian passport.
There was no ambiguity about any of these issues," says Pardy, who
believes he should have been sent to Canada, or dealt with under
American law in the United States. But not sent to Syria.
But while Canadian diplomats were demanding answers from the U.S., it
turns out that it was the Royal Canadian mounted police who had been
passing U.S. intelligence the information about Arar's alleged
terrorist associations.
However, U.S. government officials we spoke to say they told Canadian
intelligence that they were sending Arar to Syria - and the Canadians
signed off on the decision.
Pardy says if that's true, it would have been wrong all around: "I
would dispute that the people who were making any statements in this
context were speaking for the Canadian government. A policeman talking
to a policeman in this context is not necessarily speaking for the
Canadian government.
And the Canadian government wanted Arar back. It took a year and a
week from the time Arar was detained in New York for Arar to be
released. He arrived home in Canada dazed and exhausted.
Why did Syrian officials let him go? "Why shouldn't we leave him to
go? We thought that would be a gesture of good will towards Canada,
which is a friendly nation. For Syria, second, we could not
substantiate any of the allegations against him," says Moustapha.
He added that the Syrian government now considers Arar completely
innocent. But does he feel any remorse about taking a year out of
Arar's life?
"If this was the case, it's not our problem," says Arar. "We did not
create this problem." 60 Minutes II has learned that the decision to
deport Arar was made at the highest levels of the U.S. justice
department, with a special removal order signed by John Ashcroft's
former deputy, Larry Thompson.
Ashcroft made his only public statement about the case in November. He
said the U.S. deported Arar to protect Americans -- and had every
right to do so.
"I consider that really an utter fabrication and a lie," says Michael
Rather, Arar's attorney and head of the Center For Constitutional
Rights. He plans to file a lawsuit against Ashcroft and several other
American officials.
"They knew, when they were sending him to Syria, that Syria would use
certain kinds of information-gathering techniques, including torture,
on him. They knew it," says Ratner. "That's why he was sent there.
That's why he wasn't sent to Canada."
Before deporting Arar to Syria, American officials involved in the
case told 60 Minutes II they had obtained assurances from the Syrian
government that Arar would not be tortured -- that he would "be
treated humanely"
"The fact that you went looking for assurances, which is reflected
here, tells you that even in the minds of people who made this
decision," says Pardy. "I mean, there were some second thoughts."
No one at the justice department would talk to 60 Minutes II on camera
about Arar, but they sent us this statement saying:
"The facts underlying Arar's case…[are]classified and cannot be
released publicly."
"We have information indicating that Mr. Arar is a member of al Qaeda
and, therefore, remains a threat to U.S. national security."
Despite the American accusations, Arar has never been charged with a
crime and, today, he's free in canada. He's afraid, though, that he
might never be able to clear his name.
Arar's case is unusual because he was sent directly from U.S. soil to
Syria. But intelligence sources tell 60 Minutes II that since 9/11,
the U.S. has quietly transported hundreds of terror suspects captured
in different parts of the world to Middle Eastern countries for tough
interrogations.
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