Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:58 am Post subject: UN Charter Horror Stories Guantanamo Extraordinary Rendition
Extraordinary Rendition - UN charter busting horror stories
EU: CIA Executed Over 1,000 Europe Flights
By JAN SLIVA, Associated Press WriterWed Apr 26, 7:20 AM ET
The CIA has conducted more than 1,000 undeclared flights over European territory since 2001 — a clear violation of an international treaty, European Parliament investigators said Wednesday.
Lawmakers investigating alleged illegal CIA activities in Europe also said incidents when terror suspects were handed over to U.S. agents did not appear to be isolated, and that the suspects often were transported by the same planes and groups of people.
EU lawmakers presented a first preliminary report on their findings, working off data provided by Eurocontrol, the EU's air safety agency, and information gathered during three months of hearings and more than 50 hours of testimony by individuals who said they were kidnapped and tortured by U.S. agents, EU officials and rights groups.
Data showed that CIA planes made numerous stopovers on European territory that were never declared, violating an international air treaty that requires airlines to declare the route and stopovers for planes with a police mission, said Italian lawmaker Giovanni Claudio Fava, who drafted the report.
"The routes for some of these flights seem to be quite suspect. ... They are rather strange routes for flights to take. It is hard to imagine ... those stopovers were simply for providing fuel," he said.
Associated Press.
and this:
Lawyer: Secret Plane Originated in Germany
By JAN SLIVA, Associated Press WriterTue Apr 25, 5:45 PM ET
A lawyer for six Guantanamo Bay prisoners told a European Parliament committee Tuesday that his clients were taken from Bosnia on a U.S. plane that made stops in Turkey and elsewhere in Europe.
Stephen Oleksey also told the committee that Bosnian authorities cooperated in extraditing the Algerian terror suspects because they feared their country would lose U.S. aid.
"The U.S. charge d'affaires told Bosnia that if these men are not arrested the U.S. would withhold its support to Bosnia," Oleksey told the committee investigating allegations that U.S. intelligence agents interrogated al-Qaida suspects at clandestine prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some on secret flights that passed through Europe.
The six Algerians — including four with Bosnian citizenship — were arrested in October 2001 after U.S. intelligence indicated they were planning attacks on U.S. and British embassies in Sarajevo and a U.S. military base in the northeastern city of Tuzla.
In a well-documented case, Bosnian authorities handed them over to U.S. authorities in a secret late-night operation in 2002, just a few hours before the country's human rights court was to order their release for lack of evidence. The six, who had worked in Bosnia for several years, all ended up in the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay — on a flight that Oleksey said originated at the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein Air Base.
The arrest of the Algerians in 2001 was widely covered by the European media. The United States has not confirmed or denied Oleksey's account.
Oleksey told the committee his information came from documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and interviews with his clients, whom he has visited seven times at the detention center in Cuba.
"From that information you can discern the plane was on standby in Ramstein, flew to Tuzla, then to Turkey, took on additional detainees," he said. "It was a grossly unlawful, wholly extralegal transfer."
U.S. authorities said the six included Bensayah Belkacem, suspected of serving as Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant in Europe.
Belkacem was accused by the United States of making several phone calls to one of bin Laden's aides — Abu Zubaydah, the operations chief of al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
Bosnia's highest court and the country's top human rights panel both ordered the release of the men, saying the government lacked evidence that they were plotting post-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. facilities in Bosnia.
Oleksey's testimony supported earlier testimony by human rights activists who say the United States carried out secret flights from Europe to transfer terror suspects to detention centers abroad where they were tortured.
A draft of a preliminary report on the European Parliament committee's findings was to be presented Wednesday.
Clandestine detention centers and secret flights via or from Europe to countries where suspects could face torture would breach the continent's human rights treaties.
Hi Annie, do you never consider that with such a humungous amount of these 'rendition flights' - this could even be a smokescreen for more nefarious activities like moving their bumber crops of heroin from Afghanistan?
The authorities should be searching the planes which land here and it's probably why HM Customs don't.
Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 296 Location: Halifax, West Yorkshire
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 11:53 am Post subject: Obama keeps 'Rendition' torture flights
EU Observer reports:
Quote:
US rendition flights to continue
LEIGH PHILLIPS
Today @ 09:25 CET
While the new US administration of Barack Obama has been cheered the world over for announcing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay, the banning of torture during interrogation and secret prisons, another affront to international human rights law - extraordinary rendition - is to be retained.
The Los Angeles Times on Sunday (1 February) revealed that according to executive orders signed by Mr Obama on 22 January, the CIA is to be permitted to engage in the abduction of terrorist suspects, so long as this is only performed for short-term periods. ...
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.
By Greg Miller
February 1, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. ...
There you have it. Torture is now official policy of the US government. But in true Orwellian style, you have to use Newspeak to describe it ("Rendition") and DoubleThink to justify it.
Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 296 Location: Halifax, West Yorkshire
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 3:55 pm Post subject:
Disco_Destroyer wrote:
Vote Obama, the change you can believe in!
Exactly.
One thing that amazes me is how they use the identical techniques from the very top to the very bottom. There must be thousands of us who are in membership associations that have been nobbled. The one I'm in was collapsing in a mysterious way, when they brought in a paid Director of Development to bring about change. The new Director went around the country introducing himself in local clubs etc, and it was all about gaining 'credence', as he eventually put it when he admitted to it in an email to me.
Absolutely nothing changed, but all the problems were constantly attributed to "the others".
At the same time, they continued to fob off well-meaning members who were doing the best for the association. Eventually they did to me what George Bush did to Osama bin Laden.
Now look at this para from the Times Online:
Quote:
Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve, the British human rights group, said: “Western liberals are totally deluded at the moment. Like George Bush, who declared ‘mission accomplished’ on Iraq six years ago, they need to realise that the job is far from done. I believe that Obama’s heart is in the right place but he is surrounded by people in the US intelligence and military who don’t want either themselves or their policies subjected to too much scrutiny.”
i.e. "I can't believe Obama would be an accomplice in this; it's got to be the others". Probably said in sincerity, too.
Like Obama, our Director of Development acquired a “godlike status", and anyone who criticised would be cast aside. The following article in the Times Online ran:
Quote:
Claude Moraes, the Labour MEP who was part of the European committee investigating CIA renditions, said that it was hard to criticise Mr Obama because he had “godlike status at the moment”, adding: “We should be pleased he has closed Guantánamo and acknowledged the existence of the secret CIA prisons. But if he’s going to complete the change, he must see that rendition is part of the package. I have heard testimony from people who have clearly been tortured in Egypt and Jordan. To deposit people in those prisons still speaks volumes about American foreign policy.”
My point is, that whilst we focus our telescopes on the elevated elite, some of us may find the identical techniques being used at close quarters, yet not be able to believe it. This is important, because democracy starts at grass roots, where most of us can intervene directly.
There are many now who think that there has been widespread nobbling of political parties, peace organisations and other associations. I joined Liberty for a year and was disappointed to receive a resolution to the AGM which would expel from the committee any elected member who had made any unauthorised statement to the press. I was the first to speak out against this draconian proposal.
If anyone reading this has experiences, I think it is important to observe and document what they can, and then to pass what information they have on to others. Preserving democracy at grass roots is in my view important. Observing and comparing the techniques used at all levels of society can be a useful way of understanding what is going on.
So how will the political parties, the peace groups, the civil liberties groups and the churches react to this doublespeak?
I read also he is working on another Trillion doller bail out package, mind you maybe he will target someone other than the elite _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Is Condi Rice's equivalent in the Obama regime going to carry on Dr. Ricin's procrastination of NOT releasing the OBL 9/11 smoking gun evidence she promised us almost from day one?
Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 3889 Location: North Down, N. Ireland
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 12:05 am Post subject:
It would appear that certain quarters are deliberately muddling the difference between long standing rendition (for example as in the case of Eichmann, i.e. to stand trial - though that case wasn't under US rendition law) and GW's much loved extraordinary rendition program involving carrying the unfortunate off to foreign torture dungeons with no accountability whatsoever.
"In the course of the last week we’ve seen a steady stream of efforts designed to show that Obama is continuing the counterterrorism programs that he previously labeled as abusive and promised to shut down. These stories are regularly sourced to unnamed current or former CIA officials and have largely run in right-wing media outlets. However, now we see that even the Los Angeles Times can be taken for a ride."
Following 9/11, the United States set up a covert prison system in Eastern Europe where suspected terrorists were exposed to brutal torture. It took a new US president to put them out of business.
The Central Intelligence Agency announced Thursday that it would close the secret prisons, thus ending one of the darkest chapters of the Bush administration, which believed that such extraordinary actions were legal in light of the perceived threat of further acts of terrorism against the US.
Although the CIA has never revealed the locations of the mysterious “black-site” prisons, or the countries suspected of hosting them (Poland and Romania rank high on the list of suspected hosts), anonymous tips, aviation records and investigative journalism brought these secret detention facilities to public awareness in late 2005.
Read more
In an article in The Washington Post, quoting anonymous intelligence sources, the reason for keeping detainees in overseas facilities was to avoid legal restraints at home.
“It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas,” the paper reported.
Yet, while attempting to escape the US court system, the article acknowledged that “the CIA’s internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries.”
The CIA “enhanced interrogation” methods, included ‘water boarding', which gives the detainee the sensation that he is drowning; continuous solitary confinement, which meant “no contact with persons other than their interrogators or guards,” in some cases lasting up to 4 years; and sleep deprivation, where the prisoner is kept awake for long periods of time through the use of “forced stress positions (standing or sitting), cold water and the use of repetitive loud noise or music.”
Despite these extraordinary methods of extracting information from detainees, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, said that operatives who were employed in the program “should not be investigated, let alone punished” because the Justice Department under George W. Bush had decreed their actions to be legal.
But US President Obama and his administration believes that the abovementioned techniques amount to torture, which is illegal under US and international law. In his first days in office, Obama ended the extraordinary interrogations and shut down the overseas detention facilities.
Panetta said that the CIA had not detained any suspects since he took office in February and that the secret prisons are now empty. In the future, terrorism suspects will be handed over to the American military or to a suspect’s native country.
Panetta also announced that the CIA has stopped using contractors to interrogate prisoners and removed private security guards at the overseas prisons. Replacing the private guards with agency officers would save the intelligence agency some $4 million. The CIA refused to provide information about the contract, its total value and the company or companies that were removed from the assignment.
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross says staff members who monitored CIA interrogations of prisoners at covert overseas locations violated medical ethics.
The confidential Red Cross report, which was published Monday on the web site of The New York Review of Books, was based on interviews with 14 “high value” detainees who were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in September 2006.
The report, the third of its kind by the Red Cross, recommends “adjustments” at the facilities, adding that the US government “never responded to the two [previous] ICRC consolidated reports,” which document cases of prisoner abuse.
Presently there is growing debate in the US Senate for the creation of a “truth commission” to investigate past counter-terrorism programs, some of which, critics argue, undermine civil rights.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 9:22 pm Post subject:
The purpose of torture is not to get reliable information since the victim will say anything to make the torture stop. The purpose is to enrage the tortured person's fellow countrymen to increase hatred and provide plenty of grisly entertainment for fascsist soldiers and police.
CIA inflates importance of terror suspects - Sat, 18 Apr 2009
The report confirms that the CIA inflated the importance of terror suspects. Top CIA officials had reportedly ordered harsh torture techniques against a terror suspect although he had told interrogators all he knew.
The New York Times cited former intelligence officials on Friday as saying that the use of brutal techniques such as waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah was based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance.
Under less severe treatment, Abu Zubaydah had provided valuable information and the harsher handling produced no additional breakthroughs, according to an unnamed official with direct knowledge of the case.
The official noted that watching his torment caused great distress to his captors also, according to the Times.
Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, "seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect," an official was quoted as saying by the paper.
Secret legal memos on interrogations released Thursday showed that the Justice Department had given its official approval on Aug. 1, 2002, for CIA officers to adopt the torture techniques.
Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and identified as an al Qaeda leader. Top US officials have called him a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
CIA told suspect his mother would be raped in front of him
24 Aug 2009 An internal CIA reported published today reveals a host of incidents in which its interrogators went far beyond acceptable bounds, such as threats against family members, including hinting that an [alleged] al-Qaida suspect's mother would be raped in front of him. Interrogators, questioning 'al-Qaida' and other suspects at Guantánamo and secret prisons round the world, took a power drill and a handgun into the interrogation room, and also staged a mock execution in a cell next door. The CIA document, which the agency fought for years to prevent publication of, says that Saudi terror suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was told that if he did not talk, "we could get your mother in here. We can bring your family in here". It added that the debriefer wanted Nashiri to infer that the "interrogation technique involves sexually abusing female relatives in front of the detainee".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/24/cia-report-unauthorised-te chniques-threats
Report: CIA Used Power Drills, Guns, Threats Against Children --Declassified Report Says --Then-Attorney General Knew One Suspect Waterboarded 119 Times 24 Aug 2009 CIA officers used power drills, mock executions and threats against children in often futile attempts to break [alleged] high-value al Qaeda targets, according to portions of a 2004 report by the CIA inspector general that was made public today. "We now have a document that the world can read that shows in excruciating and disgusting detail that the United States violated its own beliefs and turned to the dark side when it didn't have to," said Richard Clarke, a former national security official and now an ABC News consultant.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=8402999
'The CIA hired Blackwater to conduct targeted killings in Afghanistan.' Death Squad: Blackwater Accused of Creating 'Killing Program' --A memo obtained by SPIEGEL indicates that cooperation between the CIA and private security firm Blackwater was deeper than previously known. SPIEGEL has uncovered further details about a plan to set up squads for targeted killings of suspected al-Qaida leadership in Afghanistan... In a memo obtained by SPIEGEL, two former employees describe details of cooperation between the firm and the intelligence agency that then-Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney asked the CIA not to disclose to the United States Congress. The intelligence service commissioned Blackwater and its subsidiaries to transport terror suspects from Guantanamo to interrogations at secret prison camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The paper identifies aircraft movements and unveils how the flights were disguised. The memo says: "The CIA hired Blackwater to conduct extraordinary renditions". And: "Blackwater flew the rendition targets from Fort Perry and Cuba to Kandahar, Afghanistan." Blackwater also supported the CIA with other controversial activities during the Bush years, the memo states. "The CIA hired Blackwater to conduct targeted killings in Afghanistan," it reads.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,644405,00.html
Blackwater mercenaries used for CIA renditions
By Patrick Martin 24 Aug 2009 The German news magazine Der Spiegel announced Saturday that it has obtained evidence that the security firm formerly known as Blackwater Associates was hired by the CIA to transport prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to secret prisons in Central Asia where they could be tortured. US press reports late last week revealed that Blackwater had CIA contracts to carry out "targeted killings"--assassinations--and to load and service the missiles used by CIA officers to conduct assassination strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,644405,00.html
The interesting thing about those linked stories Tony, is that although recently released, they all refer back to the Bush era.
Though I take your metapoint that Obama still has to prove he's a new broom in town, his control so far over Cheney's foreign-based private mercenary armies and their CIA enablers is sadly lacking.
Perhaps the process of taking down Eric Prince is step one. _________________ Dissolution of the Global Corporations.
It's the only way.
'Torture flight' plane spotted in Birmingham
01Nov - Guardian
An American plane named in an inquiry by the European parliament into alleged CIA torture flights landed at Birmingham airport last month and was met by British special forces helicopters.
Plane spotters said the Gulfstream jet touched down from an undisclosed location on 2 October and was met by two army air corps Dauphin 2 helicopters used by the SAS at Hereford.
The 22-seat plane is registered to L-3 Integrated Systems, a Montana-based subsidiary of a US defence corporation. It made numerous flights between Ireland and Egypt in 2003 and was involved in an accident at Bucharest airport in Romania in 2004 after a flight from Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.
The European parliament reported that seven passengers disappeared after the accident and deplored the CIA's use of Romania as a stopover for extraordinary renditions of terror suspects including the British national Binyam Mohammed.
The report's authors said they regretted "the lack of control of the Gulfstream aircraft with registration number N478GS".
A Ministry of Defence source said that the meeting at Birmingham airport had nothing to do with the rendition of prisoners, whatever the allegations about the plane's past use. "This was routine military liaison between two allies," he said.
The plane departed the next day at the same time as a Boeing 757 operated by Comco, a private company that provides flights for the US defence department, which had arrived a day earlier.
The Gulfstream has also been photographed at Glasgow Prestwick airport, Shannon airport in Ireland and Stuttgart airport in Germany.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/01/rendition-flight-birmingha m-airport-cia _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
A jet owned by a senior executive in the US firm which has bought Liverpool Football Club was chartered by the CIA and used in flights allegedly linked to the rendition of terror suspects.
Abduction link: Mr Morse's jet with the Red Sox logo on its tail fin
The plane is owned by Phillip Morse, 69, the vice-chairman of New England Sports Ventures, which bought the club on Friday for £300million.
An investigation has established that between 2002 and 2005 the CIA chartered the plane from Mr Morse for millions of pounds and made extensive use of it.
Inquiries by the European Parliament and human rights groups have linked the plane to alleged extraordinary rendition operations which took place during the same period.
A European Parliament report linked the jet directly to the abduction of Abu Omar, an Islamic preacher, who was snatched from a Milan street by the CIA in 2003 before being taken to Cairo.
Extraordinary rendition entails the abduction and transfer of a terrorist suspect from one country to another. People have been taken to states such as Egypt, Syria, Morocco and Uzbekistan which are suspected of practising torture in violation of a United Nations Convention.
The disclosure that such a senior figure in New England Sports Ventures (NESV) has been paid millions by the CIA is likely to alarm football fans already concerned that one of the country’s most prestigious clubs is still in American hands.
Mr Omar was snatched by the CIA in 2003 despite having been granted political asylum by the Italian government. He was moved to an American air force base at Aviano near Venice before being transported to a NATO base in Ramstein in Germany. He was then flown from Germany to Cairo.
The European Parliament report reproduced flight documents for Mr Morse’s jet, which carries the logo of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, also owned by NESV, on its tail fin. The 19-seater Gulfstream IV, with the registration N85VM, flew from Washington to Ramstein on February 4, 2003.
On February 17, the day of Mr Omar’s abduction and rendition, the plane left Ramstein at 6.52pm and arrived in Cairo at 10.30pm. The following day the plane made the return journey to Washington via Shannon in Ireland.
MEPs and European rights campaigners believe the plane may have been used in other rendition operations. They point out that its travel destinations, which are detailed in flight logs, are totally at odds with those expected of a normal private charter jet.
During the same period it was on loan to the CIA the jet flew to Kabul in Afghanistan, Rabat in Morocco, Tripoli in Libya and Baku in Azerbaijan. The jet, which changed its registrations details in December 2004 to N227SV, also made at least 51 trips to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Amnesty International, which produced a report on rendition flights in 2006, believes the aircraft may have notched up 114 separate take offs and landings at the facility.
In a report released exclusively to The Mail on Sunday last week, human rights group Reprieve raises concerns that the plane was used in at least two more rendition flights.
It links a flight from Guantanamo Bay to Morocco on March 27 2004 and a journey from Guantanamo to Romania and Morocco on April 12 2004 to the abduction of al Qaeda operatives Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.
All four men were reportedly transferred from Guantanamo to foreign prisons in March and April 2004. The CIA subsequently admitted that it has video footage of al-Shibh under interrogation in a Morocco black prison.
The plane’s flight records show it also made a series of visits to RAF Leuchars in Scotland and also landed at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Luton airports.
Located by The Mail on Sunday at his home in Florida on Friday night, Mr Morse confirmed the arrangement with the CIA. He said: ‘Yeah, that’s true.’
But he insisted he had stopped renting the plane to the agency after he became aware of the rendition of Mr Omar.
He said: ‘The plane is still chartered. It’s just not chartered to the CIA.’
He said he became aware of the investigation into Mr Omar’s abduction in early 2005 and at that point he stopped hiring the jet to the CIA.
He said: ‘I didn’t know anything at the time. I don’t know that it’s ever been verified.’
Mr Morse, a partner in NESV, made his fortune from a company he founded which makes tubes used in heart surgery.
In 2002 he bought a ten per cent stake in NESV, which experts believe was valued at £26million at the time.
Mr Morse bought the white Gulfstream IV in 1995.
Clara Gutteridge of Reprieve said: ‘Questions have now been raised about the involvement of Mr Morse’s plane N85VM in three illegal rendition operations, and Reprieve is actively investigating its involvement in a number of further “transfers to torture”.
‘In light of these revelations, I hope very much that Mr Morse’s moral fibre is of the same high calibre as his bank balance.
‘I therefore look forward to Mr Morse’s full co-operation with our investigations into the clandestine activities of this executive jet. If Mr Morse fails to assist in investigations, this would raise serious questions as to his fitness to own Liverpool Football Club.’
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2010 7:33 pm Post subject:
Unt now, courtesy of some links in the States, I bring you all the chance of a lifetime, not to be missed; a chance to support 'Wall Street Critter' 'Uncle Tom' Obomba:
'Right now, the same special interests that we've fought for two years are flooding the airwaves with negative ads. They don't have the courage to stand up and disclose the identity of their donors. They could be insurance companies. They could be Wall Street banks. We don't know.
This kind of politics isn't just a threat to Democrats. It's a threat to our democracy.
And the only way to fight back is with millions of voices, ready to stand up and finish what we started in 2008. That means you. And we have just seven days to do it.
The reason you knocked on doors, made phone calls, chipped in what you could, and cast your vote in 2008 was because you believed that your actions could make a difference and you could play a role in bringing about historic change. You were right.
But the next seven days are a pivotal moment in that continuing fight for historic change. And I need you again to do everything you can.
Because this moment is so crucial, Organizing for America is pairing every grassroots donor who gives today with another individual giving what he or she can afford.
Please donate $3 right now, and it will become $6 because another person out there is ready to invest in this movement with you.
We are not just calling for change, we are grinding it out. We are doing the hard, frustrating, inch-by-inch, day-by-day, week-by-week work of bringing about change.
I understand that when you're watching it, you say to yourself, this is hard. This isn't happening as fast as I would like.
But I want you to understand this. You cannot let it get to you. Don't ever let anybody tell you that this fight is not worth it. Don't let them tell you that you're not making a difference.
Because of what you did, there's a woman somewhere who no longer has to choose between keeping her home and treating her cancer.
Because of you, there are parents who can look their children in the eye and say, "You are going to college."
Because of you, there are small businesses that kept their doors open and folks who didn't lose their jobs. Because of you, communities are safer because firefighters, police officers, and paramedics were able to keep their jobs.
Because of you, there are 100,000 brave men and women who are back from a war in Iraq.
The journey we began together was not about putting a president in the White House. It was about building a movement for change that endures. It's about realizing that in America, anything is possible -- if we're willing to work for it, if we're willing to fight for it.
That's what I believe. And if that's what you believe, I need you to knock on doors, and make phone calls, and talk to your friends, and talk to your neighbors. And I need you to dig deep and give what you can.
And if you do that, I promise you, not only will we win this election -- we will restore the dream for the next generation. We have seven days to do it.
Please donate $3 or more to help Organizing for America finish strong:
Well, gee, Barack, you just knowse you can rely on me! How much do ya need? 'tree bucks'll hardly get ya a Bud. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2010 8:25 pm Post subject:
Press TV wrote:
Amnesty International slams EU over terror suspects abuse
Mon Nov 15, 2010 6:55PM
Amnesty International has criticized the European Union for failing to blame EU governments for the "abuses" committed against CIA's terrorism suspects.
The call comes as the organization released a report titled "Open Secret: Mounting Evidence of Europe's Complicity In Rendition And Secret Detention," ahead of EU-US talks in Portugal on November 20.
The report gathered information and evidence of the involvement of European countries in covert CIA programs such as kidnapping, illegal detention, secret flights and torture under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
It also uncovered the deep role of officials from Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and Britain in the torture of terror suspects.
"The EU has utterly failed to hold member states accountable for the abuses they've committed," said the director of Amnesty International's European institutions office, Nicholas Berger.
"These abuses occurred on European soil. We simply can't allow Europe to join the US in becoming an 'accountability-free' zone. The tide is slowly turning with some countries starting investigations, but much more needs to be done."
Reactions from the European government, however, were quite poor, the report said.
"As more information trickles out, it will be harder and harder for the United States government to continue to stonewall when it comes to accountability," Amnesty researcher Julia Hall told reporters on Monday.
"So the processes that are happening in Europe, we do have hopes that they will have some kind of an impact across the Atlantic in the United States," she added.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/151150.html
Radio Free Europe wrote:
Amnesty Calls For Justice For Victims Of CIA Rendition Programs
A plane suspected of being used by the CIA in its secret rendition program (file photo)
November 15, 2010
Amnesty International is calling on European governments to provide justice for the victims of the CIA's rendition and secret detention programs after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The call comes as the London-based organization published a report titled "Open Secret: Mounting Evidence Of Europe's Complicity In Rendition And Secret Detention," ahead of an EU-U.S. summit in Portugal on November 20.
Amnesty researcher Julia Hall told reporters today that even though the report targets European governments, the organization hopes its impact will be felt in the United States, as well.
"As more information trickles out, it will be harder and harder for the United States government to continue to stonewall when it comes to accountability," Hall says. "So the processes that are happening in Europe, we do have hopes that they will have some kind of an impact across the Atlantic in the United States."
The 53-page document compiles the latest evidence of European countries' complicity in the CIA's programs of kidnapping, secret flights, illegal detention, and torture in the context of the fight against terrorism.
It also outlines degrees of progress in uncovering to what extent local officials were involved in the program in eight countries: Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and Britain.
The report concludes that the response has so far been poor among EU countries, while also noting that Europe is still "fertile ground" for accountability, especially compared to the United States -- which is described as an "accountability-free zone."
http://www.rferl.org/content/Amnesty_Calls_For_Justice_For_Victims_Of_ CIA_Rendition_Programs/2220683.html
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:57 pm Post subject:
anywhere people are behaving like depraved animals the CIA is to be found lending a hand
CIA worked with Libya in terror suspect renditions, documents show
Documents found in the offices of former head of Libyan intelligence also reveal MI6 gave Gaddafi regime information on dissidents
The CIA worked closely with Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence services in the rendition of terrorist suspects including Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, the rebel commander in Tripoli, according to documents found in Tripoli.
The documents, found in the offices of the former head of Libyan intelligence Musa Kusa, also show that MI6 gave Gaddafi's regime information on Libyan dissidents living in the UK.
The files, uncovered by Human Rights Watch, provide details of the close relationship between western intelligence services, including MI6 and the CIA, and the ousted dictator's regime.
Two documents from March 2004 appear to be American correspondence to Libyan officials to arrange the rendition of Belhaj, the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a now-dissolved militant group with links to al-Qaida.
Referring to him by his nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq, the documents say he will be flown from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Libya, and asks for Libyan government agents to accompany him. They also request US "access to al-Sadiq for debriefing purposes once he is in your custody".
Belhaj has said he was tortured by CIA agents at a secret prison before being returned to Libya.....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/03/cia-libya-terror-suspect-r enditions _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
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Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Wednesday 9 July 2014 15.39 BST
The British government's problems with missing files deepened dramatically when the Foreign Office claimed documents on the UK's role in the CIA's global abduction operation had been destroyed accidentally when they became soaked with water.
In a statement that human rights groups said "smacked of a cover-up", the department maintained that records of post-9/11 flights in and out of Diego Garcia, the British territory in the Indian Ocean, were "incomplete due to water damage".
The claim comes amid media reports in the US that a Senate report due to be published later this year identifies Diego Garcia as a location where the CIA established a secret prison as part of its extraordinary rendition programme. According to one report, classified CIA documents state that the prison was established with the "full cooperation" of the UK government.
It also comes at a time when MPs are demanding the Home Office urgently provide more information about 114 "missing" files that could have contained information about an alleged child abuse network in the 1980s.
Ministers of successive governments have repeatedly given misleading or incomplete information about the CIA's use of Diego Garcia. In February 2008, the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, was forced to apologise to MPs and explain that Tony Blair's "earlier explicit assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights" had not been correct. Miliband said at this point that two rendition flights had landed, but that the detainees on board had not disembarked.
Miliband's admission was made after human rights groups produced irrefutable evidence that aircraft linked to the rendition programme had landed on Diego Garcia. Since then, far more aircraft have been shown to have been involved in the operation.
The "water damage" claim was given in response to a parliamentary question by the Tory chair of the Treasury select committee, Andrew Tyrie, who has been investigating the UK's involvement in the rendition programme for several years.
When Tyrie asked the Foreign Office (FCO) to explain which government department keeps a list of flights which passed through Diego Garcia from January 2002 to January 2009, FCO minister Mark Simmonds replied: "Records on flight departures and arrivals on Diego Garcia are held by the British Indian Ocean Territory immigration authorities. Daily occurrence logs, which record the flights landing and taking off, cover the period since 2003. Though there are some limited records from 2002, I understand they are incomplete due to water damage."
The Foreign Office would not say whether the damaged files were UK or US records, or say where they were located. An FO spokesperson maintained that because the damage "was only recently discovered" it did not know how or when it occurred.
Cori Crider of the legal charity Reprieve said: "It's looking worse and worse for the UK government on Diego Garcia. First we learn the Senate's upcoming torture report says detainees were held on the island, and now – conveniently – a pile of key documents turn up missing with 'water damage'? The government might as well have said the dog ate their homework. This smacks of a cover-up. They now need to come clean about how, when, and where this evidence was lost."
Crider added that the claim that documents had been destroyed accidentally was "especially disturbing" given that Scotland Yard is investigating the role played by MI6 in the abduction of a Libyan dissident, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who was flown to one of Muammar Gaddafi's prisons along with his pregnant wife in 2004.
The police investigation, Operation Lydd, is thought to have examined whether the couple were flown via Diego Garcia. A report is due to be handed shortly to the director of public prosecutions.
The White House and the CIA are working on final redactions to a 481-page executive summary of a classified report by the US Senate committee on intelligence on the rendition programme prior to its publication, possibly in September. The full 6,300-page report is said to be scathing of the way in which the CIA resorted rapidly to the abduction and torture of al-Qaida suspects after the attacks of 2001.
There have been a number of reports suggesting that allies of the US, including the UK and Poland, and been lobbying to ensure that all reference to their own involvement is removed from the summary before it is published. The Foreign Office claimed that it had merely been seeking assurances that "ordinary clearance procedures will be followed" if the report contains material supplied by the UK.
The British government is particularly sensitive about the allegations that Diego Garcia hosted one of the CIA's prisons, at times claiming that it knows only that which it is told by Washington. Although the island has operated as a US military base since the islanders were evicted in the 1960s, it remains a British territory, and its use during the rendition programme would have placed the UK in breach of a raft of international and domestic laws.
Belhaj and his wife are suing MI6, the agency's former head of counter-terrorism Sir Mark Allen and Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time that the couple were abducted.
Last month, the Commons cross-party defence committee suggested that information about the extent to which the CIA used the island as a "black site" to transfer detainees was still being withheld. "Recent developments have once again brought into question the validity of assurances by the US about its use of Diego Garcia," it said.
The committee warned that it will assess the implications for Britain and for "public confidence" in its previous statements on US use of Diego Garcia, and said the US should not in future be permitted to use the island, to transfer terror suspects, for combat operations, "or any other politically sensitive activity", without the explicit authorisation from the UK government.
Although Miliband told MPs that detainees had not been held on Diego Garcia, others have contradicted this assertion.
Manfred Nowak, as United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said he had received "credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island" that CIA detainees had been held there between 2002 and 2003.
General Barry McCaffrey, a former head of Southcom, the US military's southern command, has twice stated publicly that Diego Garcia has been used by the US to hold prisoners, saying in one radio interview in May 2004: "We're probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq."
In 2003, Time magazine quoted "a regional intelligence official" as saying that a man accused of plotting the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing was being interrogated on Diego Garcia. Five years later the magazine reported that a CIA counter-terrorism official said a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being held and interrogated on the island.
In August 2008, the Observer reported that former US intelligence officers "unofficially told senior Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón that Mustafa Setmarian, a Spanish-based Syrian accused of running terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, was taken to Diego Garcia in late 2005 and held there for months".
As a consequence of the repeated allegations, the foreign affairs select committee said in 2009 that it was "unacceptable" that the government had not taken steps to obtain the full details of the two individuals whom it had admitted to have been rendered through Diego Garcia.
Cori Crider
theguardian.com, Friday 11 July 2014 07.00 BST
First the British government denied renditions ever took place through Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean. Then in 2008 it finally admitted the truth. Now, years later, documents relating to a key period have reportedly been accidentally destroyed when they were soaked in water. Here are seven critical points about the affair.
1. Two rendition flights landed on Diego Garcia in 2002, the year covered by the 'lost' documents
The year the drowned documents apparently covered, 2002, is when the UK government admitted that it saw two CIA torture flights land on the island. There is an undeniable stink of the destruction of evidence here. Why, in none of the many prior discussions between MPs and the government about Diego Garcia over the years, was this "water damage" never once mentioned?
2. It is not only the records for 2002 we need to see
Diego Garcia's role may extend far beyond 2002. None of the flight documents that we know exist – "water damaged" or not – have yet been provided to the public or, apparently, to the MPs who are meant to provide oversight.
3. For years the UK government denied all knowledge
For a long time, ministers claimed that anyone who thought the UK was involved in renditions was a conspiracy theorist. Here's foreign secretary Jack Straw in 2005: "Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop."
Three years later, the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, was forced to confess that this was spectacularly untrue, admitting to parliament that two CIA "rendition" flights carrying detainees had in fact made use of the British territory of Diego Garcia – an atoll in the Indian Ocean – in 2002.
4. Renditions enabled horrific torture beyond the rule of law
Before we become swamped in the euphemisms of the war on terror, it is worth remembering what Bush-era "rendition" really meant. The CIA, with significant support from Britain and other allies, would kidnap people and fly them to countries where they could be tortured. Detainees spent months or years in secret prisons beyond the rule of law. In the dungeons of Gaddafi, Mubarak or Assad they were beaten and hung from the walls, and in some cases had their genitals cut with a scalpel.
5. Among the victims were children and pregnant women
The victims of the rendition programme were not just men; they included women and children. The al-Saadi family was "rendered" en masse to Libya in 2004: Sami, a prominent anti-Gaddafi dissident, his wife Karima and their four children, the eldest 12 and the youngest just six. Fatima Boudchar, the wife of another Gaddafi opponent, was five months' pregnant when she was kidnapped with her husband and flown to Gaddafi's prisons in the same year.
6. Britain played a key role
We now know that a high-ranking MI6 official wrote to Gaddafi's spy chief to congratulate him on the arrival of the "air cargo" – Boudchar and her husband, Abdul Hakim Belhadj. Tony Blair embraced Gaddafi, welcoming him back to "civilised" society, the very same month – March 2004.
Crucially, given revelations that key flight documents – never before released – relating to Diego Garcia have conveniently suffered "water damage", there is evidence that the US sought to make use of the island in the rendition of Belhadj and Boudchar. Despite the emergence of a flight plan showing that the CIA intended to stop off on the British territory, the UK government has repeatedly refused to say whether or not the US asked to send the couple via the island in 2004 and whether it was allowed. The destroyed documents would have shed light on what British officials knew about Diego Garcia's potential use as a secret prison.
7. Political oversight of British involvement has spectacularly failed
Parliament's intelligence and security committee said in 2007 that there was "no evidence that the UK agencies were complicit in any 'extraordinary rendition operations'", adding, "we are satisfied that there is no evidence that US rendition flights have used UK airspace". In the wake of this spectacular failure of accountability, it was felt that something more effective was needed, resulting ultimately in the establishment of an inquiry into UK involvement in rendition and torture by David Cameron in July 2010. The inquiry, he said, would be "led by a judge" and "look at whether Britain was implicated in the improper treatment of detainees".
You would be forgiven for failing to have noticed the inquiry, because it never really happened. At the tail end of last year, as MPs packed up for their Christmas break, the government quietly wound up the detainee inquiry before it could get going. It passed the inquiry's functions to the intelligence and security committee – the same group of MPs that catastrophically failed to do their job in the first place.
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