Hadley is lying on all three counts he cites:
1. As the flight logs and investigative reports document, the US is moving people around the world to be tortured.
2. Since all 25 member states have signed the European Convention on Human Rights, and the International Convention Against Torture, secret torture cells would indeed be a violation of the laws of foreign countries. If officials in this country did not know about these flights, as seems to be the case, then the US did indeed violate their national sovereignty.
Since Syria, Jordan, Egypt and many of the other countries where suspects have been rendered have turned up all too frequently as violators in human rights monitoring and have been cited by the State Department itself, the US cannot plausibly argue as it has, that it does not have "substantial grounds for believing" rendered suspects would be tortured there. Its own officials are on record saying just the opposite. Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former counterterrorism director, told Newsday about an al-Qaeda suspect taken to Egypt, "They promptly tore his fingernails out and he started to tell things." (February 6, 2003). Former CIA agent Bob Baer told The New Statesman, "If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear -- never to see them again -- you send them to Egypt,"
Since CIA officials knew the fate in store of those rendered, the US is in utter violation of international laws on torture which are binding on it.
It's not necessary anymore to hedge discussion of the program with words like "alleged," for Masri is only the latest in a long line of renditions without cause/due process of any kind: Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian citizen, seized by a CIA team in Pakistan in October 2001, sent to Egypt, burned, electrocuted and beaten till he bled in his sleep from his nose, mouth, and ears, was dumped in Guantanamo and then released without being charged; Mohamedou Oulad Slahi, a Mauritanian and former Canada resident, taken by the CIA to Jordan for interrogation for 8 months, was sent to Guantanamo and released; Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian imprisoned by Indonesia authorities in January 2002, flown to Egypt for interrogation, was returned to the CIA four months later, held for 13 months in Afghanistan, then sent to Guantanamo and later released; Maher Arar a naturalized Canadian citizen, kidnapped in New York in September 2002, was taken to Syria, held in a coffin and tortured with metal whips. He proved to have no ties to terrorism and was released.
Masri is telling the truth. There is just too much testimony from detainees that makes substantially the same charges, too many CIA admissions and leaks, too many eye-witness reports, the meticulously analyzed flight logs and even supporting medical evidence.
The Masri case is without any doubt an illegal operation involving authorities in at least five countries - Macedonia, Afghanistan, Germany, Albania, and the U.S.
Let me spell that out. In pursuit of the global war on terror, the U.S. government, apparently conspiring with foreign intelligence, has snatched a citizen of one country off the streets of another for no credible reason whatsoever, violating the sovereignty of several foreign countries in the process. It has then sent him to still another foreign country for torture for several months. And, having found itself mistaken, it has confiscated/withheld the documents necessary for the victim to substantiate a legal claim against the US government. There was no formal charge, there was no notification of the family, there were no witnesses called, there was no lawyer provided, there was no explanation or restitution offered.
Again, note. The CIA held these prisoners in contravention of the laws even of the torturing countries. Even Egypt, Syria or Jordan have legal systems - however harsh - that would have necessitated charges and a legal defense. But as ex-FBI agent Dan Coleman has stated, "We're taking people, and keeping them in our own custody [my emphasis] in third countries. That's an enormous problem....There was a process there [in Egypt]," Coleman says. "But what's our process? We have no method over there other than our laws"and we've decided to ignore them. What are we now, the Huns? If you don't talk to us, we'll kill you?" (7)
What is also clamoring to be asked is if the black sites allegedly in Eastern Europe - and according to the Post article, also in Thailand - are really all that there are to the story?
Given the extraordinary sensitivity of the whole program, what are the chances that CIA leaks tell the whole story? What about Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Pakistan, and many other countries partnered with the US in the global war on terror who have dismal human rights records.
Uzbekistan has recently been in the news about just that. Craig Murray, the former British ambassador there, told 60 Minutes that Uzbek citizens, captured in Afghanistan, were flown back to Tashkent on an American plane operating on a regular basis. Uzbeki torture techniques include drowning, suffocation, rape, and immersion in boiling liquid. Murray calls these techniques "medieval" but there is not one that has not been used by the US, not only in the war on terror" but within US prisons. When Murray complained that British intelligence was using information elicited by torture, he was recalled and quit the foreign service.(8)
Indonesia is another strong candidate to have black sites, since the Asian tsunami last year provided the perfect justification and cover for US spy satellites and military to enter the area. Just this past November 23, the Bush administration announced it will lift a six-year arms embargo and resume full relations with the Indonesian military providing aid to "support US and Indonesian security objectives, including counterterrorism, [my emphasis] maritime security and disaster relief." (9)
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