She insisted that the United States “does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture.” Instead, she explained that, where necessary, “the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured.” HRW says, “The systematic nature of the abuses suffered by prisoners rendered to Jordan contradicts Rice’s bland reassurances. If the Jordanians did indeed promise the US authorities that prisoners rendered there would not be tortured, it was a promise that neither the US nor Jordan believed.”
The Jordan chapter of the U.S. State Department’s 2001 human rights report states that prisoners in the custody of Jordanian police and security forces have alleged that “methods of torture include sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted positions, and extended solitary confinement.”
The report notes that Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer who claims to have initiated the terrorist rendition program during the Clinton Administration, “rightly dismisses these assurances as ‘legal niceties’ -- pledges meant to look good on paper, which provide no real protection. He has said that both CIA agents and their superiors were aware that abuses were likely.”
HRW reports that Pakistan, and in particular the city of Karachi, was the source of at least six detainees believed to have been rendered to Jordan from U.S. custody. “The Pakistani authorities have made no secret of the fact that since September 2001 they have handed over several hundred terrorism suspects to the United States, boasting of the transfers as proof of Pakistan’s cooperation in US counterterrorism efforts,” HRW says.
“A large number of these men ended up at Guantanamo; some ended up in secret CIA prisons, and others were rendered to Jordan and other countries.”
The US practice of rendering terrorist suspects abroad -- transferring prisoners to foreign custody outside of normal legal proceedings -- predates the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, the CIA rendered a number of Egyptian terrorist suspects from countries such as Albania and Croatia to Egypt, where some of them had previously been sentenced to death in absentia. HRW notes that after September 2001, the CIA’s rendition practices changed. “Rather than returning people to their home countries to face ‘justice’ (albeit justice that included torture and grossly unfair trials), the CIA began handing people over to third countries apparently to facilitate abusive interrogations.”
Following the September 11 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush signed a classified presidential directive giving the CIA expanded authority to arrest, interrogate, detain, and render terrorist suspects arrested abroad. Since that time, the US is believed to have rendered terrorism suspects to the custody of Egypt, Morocco, Libya, and Syria, in addition to Jordan.
The HRW report calls on the U.S. government to repudiate the use of rendition to torture as a counterterrorism tactic, discontinue the CIA’s rendition program, and “disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody by the CIA since 2001, including detainees who were rendered to Jordan.”
And it calls on Jordan’s government to repudiate its role as a proxy jailer in the CIA’s rendition program; disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons rendered to Jordan by the CIA since 2001; make public any audio recordings or videotapes made of interrogations of detainees rendered by the CIA to Jordan; and open an immediate independent judicial inquiry into the GID’s use of torture, ill-treatment, and arbitrary detention.
Dare we hope that the young monarch – and his American partners -- will heed this advice before he comes before the next joint session of Congress?
Well, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
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