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CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights

Germany offered access to prisoner in Morocco if it quelled opposition

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian

The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of America's key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal.
According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and "avert pressure from EU" over human rights abuses in the north African country. The report describes Morocco as a "valuable partner in the fight against terrorism".

The classified documents prepared for the German parliament last February make clear that Berlin did eventually get to see the detained suspect, who was arrested in Morocco in 2002 as an alleged organiser of the September 11 strikes.

He was flown from Morocco to Syria on another rendition flight. Syria offered access to the prisoner on the condition that charges were dropped against Syrian intelligence agents in Germany accused of threatening Syrian dissidents. Germany dropped the charges, but denied any link.

After the CIA offered a deal to Germany, EU countries adopted an almost universal policy of downplaying criticism of human rights records in countries where terrorist suspects have been held. They have also sidestepped questions about secret CIA flights partly because of growing evidence of their complicity.

The disclosure is among fresh revelations about how the CIA flew terrorist suspects to locations where they were tortured, and Britain's knowledge of the practice known as "secret rendition". They are contained in Ghost Plane, by Stephen Grey, the journalist who first revealed details of secret CIA flights in the Guardian a year ago. More than 200 CIA flights have passed through Britain, records show.

He describes how one CIA pilot told him that Prestwick airport, near Glasgow, was a popular destination for refuelling stops and layovers. "It's an 'ask-no-questions' type of place and you don't need to give them any advance warning you're coming," the pilot said.

The CIA used planes of Air America, a group of private companies it secretly owned, and a second company, Aero Contractors. A CIA Gulfstream V jet, frequently used for the secret rendition of prisoners, flew to Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean territory where the US has a large base, the book says. Grey plans to publish more than 3,000 logs of the CIA flights on the internet this week.

CIA pilots, sometimes using false identities and whose planes regularly passed through Britain, ran up huge bills in luxury hotels after flying terrorist suspects to secret locations where they were tortured. But they revealed their whereabouts and identities by indiscreet use of mobile phones and allowed outsiders to track their aircraft's flights.

On one occasion, CIA pilots and crew lived it up in Majorca after rendering Benyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian brought up in Notting Hill, west London, to Afghanistan where he was tortured. Benyam was detained in Pakistan early in 2002, and then flown to Morocco, where he says he suffered appalling torture. He is being held at Guantánamo Bay.

Benyam has said in a statement to his lawyer that he was tortured for more than two years after being questioned by US and British officials. He says that while in Morocco he was shown photos of people he knew from a west London mosque, and was asked about information he was told was supplied by MI5.

The government has consistently denied it has ever actively cooperated in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme". The Foreign Office said yesterday that the government had "not approved and will not approve a policy of facilitating transfer of individuals through the UK to places where there are substantial grounds to believe they face a real risk of torture".

Special report
Human rights in the UK

Useful links
Human Rights Act 1998
European court of human rights
Lord Chancellor's office
UN high commissioner for human rights

http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com/2006/10/america-human-rights-abusers.html
 
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High-flying lifestyle of the CIA's rendition men

· VIP status for agents who transfer terror suspects
· New book reveals disturbing details

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday October 26, 2006
The Guardian

In January 2004 a crew of CIA agents checked into the five-star Marriott Son Antem golfing resort in Palma for a well-deserved rest. The agents had just flown from Rabat in Morocco to Afghanistan and back to Algeria - a gruelling 8,000-mile journey - and were looking forward to luxuriating in the hotel's spa where, as the brochure put it, they could "journey to deep inner peace".
But as the crew were basking in comfort at US taxpayers' expense there was little peace for their cargo. In the hold on that day was Benyam Mohammed, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee alleged to be one of the world's most dedicated jihadists. In Morocco, Mohammed would later allege, he had been doused in hot liquids, subjected to incessant loud noise and had his penis slashed with a scalpel.

The details of Mohammed's treatment emerges in Ghost Plane, a new book by investigative journalist Stephen Grey describing the CIA's clandestine system of international terrorist transfers known as extraordinary rendition.
The Marriott Son Antem was not the only luxury hotel in Palma frequented by CIA agents. The rendition crews also liked to stop off at the Gran Melia Victoria, a five-star hotel in the centre of the Majorcan capital. On one occasion, they ordered three bottles of fine Spanish wine, and five crystal glasses from Mallorcair, one of the plane's ground handling agents - refreshments for the flight home, all charged to the CIA's bill.

Agents displayed a similar taste for luxury in Milan where Italian prosecutors accuse the CIA of involvement in the seizure and rendering of Abu Omar, a radical Egyptian cleric, to Cairo in 2003. Italian investigators found the CIA agents spent nearly $150,000 (£80,000) on accommodation. Two spent nearly $18,000 during a three-week stay at Milan's Savoy hotel.

But the US secret service operatives' indiscretions meant the task of the Italians investigating the kidnapping of Abu Omar was made simple.

CIA officers frequently called each other's hotels and many of the 22 CIA agents allegedly involved had "frequent flyer" numbers or hotel loyalty cards so they could earn points during their stay in the Italian fashion capital. Among itemised phone bills discovered by Italian counter-terrorism police was one showing 156 calls had been made to a landline in Milan. This led them to the US consulate.

Another example of the indiscretions and contradictions in the US administration's rendition programme emerges in its willingness to lavish money on entertaining the Syrians.

In December 2002, Syrian president Bashar Assad and his wife paid an official visit to London. They were guests of honour at the City of London.

But back in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on that same day in December 2002, seven prisoners were languishing in jail, sent there by the US despite President George Bush's view that Syria was part of an "axis of evil" with a legacy of "torture, oppression, misery, and ruin". There is clear evidence the seven rendered there by the US were brutally tortured.

One, Maher Arar, abducted with the help of Canada, was freed after more than nine months when he signed a false confession that he had trained at a camp in Afghanistan.

For Mr Arar, the contrast between his treatment and the Syrian president's is likely to be a bitter pill to swallow.

Full coverage
CIA rendition flights

http://starkravingviking.blogspot.com/2006/10/america-human-rights-abusers.html
 
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