Source: The New York Times

Rights Group Offers Grim View of C.I.A. Jails

By DOREEN CARVAJAL

Published: June 9, 2007

PARIS, June 8 — In a report on Friday, the lead investigator for the Council of Europe gave a bleak description of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency in Eastern Europe, with information he said was gleaned from anonymous intelligence agents.

Prisoners guarded by silent men in black masks and dark visors were held naked in cramped cells and shackled to walls, according to the report, which was prepared by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating C.I.A. operations for the Council of Europe, a 46-nation rights group.

Ventilation holes in the cells released bursts of hot or freezing air, with temperature used as a form of extreme pressure to wear down prisoners, the investigators found. Prisoners were also subjected to water-boarding, a form of simulated drowning, and relentless blasts of music and sound, from rap to cackling laughter and screams, the report says.

The report, which runs more than 100 pages, says the prisons were operated exclusively by Americans in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2006. It relies heavily on testimony from C.I.A. agents.

Critics in Poland and Romania attacked Mr. Marty’s use of anonymous sources and issued categorical denials, as they have done repeatedly. Denis MacShane, a British member of Parliament and longtime critic of Mr. Marty, complained that the investigator “makes grave allegations to two European Union member states, Poland and Romania, without any proof at all.”

Tomasz Szeratics, a spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “We shall not make any comments on Dick Marty’s latest report until we receive it officially and analyze the evidence presented. The Polish position remains unchanged and it is very clear: There were no secret C.I.A. detention centers on the territory of the Republic of Poland.”

But Mr. Marty said at a news conference in Paris that anonymous testimony was backed by thousands of flight records showing prisoner transfers, including private planes linked to the C.I.A. that made 10 flights from Afghanistan and Dubai to the Szczytno-Szymany International Airport in Poland between 2002 and 2005.

That was the closest airport to a Soviet-era military compound where about a dozen high-level terror suspects were jailed, the report charges. The local authorities formed secure buffer zones around the jails, which were operated exclusively by Americans, Mr. Marty reported.

Lower-level prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq were held at a military base near the Black Sea in Romania, the report says. The Romanians were restricted to the buffer zone.

“Our Romanian officers do not know what happened inside those areas because we sealed them off and we had control,” the report cites a senior military agent as saying.

The details of prison life were given by retired and current American intelligence agents who had been promised confidentiality, the report says.

Their motives were varied, Mr. Marty said. “For 15 years, I have interviewed people as an investigating magistrate and I have always noticed that at a certain point, people with secrets need to talk,” he said.

Others justified the grim treatment, the reports said, saying, in one instance: “Here’s my question. Was the guy a terrorist? ’Cause if he’s a terrorist, then I figure he got what was coming to him.”

According to the report, suspects were often held for months with no contact except with masked, silent guards who would push meals of cheese, potatoes and bread through hatches.

When prisoners resisted, the report says, one investigator considered it a welcome sign. “You know they are starting to crack,” he said, “So you hold out. You push them over the edge.”

Source: The New York Times

Secret Prisons in 2 Countries Held Qaeda Suspects, Report Says

By STEPHEN GREY and DOREEN CARVAJAL

Published: June 8, 2007

LONDON, June 7 — Investigators have confirmed the existence of clandestine C.I.A. prisons in Romania and Poland housing leading members of Al Qaeda, contends a new report from the Council of Europe, the European human rights monitoring agency.

Dick Marty, the Swiss senator leading the inquiry, said in a recent interview that his conclusions were based on information from intelligence agents on both sides of the Atlantic, including members of the C.I.A. counterterrorism center. The report is to be released on Friday.

The report says the jails operated from 2003 to 2005. “Large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice,” it says.

These suspects included Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed master planner for the Sept. 11 attacks; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a member of the Hamburg, Germany, cell that organized the conspiracy; and Abu Zubaida, believed to have been a senior figure in Al Qaeda.

The report says that some of the information comes from trusted intelligence agents, who reported directly to former President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland and to two former Romanian leaders, Ion Iliescu and Traian Basescu.

The governments of Poland and Romania have denied the existence of such prisons, and officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Poland has criticized Mr. Marty and his investigators in the past for not traveling there to investigate the compound that the report describes as a prison.

The current president, Lech Kaczynski, has said that since he came to power in December 2005 “there has been no secret prison — I am 100 percent sure of it,” adding, “I am assured there never were any in the past either.”

Romania has repeatedly denied the presence of a secret prison there.

But last year, President Bush acknowledged for the first time that terrorism suspects had been held in C.I.A.-run prisons overseas, without specifying where.

Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said Thursday that, “While I’ve yet to see the report, Europe has been the source of grossly inaccurate allegations about the C.I.A. and counterterrorism,” and he added, “People should remember that Europeans have benefited from the agency’s bold, lawful work to disrupt terrorist plots.”

The report contends, “What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven.” An advance copy of the report was obtained by the British Channel 4 program “Dispatches” and provided to The New York Times.

Apart from the statements of what his report describes as former and serving intelligence agents, Mr. Marty quotes aviation records that he suggests provide detailed evidence of clandestine visits by C.I.A. planes to Szymany, in Poland; as well as the text of confidential military agreements signed between the United States and Romania that, he suggests, allowed the establishment of a C.I.A. base in the country.

Mr. Marty said the C.I.A.’s partners in establishing the secret prisons were the military intelligence agencies of both countries, which reported only to their presidents and defense ministers. Neither the countries’ prime ministers nor the two Parliaments’ intelligence committees were consulted or informed.

Prisoners in the secret jails were subjected to sleep deprivation and water-boarding, or simulated drowning, said Mr. Marty, who also said that the two jails had been divided into two categories.

The main C.I.A. jail was centered in a Soviet-era military compound at Stare Kjekuty, in northeastern Poland, where about a dozen high-level terrorism suspects were jailed, the report concludes. Lower-level prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq were held in a military base near the Black Sea in Romania, the report contends.

Jails were staffed entirely by the C.I.A., and local guards secured the perimeters, the report says. “The local authorities were not supposed to be aware of the exact number or the identities of the prisoners who passed through the facilities — this was information that they did not ‘need to know,’ ” the report said.

Mr. Marty said last month in an interview with the Swiss newspaper La Liberté that the report relied on information from disaffected C.I.A. agents and other intelligence officials on the other side of the Atlantic. Many of the agents said they were surprised that the prisons remained a secret for so many years. “They spoke to me because they found what was happening to be disgusting,” he was quoted as saying.

The report includes more specific conclusions than a study issued in June last year that contended that at least 14 European countries had accepted secret transfers of terrorism suspects by the United States. That report listed a web of landing points around the world that it said had been used by American authorities for its air network.

The new report contends that the C.I.A. took extraordinary measures to cover its activities. When C.I.A. jets flew to the Szymany airport in Poland, they used flight plans with “fictitious routes,” it says, giving no indication that the airport was the destination. Polish air traffic controllers — working with military intelligence — completed the cover-up, the report says.

Although the report singled out Poland and Romania, it said that it could not rule out the possibility that other European countries permitted these jails to operate.

Among its accusations, this report said NATO agreements, under the guise of waging a “war on terror,” provided the framework that the C.I.A. used to expand its European operations after Sept. 11.

The Marty report says it would be pointless for researchers to visit the Polish compound because “we have no doubts about the capability of those who would have removed any traces of the prisoner’s presence.”

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

Sources:

https://sudhan.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=59

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_07/0507001.htmlThe rapid course of events that had started unfolding in the second half of 1989 in Eastern Europe eventually culminated in the disintegration of the Soviet Union by the end of 1991. These colossal changes in the former Eastern bloc countries undoubtedly constitute one of the major turning points in the history of the twentieth century. In view of the epochal changes that had taken place, political observers asked questions, such as: What will be the final outcome of these developments? What sort of new global order will emerge to replace the former balance of power between the East and the West? How is the United States as the sole superpower going to behave in relation to those countries that choose to follow their independent socio-economic developments, stand for their national interests or refuse to bow to the U.S. domination and pressure? As it turned out, no one had to wait long for the answers. The events during the last fourteen years are before us. They have revealed clearly the shape of international developments.

Let us take a quick glance at some of the events. We have seen how during the course of the last sixteen years the U.S. has virtually monopolized the United Nations and started to use it to dictate its decrees in the international organization. In the first place, this ploy succeeds because it gives the appearance of legalistic formality to the American conduct before the silent majority in the international community who in any case has little or no effective influence on the major decisions, which are taken in the Security Council. Secondly, this practice has been closely associated with asserting the full weight of the U.S., the only superpower in the international arena. The foundation of this role is to protect and increase the sphere of the U.S. interests. These, in any case, are not confined to any fixed area or location; they extend to the whole world in general, and in particular, the oil-rich countries of the Middles East. At the same time, only the U.S. can define and proclaim its national interests in any manner it chooses to do so. This assertion of supra-national interests is backed by the most destructive military arsenal and prowess in the human history as well as by using the policy of terror and intimidation against those countries that dare to defy the United States diktat.

continued…

Aska Draft Registration Freeze
scott@draftresistance.org

This site is a crime against the Military Selective Service Act. It advocates. We are specifically encouraging resistance to the registration laws of the United States, seeing registration as the necessary step toward conscription (the draft). We are what the Selective Service calls ‘anti-war intellectuals.’ We see the direct link between registration, the draft, and aggressive war. Remember, non- registration is the strategy to beat the draft. If enough of us refuse, there is nothing they can do!
— Scott A Kohlhaas

Defining patriotism

EDITORIAL – Ron Paul before the U.S. House of Representatives, May 22, 2007

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Posted on May 24, 07 | 9:24 pm

The truth is getting him fired VA says the rules will cost agency a valued worker

VA says the rules will cost agency a valued worker

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Posted on May 11, 07 | 7:44 pm

The Draft and Dirigibles

A highly-qualified Veteran’s Administration employee is being fired for failure to register with the Selective Service.

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Posted on May 11, 07 | 7:42 pm

Amman opts to resume military conscription

Jordan has decided to resume limited military conscription for men and women.

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Posted on Mar 08, 07 | 3:44 pm

AFP Conscripts prepare to boost Eritrea’s defences on tense border

For Eritrea, a nation that has spent most of the past half-century in bloody battles against arch-foe and large neighbour Ethiopia, war worries are never far from people’s minds.

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Posted on Mar 01, 07 | 3:33 pm

SELECTIVE SERVICE STUDIED RAPID-FIRE DRAFT PLAN

The Selective Service System last year studied whether it should revert to a Cold War-era plan of being able to draft people within 13 days of a crisis, compared to its current goal of carrying it out within six months.

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Posted on Feb 25, 07 | 7:43 pm

Regiment is in ‘parlous state’, MP tells House of Commons

A British MP has launched a stinging attack on the Bermuda Regiment in the House of Commons.
Anti-conscription campaigner Andrew MacKinlay – a member of the ruling Labour Party – said the Regiment was in a “parlous state”.

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Posted on Feb 18, 07 | 11:15 pm

Source: CounterPunch.org

Why Did Bush Invade Iraq?

The Secret War

BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

American soldiers have been fighting and dying in Iraq since 2003, and Americans do not know why.

All the reasons President Bush gave us for his war are false. Bush said he invaded Iraq “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.”

We now know that these were false claims. Disinformation about Iraq was produced by a special unit within the Pentagon run by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith. The unit operated outside the normal intelligence channels of the CIA and DIA. Its purpose was to create false intelligence to enable Bush to initiate war with Iraq.

Did President Bush know that the claims put into his speeches by his speechwriters was false?

Who instructed Bush’s speechwriters to incorporate known lies into the President’s speeches?

Why did Vice President Cheney, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of Defense all lie to the American people and to the entire world?

What is the real agenda?

Millions of Americans have come to their own conclusions about the reasons for Bush’s invasion: (1) Oil: the US government wants to hold on to power by expanding its control over oil, and Bush and Cheney want to reward their oil company cronies. (2) Military-security complex: Police agencies favor war as a means of expanding their power, and military industries favor war as a means of expanding their profits. (3) Neoconservative ideology: Neocons’ believe in “American exceptionalism” and claim that America’s virtue gives the US government the right and the obligation to impose US hegemony on the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East where independent Muslim states object to Israel’s theft of Palestine. (4) Karl Rove: Rove used the “war president” role to rescue Bush from attack by Democrats as an illegitimate president elected by one vote of the US Supreme Court. (5) American self-righteousness over 9/11 and lust for revenge.

All of these reasons came together to make a cruel war on an innocent people.

There may be other reasons about which we know not.

As it is now recognized that every reason for the war is false or illegitimate, the question is: why does Bush insist on persisting with a costly war, the express reasons for which are now known to be mistakes? There were no weapons of mass destruction, no connections to al Qaeda, and Bush has installed a puppet Iraqi government that cannot venture outside the heavily fortified and US protected “green zone.” The Iraqi government governs nothing.

War without cause is murder, not war.

That Bush persists with a war for which he can provide no legitimate reason indicates that there is a secret agenda that has not been shared with the American people. Are we experiencing the privatization of the US government by police agencies, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby?

That the American people and their elected representatives continue to tolerate a war that has killed and maimed thousands of their own soldiers, destroyed the infrastructure of a country,

killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and created 4 million refugees for no known reason raises serious questions about the morals of the American people.

Is the impotence of the peace movement due to the power of the Israel Lobby or have Americans become morally degenerate as commentators increasingly assert?

One indication would be the response of presidential candidates to the gratuitous and failed war. What we saw at the Republican presidential candidates’ debate on June 5 is inconsistent with the self-esteem of the American people. All of the leading Republican presidential candidates openly and nonchalantly endorsed using nuclear weapons against Iran unless Iran abandons its right to enrich uranium under the non-proliferation treaty, to which Iran is a signatory (unlike nuclear-armed Israel, India, and US puppet Pakistan).

What is moral degeneracy if it is not using nuclear weapons to murder masses of innocent civilians and spread deadly radioactivity over vast areas merely in order to force a country to do as we order? If this isn’t barbarism, what is barbarism?

Do the American people realize that the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination are monsters who want to murder people who have done us no harm?

After five years of war that has achieved no noble purpose, no valid aim, indeed, no aim at all except perhaps Osama bin Laden’s aim of stirring up uncontrollable strife in the Middle East, how can Republicans cheer for candidates who preach a wider war and the use of nuclear weapons against defenseless people?

Is the approval lavished on Republican presidential candidates, who are willing to use nuclear weapons as means of terrorizing Muslim peoples, an indication that the American people have morphed into inhuman monsters?

If not, what does it indicate? Ignorant fanaticism? Paranoia? Blind hatred? The belief that no one is of any value but Americans?

For six and one-half years the Bush Regime has relied on coercion, intimidation, war, and threats of war. Diplomacy and good will have been shunned. The regime’s blatant warmongering has resurrected the nuclear arms race. China and Russia regard America’s drive for world hegemony with great alarm. China has put nuclear ICBMs on mobile platforms to increase their survivability in event of an American attack. Russia has developed new multi-warhead ICBMs, which can penetrate any known missile defense, and new cruise missiles that Putin says will be targeted on Europe if the US persists in its aggressive military encirclement of Russia.

An administration that resurrects the threat of nuclear Armageddon so that its cronies in the military-security complex can become still richer is evil beyond compare.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Let’s face it: we’ve got a president in the White House who is running an international kidnapping ring. Six human rights groups(HRG) today (June 6) named for the first time 39 more kidnap (they call them ‘disappeared’) victims of the Bush administration. Not only have Mr. Bush’s apparatchiks dumped the terrorist suspects in secret prisons but they abducted some of their wives and children, too. The sons of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, aged seven and nine, were kidnapped and tossed into an adult detention center for months “while U.S. agents questioned the children about their father’s whereabouts,” HRG said in a news release. And when Tanzanian national Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was seized in Gujarat, Pakistan, in July, 2004, his wife was kidnapped with him. Shades of Joe Stalin, notorious for abducting Soviet defectors in their foreign sancutaries!

“The duty of governments to protect people from acts of terrorism is not in question. But seizing men, women and even children, and placing people in secret locations deprived of the most basic safeguards for any detainees most definitely is,” said Claudio Cordone, a spokesperson for Amnesty International, one of the HRG involved in today’s revelations.

Adds Meg Satterthwaite, of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the NYU School of Law: “Since the end of Latin America’s dirty wars, the world has rejected the use of ‘disappearances’ as a fundamental violation of international law. Despite this universal condemnation, our research shows that the United States has tried to vanish both the people on this list and the rule of law… Enforced disappearances are illegal, regardless of who carries them out.”

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano dismissed the HRG report. He told Reuters the CIA acts in “strict accord with American law” and that its counter-terror initiatives are “subject to careful review and oversight.”

Operating secret prisons turns the kidnapped victims into ghost prisoners kept “off the books.” It prevents scrutiny by the public and the courts, “and leaves detainees vulnerable to abuses that include torture and other ill-treatment,” the HRG said. It also blocks the Red Cross from exercising its right of visitation. In the past, the CIA has denied the International Red Cross visitation to its prison in Kabul, Afghanistan. That’s hardly in accord with American law, as international treaties the U.S. has signed obligate Red Cross visits to prisoners. And, of course, none of the 39 disappeared have been brought to public trial, as required by U.S. law.

The organizations bringing the charges against the Bush administration are Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law(CHRGJ), Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve.

Last September, President Bush conceded his administration held prisoners in secret. It is unlikely he compared this practice to the foreign kidnappings that characterized Stalin’s Soviet regime, just as he undoubtedly failed to see the self-satire of his speech the other day calling upon Russia to act more like a democracy. But Vincent Warren, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has a broader vision: “Our client Majid Khan was subjected to torture and abuse while in secret CIA detention for three years. His family didn’t know if he was alive, let alone where he was. ‘Ghost’ detention is incompatible with basic respect for human rights and the rule of law.”

If you think it’s ugly stuff for the White House to jail children, keep in mind the U.S. detains 800 Pakistani boys between 13 and 15, some of whom the Red Cross charges have been tortured. By the estimate of Human Rights First(HRF), as of April, 2005, at least 108 innocent (well, they were never tried, were they?) foreign detainees “perished” in U.S. custody.

Kidnapping by the CIA, which the Bush-Cheney regime is converting into a Soviet-style KGB, got its start under President Bill Clinton, who signed off on the first “extraordinary rendition” in 1996. The invasion of the body snatchers, though, made the jump into light speed under Mr. Bush. Right now, Italy has warrants out for the arrest of 22 CIA agents who four years ago abducted Milan resident cleric Hassan Osama Nasr, and flew him to Egypt to be tortured. HRG says the disappeared victims it identified were snatched in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan.

Although Mr. Bush fibs “we don’t torture,” there have been verified reports to the contrary, particularly relating to the kidnap victims. Title 18 of the U.S. Code makes it a crime for an American to commit torture outside the U.S. The offense is punishable by fines and prison terms of up to 20 years, and if deaths result, the killers may be jailed for life or executed.

At least 20 high Bush administration officials authorized, and hundreds of U.S. military or other government employees participated in, crimes of torture against prisoners taken in the Middle East or scooped off the streets of Europe. This list begins with President Bush, for his arbitrary suspension February 8, 2002, of the Geneva Conventions that protect prisoners and includes top White House officials, Pentagon flag officers, CIA agents, and interrogators.

One very curious sentence leaps out of the new HRG report. It’s this: “Interviews with prisoners who have been released from secret CIA prisons indicate that low-level detainees have frequently been arrested far from any battlefield, and held in isolation for years without legal recourse or contact with their families or outside agencies.”

Put that together with the fact almost none of the captives at Guantanamo or in any of the other prisons have been brought to trial and it raises several questions: What if thousands of innocent men have been arrested to give the appearance of a vast “terrorist” conspiracy against America where none exists? What if, apart from Al-Qaida, the terrorists are just nationalists defending their turf when invaded? Otherwise, why hold these men in secret prisons? Is it to keep the public from hearing what they may say in court?#

(Sherwood Ross is a free-lance reporter. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)

Sherwood Ross has worked in the civil rights movement and as a reporter for major dailies and wire services.

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Source: BBC, 7 June 2007

Saudi prince ‘received arms cash’

Arms deals with the Saudis have been worth billions to the UK BBC investigation

A Saudi prince who negotiated a £40bn arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia received secret payments for over a decade, a BBC probe has found. The UK’s biggest arms dealer, BAE Systems, paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.

Prince Bandar “categorically” denied receiving any improper payments and BAE said it acted lawfully at all times.

The MoD said information about the Al Yamamah deal was confidential.

Sir Raymond Lygo, a former chief executive of BAE, told the BBC’s World Business Report that there had been “nothing untoward” about the arms deal.

“I was the one who won the contract,” he said. “I don’t know anything about him (the prince) at all. I would have remembered that name.”

All that BAE has ever rejected is any suggestion that the commission payments were illegal Robert Peston BBC Business Editor Read Robert Peston’s blog

When asked about the secret payments, Sir Lygo said that it was not going on when the deal was signed.

“I would have known if it was going on at the time. I was not aware of it, so as far as I am concerned it was not occuring.

“Yes, we paid agents. Nothing illegal about that. It was absolutely in accordance with the law at the time… there was nothing untoward about the deal whatsoever.”

Private plane

The investigation found that up to £120m a year was sent by BAE Systems from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington.

There wasn’t a distinction between the accounts of the embassy or official government accounts… and the accounts of the royal family David Caruso American bank investigator Timeline: BAE Systems probe

The BBC’s Panorama programme has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Bandar for his role in the 1985 deal to sell more than 100 warplanes to Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the expenses of the prince’s private Airbus.

David Caruso, an investigator who worked for the American bank where the accounts were held, said Prince Bandar had been taking money for his own personal use out of accounts that seemed to belong to his government.

He said: “There wasn’t a distinction between the accounts of the embassy, or official government accounts as we would call them, and the accounts of the royal family.”

Mr Caruso said he understood this had been going on for “years and years”.

“Hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars were involved,” he added.

Investigation stopped

According to Panorama’s sources, the payments were written into the arms deal contract in secret annexes, described as “support services”.

They were authorised on a quarterly basis by the MoD.

Prince Bandar was Saudi ambassador to the US for 20 years

It remains unclear whether the payments were actually illegal – a point which depends in part on whether they continued after 2001, when the UK made bribery of foreign officials an offence.

The payments were discovered during a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation.

The SFO inquiry into the Al Yamamah deal was stopped in December 2006 by attorney general Lord Goldsmith.

Prime Minister Tony Blair declined to comment on the Panorama allegations.

But he said that if the SFO investigation into BAE had not been dropped, it would have led to “the complete wreckage of a vital strategic relationship and the loss of thousands of British jobs”.

The SFO’s inquiry is thought to have angered Saudi Arabia, to the point where there was a risk that BAE could lose a contract to sell the new Typhoon fighter to Riyadh.

Prince Bandar, who is the son of the Saudi defence minister, served for 20 years as US ambassador and is now head of the country’s national security council.

Panorama reporter Jane Corbin explained that the payments were Saudi public money, channelled through BAE and the MoD, back to the Prince.

The SFO had been trying to establish whether they were illegal when the investigation was stopped, she added.

She believed the payments would thrust the issue back into the public domain and raise a number of questions.

‘Bad for business’

Labour MP Roger Berry, head of the House of Commons committee which investigates strategic export controls, told the BBC that the allegations must be properly investigated.

If there was evidence of bribery or corruption in arms deals since 2001 – when the UK signed the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention – then that would be a criminal offence, he said.

He added: “It’s bad for British business, apart from anything else, if allegations of bribery popping around aren’t investigated.”

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said that if ministers in either the present or previous governments were involved there should be a “major parliamentary inquiry”.

“It seems to me very clear that this issue has got to be re-opened,” Mr Cable told BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight.

“It is one thing for a company to have engaged in alleged corruption overseas. It is another thing if British government ministers have approved it.”

Panorama will be broadcast on Monday 11 June 2007 on BBC One at 2030 BST
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Source: WSWS

As part of CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program

Boeing subsidiary accused of profiting from torture

By David Walsh
1 June 2007

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The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit May 30 accusing Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing, of providing flight services that enabled the CIA to transport suspects illegally to locations where they were brutally tortured. The ACLU filed the suit on behalf of three men, Binyam Mohamed, Abou Elkassim Britel and Ahmed Agiza, who have suffered nightmarish fates at the hands of one or more intelligence service. All three men remain incarcerated.

At a New York City press conference, ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner commented, “This is the first time we are accusing a blue-chip American company of profiting from torture.” A lawyer for Binyam Mohamed, Clive Stafford Smith, a co-counsel on the suit, told the media, “Corporations should expect to get sued where they are making blood money off the suffering of others.” According to the lawsuit, Jeppesen has provided flight and logistical support for at least 15 aircraft (belonging to CIA front companies) that have made a total of 70 rendition flights.

The ACLU argues that Jeppesen knew or reasonably should have known that the countries to which it was delivering shackled human beings were guilty of routinely torturing or abusing detainees. The company, notes an ACLU fact sheet, furnished flight crews with flight planning services including itinerary, route, weather, and fuel planning; took responsibility for the preparation of flight plans; facilitated customs clearance and arrangements for ground transportation, catering, and hotel accommodation for aircraft crew upon landing; and provided physical security for aircraft and crew.

As vital as any of these services, “Jeppesen’s role as coordinator with virtually all public and private third parties has permitted the CIA to conduct its illegal activities below the radar of public scrutiny and beyond the reach of the rule of law. In short, without the assistance of Jeppesen and other corporations, the US extraordinary rendition program could not have gotten off the ground.”

“Extraordinary rendition” is a term the American ruling elite has introduced into the world’s political lexicon. Under this criminal program, the CIA and other US government agencies seize and transfer foreign nationals to countries where torture is commonplace or to secret US-run facilities on foreign soil where similar conditions prevail. The program has been in effect since at least the early 1990s during the Clinton administration, according to the ACLU complaint, but the September 11 terrorist attacks provided the pretext for its vast expansion.

The civil suit was filed, in San Jose, California, under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789, according to which noncitizens can bring suit against the US government or a US company for abuses they suffered resulting from activities in a foreign country.

Jeppesen, which Boeing purchased in 2000, is a major provider of aviation logistical and travel services. According to Italian investigative journalist Claudio Gatti, “Before the CIA began extraordinary renditions, companies like Jeppesen were in the business of enabling wealthy people to fly smoothly around the globe. After Sept. 11, 2001, according to human rights organizations and European investigating commissions, new customers appeared—charter companies operating planes on behalf of the CIA.”

In January 2007, following a 10-month inquiry, the European Parliament concluded that between 2001 and 2005 flights involving aircraft directly or indirectly operated by the CIA were used to carry out the “extraordinary renditions” of Mohamed, Britel, Agiza and others. According to the European Parliament report, the publicly available flight data proves “the existence of a widespread, methodical practice of ‘extraordinary rendition,’ following precise rules and carried out by certain US secret services.”

In October 2006 the New Yorker magazine published an article by Jane Mayer, “The C.I.A.’s Travel Agent,” which charged that Jeppesen planned such flights for the CIA. It cited the comment of a former Jeppesen employee who reported that during an internal corporate meeting, Bob Overby, managing director of Jeppesen International Travel Planning, told his listeners, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights—you know, the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.”

Mayer’s piece continued, “The former employee said that another executive told him, ‘We do the spook flights.’ He was told that two of the company’s trip planners were specially designated to handle renditions…. He recalled Overby saying, ‘It certainly pays well. They’—the C.I.A.—‘spare no expense. They have absolutely no worry about costs. What they have to get done, they get done.’”

The ACLU also announced that it was petitioning the US Supreme Court to review the case of Khaled El-Masri, an innocent German citizen who was another victim of the rendition program. El-Masri was mistakenly kidnapped and tortured by the CIA. His lawsuit against former agency director George Tenet and 10 CIA employees was dismissed in March 2007 by a US appeals court after the government claimed that moving forward with the case might endanger “state secrets.”

The cases of Mohamed, Britel and AgizaThe account of the treatment of Mohamed, Britel and Agiza makes horrifying reading (See http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/mohamed_complaint20070530.pdf).

Binyam Mohamed, born in Ethiopia, came to the UK in 1994 with his family and sought political asylum. He remained in Britain seven years while his application was pending. In 2001 he traveled to Afghanistan to escape personal problems in London. When the US invaded Afghanistan, he left the country for Pakistan, where he was arrested on April 10, 2002, on immigration charges.

Removed to a detention center by Pakistani officials, he was interrogated by FBI and British intelligence agents. He remained in custody in Pakistan, where he was abused and accused of being a high-ranking Al Qaeda member.

The ACLU complaint recounts that in July 2002 Mohamed was taken to a military airport near Islamabad and turned over “to the exclusive custody and control of US officials.” Several Americans dressed in black, wearing masks, stripped Mohamed of all his clothes. He was dressed in a tracksuit, blindfolded and shackled and placed on an airplane, which landed in Rabat, Morocco. Between July 2002 and January 2004, Mohamed was “detained, interrogated, and tortured at a series of detention facilities in Morocco.”

He was routinely beaten, suffering broken bones. “His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.” At one point, he was placed in a damp, moldy room with open sewage for a month.

Significantly, Mohamed was told that “the US wanted a story from him” and that he had to prepare to testify against individuals then in US custody, including Jose Padilla, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Ibn Sheikh Libi.

After 18 months of hell in Morocco, Mohamed was sent to Afghanistan and taken to a US-run facility, “commonly known as the ‘Dark Prison.’” For four months, he was tortured and abused, including being hung from a pole in his cell, in this location. “At one point, a group of American agents dressed from head to toe in black came to him with a story. He was told that ‘Washington’ wanted him to recount how he had stolen parts for what they called a ‘dirty bomb’ and how he had built it with Jose Padilla in New York.”

He was later transferred to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where he was made to write a 20-page statement detailing his supposed relationship with Padilla, “how they went to Afghanistan together, and how they planned to go to the United States to detonate a dirty bomb.” Apparently, this fabrication proved too flimsy even for the CIA and the US military, because the ‘dirty bomb’ charges were dropped against Padilla. Eventually, Mohamed was flown to Guantánamo, where he remains.

An Italian citizen of Moroccan descent, Abou Elkassim Britel, fell victim to “extraordinary rendition” after traveling to Pakistan in 2001 in connection with the translation of Islamic books and texts from Arabic into Italian. He was arrested in March 2002 by Pakistani officials and held at a facility in Lahore. Britel requested that he be afforded representation and assistance from the Italian embassy, a request that was denied. Pakistani interrogators beat him, sometimes with a cricket bat, and accused him of being a “terrorist fighter.” He too was hung from the walls of his cell. Eventually, he gave way and “confessed” to terrorist activities.

Britel was also eventually transferred by US agents to Morocco where he was severely tortured between May 2002 and February 2003, at which point he was released. However, while attempting to return to Italy in May 2003, Britel was again arrested by Moroccan officials, tortured once more in custody and eventually tried for terrorist activities. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, later reduced to nine years. He remains imprisoned in a Casablanca prison.

Eighty-seven members of the Italian parliament have petitioned the president of Morocco to have Britel pardoned and immediately returned to Italy. “To date these efforts have been unsuccessful,” according to the ACLU complaint.

A six-year criminal investigation in Italy culminated in September 2006 in the dismissal of all charges by an examining judge, who found no evidence linking Britel to “any criminal, let alone terrorist-related, activity.”

Ahmed Agiza is an Egyptian citizen, a pharmacist by trade and father of five children. As long ago as 1982 he fell afoul of the Egyptian authorities who suspected that his cousin had been involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Tortured and interrogated in custody, Agiza was later released, but continued to be harassed by the security police. In 1991 he filed a damages action against the government, which provoked more harassment and abuse, including the arrest of his lawyers.

He fled Egypt, and, after a time in Iran, attempted to make his way to Canada. During a stopover in Sweden, he and his family decided to seek asylum there. In 2001, the Swedish government determined that although Agiza had demonstrated a well-founded fear of persecution if returned to Egypt, he should be expelled from the country on national security grounds. This decision was based on evidence, which Agiza was not permitted to see, provided by the US government.

The Swedish security services made a deal with the CIA (or some other US intelligence agency) that they would hand Agiza over to the Americans who, in turn, would secretly transport him to Egypt. And this, in fact, is what occurred in May 2005.

Once in Egypt, Agiza was severely tortured by the security services. He was kept in solitary confinement in “a squalid cell measuring little more than two square meters, without windows, heat, or light” and routinely subjected to electric shock treatment.

The complaint explains: “Mr. Agiza was stripped naked and strapped to a wet mattress. Electrodes were then applied to his ear lobes, nipples, and genitals, so that an extremely strong electric current could be introduced causing his body to rise and fall. A doctor was present throughout to ensure that he did not die from torture. When the sessions ended, the same doctor would apply cream to his body where the electrodes had been so as to prevent scarring and minimize visible signs of the torture. Mr. Agiza was also made to stand under a cold shower to prevent bruising.”

In April 2004 Agiza was given a six-hour military trial after which he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for membership in an Islamic organization banned under Egyptian law. Without explanation, the sentence was later reduced to 15 years. He remains, in dangerously poor health, in an Egyptian prison.

The WSWS invites your comments.

Jurist, 17 May 2007

JURIST Contributing Editor Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law says that the suspension of Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has pushed the country’s lawyers and top judge into an unprecedented confrontation with the executive power of President Pervez Musharraf…

A lawyers’ mutiny is making history in Pakistan.

The sight of a “strong and honest” Chief Justice leading the nation’s lawyers to oust a military ruler who seized power by removing a democratically elected government makes a fabulous story. The story is even more engaging because the national Parliament elected by the people is playing dead. And the two popular leaders (former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto) who could have led the masses in this urgency live happily in exile.

The Parliament’s failure to mediate the crisis has forced lawyers across the nation to stage a mutiny against what they call “the usurper of the ship,” President Pervez Musharraf. The lawyers are hoping that Musharraf and his crew will jump ship and float away, perhaps to bountiful America.

Hard Lawyering

A senior Supreme Court advocate in Pakistan tells me that this is the first time in Pakistan’s history that lawyers have dropped their conflicting political affiliations and forged an unprecedented professional unity to restore the rule of law. More than 80,000 lawyers are acting in solidarity to challenge arbitrary powers that the President exercises on a regular basis with no constitutional authority. The suspension of the Chief Justice on March 9 was the President’s most blatant act to intimidate the judiciary. The edifice of law cannot stand and the state cannot survive, says the senior advocate, when the President wearing the uniform of the Army Chief summons the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) into a military camp, grills the CJP in the presence of others including some generals, and then orders his suspension. This Presidential vaulting, I am told, is too much for the lawyers to let stand.

In his petition to the Supreme Court challenging his suspension, the CJP paints the picture of an arrogant President who humiliated his person and his office – “crimes” tantamount to “the subversion of the Supreme Court.” On summoning the CJP on March 9, the petition discloses, the President “fervently persuaded him to resign” and made a good many offers to sweeten the forced resignation. The President was “most upset” when the CJP refused to resign. A chain of punitive events followed. The CJP was first detained and prevented from leaving the office for several hours. Later, the CJP and his family were falsely imprisoned in their house. The telephone lines and television connections were cut off to isolate the CJP from the world. Even the Supreme Court brethren could not visit him. The CJP’s cars were fork-lifted from his residential premises. On the order of the Supreme Judicial Council, which met the same day in “unholy haste,” the CJP’s entire staff was taken into custody, harassed, and interrogated. “What was the purpose,” asks the CJP?

These stories have stirred many of Pakistan’s lawyers into hard action. The lawyers are protesting in the streets to mobilize a popular uprising against the President. They are making it difficult for the Parliament to grant another five years term to the President. They are petitioning the Supreme Court to force the President to leave even earlier.

Soft Dictatorship

Despite an engulfing wave of discontent in the legal profession, a few lawyers do support the President and argue that Musharraf is no tyrant. As a former commando, they say, Musharraf can handle tough assignments. As the President, he is a soft dictator who welcomes (manufactures) testing events to display his power and pragmatism. The Pakistani press, including television, has enjoyed more freedom under his soft authoritarianism than any other time since the creation of Pakistan. The opinion makers and newspaper editors freely trash his policies without hearing a knock at the door in the middle of the night.

Even in the face of killings in Karachi associated with the Chief Justice’s failed visit to the city, the President has refused to declare an emergency and suspend fundamental liberties, including the freedoms of speech and association – the rights that empower the lawyers to join hands and protest. The idea of soft dictatorship, perhaps the invention of his legendary legal advisor S.S. Pirzada, has worked well for eight years in lulling the people into political slumber.

While the people and the Parliament are still unsure what to make of the crisis, the lawyers have pooled their resources to fight for a distinct legal objective -suspension annulment.

Suspension Annulment

Pakistan’s leading lawyers are seeking the annulment of the CJP’s suspension. Soon after the suspension, there existed a small window of time in which the President himself could have undone the worst mistake of his rule. That option is no longer available. Twenty-three constitutional petitions have been filed with the Supreme Court, including the one by the CJP, challenging, among other things, the President’s reference under Article 209 of the Constitution against the CJP, the formation of Supreme Judicial Council, and sending the CJP on forced leave and restricting his movements. A larger bench of 13 Justices has been established to rule on these petitions.

The CJP’s suspension is indeed the most critical constitutional issue. Article 209 empowers the President to form an opinion on information received from any source that a Supreme Court Judge is incapable of performing the duties of his office or is guilty of misconduct. The President may direct the Supreme Judicial Council to inquire into the matter. Article 209 also provides procedures for the Supreme Judicial Council to conduct a hearing and report to the President that a Supreme Court Judge may be removed from office. Article 211 vests exclusive jurisdiction in the Supreme Judicial Council to decide the removal matters and bars “any court” from calling into question the Council’s proceedings, its report to the President, or its recommendation for the removal of a Judge. These provisions seem to support the President’s authority to initiate an action against a Supreme Court Judge. Nonetheless, Article 209 contains enough breathing space for the Supreme Court to find procedural loopholes and declare that the President acted without constitutional authority in suspending the CJP.

If American realism is any guidance to court behavior, one may safely predict that the Supreme Court will annul the suspension and restore the CJP to office. This outcome is most likely because the lawyers of Pakistan will not be content with anything less. Furthermore, a Supreme Court Registrar has been murdered. The pro-government media have launched a campaign to malign some Justices of the Supreme Court in attempts to undermine the Court’s credibility. In view of these facts, the Supreme Court is psychologically predisposed to act in self-defense and will annul the President’s reference.

The annulment is most likely to occur, however, because the constitutional petitions are not about the hermeneutics of Article 209 but about a colossal struggle between two primary institutions of Pakistan, the Armed Forces and the Judiciary. Since the creation of Pakistan in 1947, the Supreme Court has sided with the generals who overthrew political governments. The Supreme Court found innovative ways to legitimize military coups, including the one Musharraf staged in 1999. In all these constitutional cases, however, the fight has been between two governments, the military and the political. This time, the fight is between the Judiciary and the Armed Forces. This time, the Judiciary itself is under attack. It is unlikely that the Justices will subordinate themselves to the Generals. In his petition, the CJP prays the Court to annul the President’s reference and raises a question that cannot be lightly ignored: “If a contrary view is taken, which judge will then stand up to the executive?”

Ali Khan grew up in Pakistan and is a law graduate of Punjab University, Lahore. He is currently a professor at Washburn University School of Law in Kansas. His publications are available here.

Source: CounterPunch, June 6, 2007

US foments Strife and Spurns Overtures

Countdown to War on Iran

By ALAIN GRESH

Silently, stealthily, unseen by cameras, the war on Iran has already begun. Many sources confirm that the United States, bent on destabilising the Islamic Republic, has increased its aid to armed movements among the Azeri, Baluchi, Arab and Kurdish ethnic minorities that make up about 40% of the Iranian population. ABC News reported in April that the US had secretly assisted the Baluchi group Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam), responsible for a recent attack in which some 20 members of the Revolutionary Guard were killed. According to an American Foundation report (1), US commandos have operated inside Iran since 2004.

President George Bush categorised Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, as the “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address in January 2002. Then in June 2003 he said the US and its allies should make it clear that they “would not tolerate” the construction of a nuclear weapon in Iran.

It is worth recalling the context in which these statements were made. President Mohammed Khatami had repeatedly called for “dialogue among civilisations”. Tehran had actively supported the US in Afghanistan, providing many contacts that Washington had used to facilitate the overthrow of the Taliban regime. At a meeting in Geneva on 2 May 2003 between Javad Zaraf, the Iranian ambassador, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan, the Tehran government submitted a proposal to the White House for general negotiations on weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and security, and economic cooperation (2). The Islamic Republic said it was ready to support the Arab peace initiative tabled at the Beirut summit in 2002 and help to transform the Lebanese Hizbullah into a political party. Tehran signed the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty on 18 December 2003, which considerably strengthens the supervisory powers of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) but which only a few countries have ratified.

The US administration swept all these overtures aside since its only objective is to overthrow the mullahs. To create the conditions for military intervention, it constantly brandishes “the nuclear threat”. Year after year US administrations have produced alarmist reports, always proved wrong. In January 1995 the director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency said Iran could have the bomb by 2003, while the US defence secretary, William Perry, predicted it would have the bomb by 2000. These forecasts were repeated by Israel’s Shimon Peres a year later. Yet last month, despite Iran’s progress in uranium enrichment, the IAEA considered that it would be four to six years before Tehran had the capability to produce the bomb.

What is the truth? Since the 1960s, long before the Islamic revolution, Iran has sought to develop nuclear power in preparation for the post-oil era. Technological developments have made it easier to pass from civil to military applications once the processes have been mastered. Have Tehran’s leaders decided to do so? There is no evidence that they have. Is there a risk that they may? Yes, there is, for obvious reasons.

During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein’s regime, in breach of every international treaty, used chemical weapons against Iran, but there was no outcry in the US, or in France, against these weapons of mass destruction, which had a traumatic effect on the Iranian people. US troops are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran is surrounded by a network of foreign military bases. Two neighbouring countries, Pakistan and Israel, have nuclear weapons. No Iranian political leader could fail to be aware of this situation.

How to prevent escalation?

So how is Tehran to be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, a move that would start a new arms race in a region that is already highly unstable and deal a fatal blow to the non-proliferation treaty? Contrary to common assumptions, the main obstacle is not Tehran’s determination to enrich uranium. Iran has a right to do so under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty but it has always said it was prepared to impose voluntary restrictions on that right and to agree to increased IAEA inspections to prevent any possible use of enriched uranium for military purposes.

The Islamic Republic’s fundamental concern lies elsewhere. Witness the agreement signed on 14 November 2004 with France, Britain and Germany, under which Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment temporarily on the understanding that a long-term agreement would “provide firm commitments on security issues”. Washington refused to give any such commitments and Iran resumed its enrichment programme.

The European Union chose not to pursue an independent line but to follow Washington’s lead. The new proposals produced by the five members of the Security Council and Germany in June 2006 contained no guarantee of non-intervention in Iranian affairs. In Tehran’s reply to the proposals, delivered in August, it again “suggest[ed] that the western parties who want to participate in the negotiation team announce on behalf of their own and other European countries, to set aside the policy of intimidation, pressure and sanctions against Iran”. Only if such a commitment was made could negotiations be resumed.

If not, escalation is inevitable. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election as president in June 2005 has not made dialogue any easier, given his taste for provocative statements, particularly about the Holocaust and Israel. But Iran is a big country rich in history and there is more to it than its president. There is much tension within the government and Ahmadinejad had severe setbacks both in the local elections and in elections to the Assembly of Experts in December 2006. There are substantial challenges, economic and social, and forceful demands for more freedom, especially among women and young people. Iranians refuse to be regimented and the only strong card the regime has to win their loyalty is nationalism, a refusal to accept the kind of foreign interference suffered throughout the 20th century.

Despite the disaster in Iraq, there is no indication that Bush has given up the idea of attacking Iran. This is part of his vision of a “third world war” against “Islamic fascism”, an ideological war that can end only in complete victory. The demonisation of Iran, aggravated by the attitude of its president, is part of this strategy and may culminate in yet another military venture. That would be a disaster, not only for Iran and the Arab world, but for western, especially European, relations with the Middle East.

Translated by Barbara Wilson

Alain Gresh is editor of Le Monde diplomatique and a specialist on the Middle East

(1) Sam Gardiner, “The End of the ‘Summer of diplomacy’: Assessing US Military Options on Iran” (in .pdf), Century Foundation Report, Washington, 2006.

(2) See Gareth Porter, “Burnt Offering”, The American Prospect, Washington, June 2006.

This article first appeared in the excellent monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com The full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique and CounterPunch will feature one or two articles from LMD every month.