CIA jails in Eastern Europe 'confirmed'
- Thread starter blakey
- Start date
As Blakely said I am also surprised that no one has tried to defend or deny this.As to whether or not these things are important or not at this point depends on if you think these are the kind of things we as a people should be concerned about.I guess I am in the same kind of place Cindy Sheehan stated she was when she announced she was giving up her fight to get us out of Iraq.When the News is overwhelmingly concerned about whether Paris Hilton is in jail you must assume that is what the populace really cares about.Not whether or not we are responsible for all kinds of suffering all over the world to maintain our mass consumption life-style or whether or not that life-style is quickly bringing the enviorment to some kind of crisis.Kinda hard to see how a people who act this way can be led to a new and better place and be the example of what a good and serious country is.No those are just too inconvient so we get nonsense like Paris or American Idol as amusements so we don't have to face the fact that maybe the problem isn't all somebody else's doing.
Re: First CIA rendition trial opens
i forgot about this one from friday
The first criminal trial over the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" of terror suspects has opened in Italy.
Twenty-six Americans and six Italians are accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from Italy and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6732897.stm
The cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr - also known as Abu Omar - was snatched from a Milan street in February 2003.
Italian prosecutors say Nasr was taken to US bases in Italy and Germany before being taken to the Egyptian capital of Cairo. Nasr says he was tortured during his four-year imprisonment in Cairo.
but i guess, given the tumbleweed rolling around on this thread, that a lot of people don't have a problem
< whether or not these things apparently happened in the recent past >
with governments kidnapping people abroad and then packing the "suspect" on to a plane to the middle east, where they can be interrogated employing some "extra" tactics
is this issue not as important, and discussion worthy, as paris hilton's recent troubles :dunno: - you decide ?
i forgot about this one from friday
The first criminal trial over the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" of terror suspects has opened in Italy.
Twenty-six Americans and six Italians are accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from Italy and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6732897.stm
The cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr - also known as Abu Omar - was snatched from a Milan street in February 2003.
Italian prosecutors say Nasr was taken to US bases in Italy and Germany before being taken to the Egyptian capital of Cairo. Nasr says he was tortured during his four-year imprisonment in Cairo.
but i guess, given the tumbleweed rolling around on this thread, that a lot of people don't have a problem
< whether or not these things apparently happened in the recent past >
with governments kidnapping people abroad and then packing the "suspect" on to a plane to the middle east, where they can be interrogated employing some "extra" tactics
is this issue not as important, and discussion worthy, as paris hilton's recent troubles :dunno: - you decide ?
I think it's worth a discussion, I just don't think a number of people are surprised by these actions. Even if someone supports the current administration they hav e to know that these types of actions by the U.S. government is just plain wrong. I believe that is why there is not a great deal of discussion about this topic.
Re: CIA & Kidnapped to order
update from this weeks channel 4 "Dispatches" program titled
Kidnapped to order
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/kidnapped+to+order/552067
"Dispatches reveals new evidence confirming fiercely-denied reports that many of the CIA captives were held and interrogated in Europe. Those prisons may now be closed but the programme is by no means over, it's just changed. A new front has opened up in the Horn of Africa and America has outsourced its renditions to its allies.
Reporter Stephen Grey (author of Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Programme) investigates America's global sweep for prisoners - obtaining exclusive interviews with former detainees who claim they have been kidnapped and flown halfway across the world to face torture by America's allies.
The film opens with an examination of the most notorious rendition story to date - the kidnap of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar. This month in Italy the trial opens of twenty-five CIA officers accused of snatching Omar from the streets of Milan in broad daylight and flying him to Cairo four years ago. Grey travels to Egypt to secure an exclusive interview with Omar who defies the warnings of his interrogators not to speak publicly about his treatment. He details the torture that was inflicted upon him in his fourteen-month detention and the number of other 'ghost detainees' he encountered - people who are being held in secret, without charge.
The film then turns to Pakistan - one of America's most significant allies in the 'war on terror'. Since 9/11, the state's intelligence services have apprehended over a five hundred people as terror suspects. Grey investigates what happens to the 'disappeared' amid claims that America pays Pakistan a bounty for every suspect they capture.
Turning his attentions closer to home, Grey gains exclusive access to an official European investigation which has found evidence that CIA prisons housing al Qaeda suspects have also existed in Europe and reveals the interrogation techniques that have been used against such high-value prisoners. The Bush administration claim such techniques stop short of torture but Grey discovers that many in the CIA disagree and are concerned that using them may leave them open to criminal proceedings in the future and make the evidence gained inadmissible in a trial - preventing terrorists from being convicted in court.
Dispatches then examines the new battleground of America's war on terror - the Horn of Africa. Grey travels to Kenya, and Ethiopia to investigate allegations of mass renditions involving women and children - where prisoners thought to have al Qaeda connections have been illegally transferred from country to country for imprisonment and interrogation.
Grey uncovers evidence of secret rendition flights on which suspects were flown from Nairobi into war-torn Somalia - a state with no effective law or government. Amongst the suspects were women and children - he hears a first-hand account from one Briton who was on one of the flights who describes being beaten, interrogated and finding himself in a prison cell opposite a woman and a five-year-old boy. Another woman who was rendered to Somalia describes being flown on to Ethiopia with other women and children - where one pregnant woman gave birth to her child whilst in detention.
Dispatches questions the legality and effectiveness of America's rendition programme and asks whether the way detainees have been interrogated will undermine the legal process to bring real terrorists to trial and conviction."
update from this weeks channel 4 "Dispatches" program titled
Kidnapped to order
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/kidnapped+to+order/552067
"Dispatches reveals new evidence confirming fiercely-denied reports that many of the CIA captives were held and interrogated in Europe. Those prisons may now be closed but the programme is by no means over, it's just changed. A new front has opened up in the Horn of Africa and America has outsourced its renditions to its allies.
Reporter Stephen Grey (author of Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Programme) investigates America's global sweep for prisoners - obtaining exclusive interviews with former detainees who claim they have been kidnapped and flown halfway across the world to face torture by America's allies.
The film opens with an examination of the most notorious rendition story to date - the kidnap of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar. This month in Italy the trial opens of twenty-five CIA officers accused of snatching Omar from the streets of Milan in broad daylight and flying him to Cairo four years ago. Grey travels to Egypt to secure an exclusive interview with Omar who defies the warnings of his interrogators not to speak publicly about his treatment. He details the torture that was inflicted upon him in his fourteen-month detention and the number of other 'ghost detainees' he encountered - people who are being held in secret, without charge.
The film then turns to Pakistan - one of America's most significant allies in the 'war on terror'. Since 9/11, the state's intelligence services have apprehended over a five hundred people as terror suspects. Grey investigates what happens to the 'disappeared' amid claims that America pays Pakistan a bounty for every suspect they capture.
Turning his attentions closer to home, Grey gains exclusive access to an official European investigation which has found evidence that CIA prisons housing al Qaeda suspects have also existed in Europe and reveals the interrogation techniques that have been used against such high-value prisoners. The Bush administration claim such techniques stop short of torture but Grey discovers that many in the CIA disagree and are concerned that using them may leave them open to criminal proceedings in the future and make the evidence gained inadmissible in a trial - preventing terrorists from being convicted in court.
Dispatches then examines the new battleground of America's war on terror - the Horn of Africa. Grey travels to Kenya, and Ethiopia to investigate allegations of mass renditions involving women and children - where prisoners thought to have al Qaeda connections have been illegally transferred from country to country for imprisonment and interrogation.
Grey uncovers evidence of secret rendition flights on which suspects were flown from Nairobi into war-torn Somalia - a state with no effective law or government. Amongst the suspects were women and children - he hears a first-hand account from one Briton who was on one of the flights who describes being beaten, interrogated and finding himself in a prison cell opposite a woman and a five-year-old boy. Another woman who was rendered to Somalia describes being flown on to Ethiopia with other women and children - where one pregnant woman gave birth to her child whilst in detention.
Dispatches questions the legality and effectiveness of America's rendition programme and asks whether the way detainees have been interrogated will undermine the legal process to bring real terrorists to trial and conviction."
Re: CIA jails in Eastern Europe 'confirmed' - Amnesty seeks rendition 'honesty'
Amnesty seeks rendition 'honesty'
The human rights organisation Amnesty International is asking European leaders to end to what it calls a "see no evil" policy on CIA renditions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5076456.stm
Amnesty says the denials damage Europe's credibility as the EU pushes the US to close its Guantanamo camp.
"Europe often presents itself as a beacon for human rights. The uncomfortable truth is that without Europe's help, some men would not now be nursing torture wounds in prison cells in various parts of the world," says the Amnesty report, Partners in Crime.
Without information provided by European intelligence agencies, some of the victims of rendition may not have been abducted in the first place
< Full Amnesty report
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/13_06_06_amnesty.pdf >
It focuses on six alleged cases, which it says present overall "irrefutable evidence of European complicity in the unlawful practice of rendition".
It says the stories leave little doubt that Bosnia-Hercegovina, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Sweden, Turkey and the UK broke international law by facilitating transfers of people to countries where there is a risk of serious human rights abuses.
Individual officials in these countries should be held criminally responsible, the report says.
It is the first time that Amnesty International has stated that EU states broke the law.
Amnesty seeks rendition 'honesty'
The human rights organisation Amnesty International is asking European leaders to end to what it calls a "see no evil" policy on CIA renditions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5076456.stm
Amnesty says the denials damage Europe's credibility as the EU pushes the US to close its Guantanamo camp.
"Europe often presents itself as a beacon for human rights. The uncomfortable truth is that without Europe's help, some men would not now be nursing torture wounds in prison cells in various parts of the world," says the Amnesty report, Partners in Crime.
Without information provided by European intelligence agencies, some of the victims of rendition may not have been abducted in the first place
< Full Amnesty report
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/13_06_06_amnesty.pdf >
It focuses on six alleged cases, which it says present overall "irrefutable evidence of European complicity in the unlawful practice of rendition".
It says the stories leave little doubt that Bosnia-Hercegovina, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Sweden, Turkey and the UK broke international law by facilitating transfers of people to countries where there is a risk of serious human rights abuses.
Individual officials in these countries should be held criminally responsible, the report says.
It is the first time that Amnesty International has stated that EU states broke the law.
lots of back-story here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_secret_prisons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_secret_prisons
