Rendition & Black Site Prisons Remain
Wikileaks reports that the US government pressured the Italians to drop charges against the CIA. Twenty three persons associated with the CIA were charged with extreme rendition of an Italian resident. They were sentenced with the crime in absentia but the Italian government refused to request extradition from the United States and so nothing will happen unless they happen to return to Italy.
I wrote about this in the past and had an interesting correspondence with the CIA over this issue. They wanted me to support their efforts to get the Italians to drop the charges. Needless to say I did not.
The Obama administration was supposed to end extreme rendition, close the black site prisons and close Guantanamo. As far as I can tell they have not done any of those except perhaps they have lessened the amount of black sites, and limited the amount of rendition but they have not ended any of these excesses from the Bush administration completely as the articles below indicate.
From Der Spiegal
12/17/2010
CIA Rendition Case
US Pressured Italy to Influence Judiciary
By John Goetz and Matthias Gebauer
SPIEGEL ONLINE
The CIA rendition of cleric Abu Omar in 2003 turned into a headache for Washington when a Milan court indicted the agents involved. Secret dispatches now show how the US threatened the Italian government in an attempt to influence the case. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was apparently happy to help.
In 2007, a court in Milan started trying several CIA agents in absentia for their roles in the 2003 kidnapping of Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric who had been living in the northern Italian city. When the indictments first came down, the US government tried to intervene — first in Milan and then in Rome — so as to influence the investigations of the public prosecutor's office.
At first, the efforts were conducted via diplomatic channels. But, later, they also took place during top-level talks with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. American diplomats and even the US secretary of defense were assured that the Italian government "was working hard to resolve the situation." And they also got to hear Berlusconi vent his rage at his own country's judicial system.
These anecdotes come from secret dispatches from the US Embassy in Rome, and they are particularly embarrassing for Berlusconi, who recently survived a confidence vote in parliament. The documents provide detailed descriptions of how both the American ambassador and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates exerted direct pressure on the Italian government in Rome. In particular, they wanted to make sure that Rome would use its influence to make sure that no international arrest warrants were issued for the CIA agents accused of being involved in Abu Omar's abduction.
In the end, a solution was found that was very similar to the one reached in Germany in the case of Khaled el-Masri. Although there were verdicts, arrest warrants and extradition requests in the case, the Italian government refused to formally forward the requests to the US, just as Berlin had done. As a result, Abu Omar's kidnappers are still at large.
The only consequence is that Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan, had to change his plans for his retirement. He can no longer travel to the wonderful property that he bought for himself in Tuscany.
For more of this article
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,735268,00.html
From New York Times
Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: November 4, 2009
MILAN — In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge on Wednesday convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.
The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to coercive interrogation techniques.
Critics of the Bush administration have long hailed the case as a repudiation of the tactics it used to fight terrorism. And the fact that Italy would actually convict intelligence agents of an allied country was seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases.
Still, the convictions may have little practical effect. They do not seem to change the close relations between the United States and Italy. Nor did they reveal whether the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had approved the kidnapping. And it seemed highly unlikely that anyone, Italian or American, would spend any time in prison.
The administration has closed secret overseas prisons but is keeping the practice of rendition in place.
For more of this
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html?_r=1&hp
From PolitiFactCheck.com
Obama's extreme rendition policy is issued, but results still uncertain
Updated: Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 | By Lukas Pleva
On the campaign trail, President Barack Obama promised to end the use of torture, close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, and stop al-Qaida prison recruitment.
He also pledged to end the use of "extreme rendition," a promise that we last rated in January 2009. At that time, we rated it In the Works, since on Jan. 22, 2009 Obama signed an executive order directing the creation of a task force to study and evaluate the transfer of prisoners to other nations for detention and/or interrogation. We were curious to see how things have unfolded since then.
First, however, a little primer on international law (a short one, we promise).
To start off, there is a difference between extreme rendition, also known as extraordinary rendition, and rendition itself.
The use of rendition in the United States goes back to President Ronald Reagan, who authorized the practice in 1986 for use against terrorism suspects. Over the years, it became a tool to retrieve suspects from foreign countries, and to bring them to this country for a trial. During the Clinton era, the suspect was also sometimes brought to a third country. These transfers are often referred to as "renditions to justice". They happen outside the legal extradition and deportation framework, but the ultimate goal is to put the individual before a regular legal panel.
Extraordinary renditions, which critics say became widespread following the September 11 terrorist attacks, are used to bring suspects to countries where they are at a high risk of being tortured and/or imprisoned indefinitely.
In the promise, Obama said that he'll stop outsourcing "our torture to other countries," so we'll look at whether he ended the use of extraordinary rendition, not rendition as a whole.
We asked numerous legal experts to evaluate how President Obama is doing with the promise.
It immediately became clear, however, that this was not going to be easy. Rendition activities are performed by top secret intelligence agencies, so it's possible we'll never really know whether extraordinary renditions have ceased.
Still, it appears that there is at least some movement on the promise.
On Aug. 24, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies had finished its review. The United States will continue to send individuals to other countries, stated a Department of Justice Press press release, but the United States will seek "assurances from the receiving country" that the suspect will not be tortured. The recommendations specifically called on the Department of State to be involved in evaluating those assurances and for the Inspector Generals of the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security to submit annual reports on transfers conducted by each of their agencies. The report also recommends that agencies obtaining assurances from foreign countries insist on a monitoring mechanism or establish a monitoring mechanism, to ensure that the individual is not tortured. The specific recommendations themselves are classified, however.
Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, told us that it's "unlikely that CIA renditions under Obama -– if they"re being conducted -– are even remotely on the scale of what occurred during the Bush administration." Wizner said we're not seeing a large number of families coming forward claiming that their loved ones were shipped off to other countries and tortured, which is what happened during the Bush administration.
For more of this
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/176/end-the-use-of-extreme-rendition/
From the Atlantic Wire
What We Know About Now-Confirmed `Black Site' Prison at Bagram
By Max Fisher | May 11, 2010 3:36pm
In November, the New York Times and Washington Post reported the existence of a secret "black site" prison at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. The site, unconfirmed by the military and separate from the main prison at Bagram, was reported based on interviews with human-rights workers and people who claimed to be former detainees.
Now the BBC reports that the International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed the site's existence with the military. The U.S. official in charge of Afghanistan detention, Vice Admiral Robert Harward has denied that the prison, reportedly called the Tor Jail after the Urdu word for "black," exists.
For more of this
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/What-We-Know-About-Now-Confirmed-Black-Site-Prison-at-Bagram-3564
From Counterpunch
October 27, 2010
What are They Hiding at Bagram?
Obama's Black Site Prison
By DAVE LINDORFF
A victory for the government in a federal court in New York Monday marks another slide deeper into Dick Cheney's "dark side" for the Obama Administration.
In a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been seeking to force the Pentagon to provide information about all captives it is holding at its huge prison facility at Bagram Airbase outside Kabul in Afghanbistan, Federal District Judge Barbara Jones of the Southern District of New York has held that the government may keep that information secret.
The lingering question is: Why does the US government so adamantly want to hide information about where captives were first taken into military custody, their citizenship, the length of their captivity, and the circumstances under which they were captured?
Says Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, "The military says that they can't release the information because it would be a threat to national security, but they provided that information for the prisoners at Guantanamo."
The court ruling keeping the information about the thousands of prisoners held at Bagram secret may be a victory for the government, but it is hardly a victory for America's image in the world, or for the troops battling in Afghanistan, who will be attacked all the harder by people induced to fight to the death to avoid capture and consignment to the hellhole in Bagram (now known as Parwan Prison), which has become Afghanistan's Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo rolled into one.
For more of this
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10272010.html
From All Voices
Obama administration refuses to help Polish Probe into secret CIA prisons.
Warsaw : Poland | Dec 31, 2010 By northsunm32
Confirmation of CIA rendition flights into Poland.
The Polish government has asked the U.S. Justice Dept. for help in its investigation into secret and illegal CIA prisons that operated on Polish territory. There are allegations that the "black sites"were used to torture prisoners.
The U.S. says it considers the matter to be closed. Buried or covered up would be more accurate. Polish officials have denied having any knowledge of the sites but news investigations and flight records show CIA flights into a seldom used base in northern Poland.
Evidence wss released in 2007 which shows that the CIA operated the facility within a Polish intelligence training school. The then Prime Minister Leszek Miller was supposedly informed but told not to tell officials. It was this evidence that has prompted the Polish investigation. Of course Obama who is so keen on transparency and accountability is keen to obstruct and coverup.
Obama ordered the closure of all black sites early in 2009 and banned the use of torture. Even though the prisons were part of the BushBush era no doubt Obama is under considerable pressure from the CIA and others to keep the lid on these issues.
For more of this
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7759703-obama-administration-refuses-to-help-polish-probe-into-secreat-cia-prisons
From the guardian.co.uk
Secret prisons: Obama's order to close `black sites'
The Guardian, Friday 23 January 2009
When Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantánamo Bay, human rights activists said it was just the tip of the iceberg. This time he's gone after the iceberg.
The US president's order to close the network of secret prisons around the world - known as CIA "black sites" - which contain an untold number of "ghost detainees" whose existence has never properly been confirmed will be just as satisfying for campaigners.
The black sites were authorised by a classified presidential directive six days after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and only acknowledged five years later in a speech in which George Bush declined to say where they were and insisted only that the interrogation techniques used there were "tough … safe, and lawful, and necessary".
The point of black sites appears to be to allow detainees to be interrogated in ways that would not have been allowed elsewhere. The black sites that first came to light were in Afghanistan, where Bagram air base and a notorious dungeon codenamed "the Salt Pit" were used as interrogation centres and clearing centres for captives from the around the world to be held before being flown to Guantánamo.
As more detainees emerged and as investigators pieced together the movements of CIA planes used under a secret "rendition" programme, the black site network began to emerge. Thailand was an early venue, after post-9/11 fears that east Asia would become the new front line in the battle against jihadis.
Poland and Romania later hosted secret interrogation units for high-value detainees (HVDs). Some of the most important HVDs, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, appear to have been held at Szymany airport in northern Poland.
US bases in Balkan states - Camp Eagle in Bosnia and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo - were also used for holding suspected jihadis before they were sent to Afghanistan and then on to Guantánamo. The Council of Europe's human rights envoy described Bondsteel as a "smaller version of Guantánamo". The human rights group Reprieve has since identified a network of secret jails in the Horn of Africa, including Camp Lemonier, a former French foreign legion base now run by the US military in Djibouti, where Clive Stafford Smith, the group's director, says up to a thousand detainees may have been held in recent years.
Stafford Smith also said that up to 17 ships have been used as floating prisons, beyond the reach of Red Cross inspectors, journalists and activists. Reprieve believes that at least one of those ships was near the British-run Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia. It also says that the island, leased to the US military, has been used as a secret detention facility. No one knows how many detainees are still being held in these secret centres. Stafford Smith has suggested there could be as many as 27,000, but that would include prisoners held on the Iraq "battlefield".
As Donald Rumsfeld, the former defence secretary, once said: "We know there are some things we do not know, but there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know." If the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress mean what they say, the details seem bound to come to light, and could become the basis of human rights prosecutions against members of the Bush administration. (END)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/23/secret-prisons-closure-obama-cia
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