[Media-watch] CIA prisoners tortured in Arab jails

[Sigi D]

Dear Media Watch,
Bbc radio 4, FILE ON FOUR had a brilliant documentary!

Journalist Stephen Grey found out that the CIA exports
their suspect prisoners to arab countries where they
are tortured to get information out of them.

That is against all kind of conventions, and human
rights.
We know from the middle ages that you can torture
anything you want out of a person - remember the
witches and their stories about dancing with the
devil?! That's torture for you.
Evidence obtained like that has been used to arrest
British citizens. 

(We live in another cold war like period, says Prof
Michael Cox, LSE  Cold War Study Centre, and like in
the cold war progaganda becomes very important.
Journalists watch out)

 You can listen to a brilliant and fascinating 
programme again on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/4246089.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/4246089.stm
(click 'listen again' on the right hand side!)
All the best 
Sigi
CIA prisoners 'tortured' in Arab jails 
By Stephen Grey 
BBC Radio 4's File on 4 
A former CIA official has confirmed suspicions that
dozens of terror suspects have been flown to jails in
Middle Eastern countries where torture is routinely
practised, and without reference to courts of law.

Michael Scheuer, who once headed the hunt for Osama
Bin Laden and left the CIA last November after a
22-year career, said the practice, known as
"extraordinary rendition", was seen by the US as a key
tactic in its war on terror. 

"The bottom line is getting anyone off the streets who
is involved in acts of terrorism is a worthwhile
activity," he told the BBC's File On 4 programme. 

 

 Human rights is a very flexible concept... It depends
how hypocritical you want to be on a particular day 



Mike Scheuer, 
former CIA agent

Mr Scheuer said the operation was authorised at the
highest levels of the CIA and the White House and was
approved by their lawyers. 


"The practice of capturing people and taking them to
second or third countries arose because the Executive
assigned the job of dismantling terrorist cells to the
CIA. 

"When the agency came back and said 'Where do you want
to take them?' the message was 'That's your job'." 

He added: "The idea that this is a rogue operation
that someone has dreamt up is just absurd. I
personally have no problem with doing any operation as
long as it's justified legal by my superiors." 

UN convention violated 

The former CIA officer acknowledged that some of the
suspects sent to places such as Egypt could then be
tortured. 

But he said: "It wouldn't be us torturing them and I
think there is a lot of Hollywood involved with our
portrayal of torture in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 

"Human rights is a very flexible concept... It depends
how hypocritical you want to be on a particular day." 

Human rights campaigners, however, find it difficult
to reconcile rendition with President Bush's claims of
upholding the United Nations convention against
torture. It says: "No state shall expel, return or
exradite a person to another state where there are
substantial grounds for believing that he would be in
danger of being subjected to torture." 

Read your comments on this programme 

Mr Scheuer was among other ex-CIA officers who told
File On 4 that as well as sending people to Guantanamo
Bay, both the CIA and the US military were sending
dozens of others to prisons in countries such as
Jordan, Syria and Egypt. 


 I could hear people being tortured. They'd be saying:
'Oh Allah! Oh God!' I could hear people screaming 



Maher Arar

The investigation looks at the dangers of sending
potentially innnocent people to these regimes where,
according to the Americans' own State Department,
torture is readily practised. 

It hears from a Canadian man called Maher Arar, who
was stopped by US officials when travelling through
New York's JFK airport in September 2002 and sent to
Syria where he was held for a year. He says he was
brutally tortured. 

The reason for his arrest was information passed to
the US by Canada, linking him to a terrorist suspect
in Ottawa. 

Mr Arar is a Syrian national by birth but holds a
Canadian passport. Once in Syria, he says he was kept
in a tiny cell for over 10 months at the Damascus
headquarters of the Syrian secret police. 

One day, after 18 hours of torture, he falsely
confessed to having been to Afghanistan. 

 
US Guantanamo Bay camp: Attacked for flouting human
rights

"The interrogator said: 'What is this?' I said: 'A
cable'. He said: 'Open your hand,' and he hit it. The
pain was awful. 

"I was crying. Then he told me to open my left hand
and he hit me. Then he would ask me more questions. 

"An hour or two later he'd put me in a room and I
could hear people being tortured. They'd be saying:
'Oh Allah! Oh God!' I could hear people screaming." 

Mr Arar was released and flown home to Ottawa three
days short of a year after being placed in Syrian
custody. 

No legal charges have ever been brought against him in
either country. In Canada, where his case has caused a
political outcry, a public inquiry is under way. 

Electric shocks 

An Australian named Mamdouh Habib was sent to Egypt in
October 2001 by US authorities after being captured in
Pakistan. 

He was held in Egypt for six months, and said he was
subjected to extreme torture involving electric
shocks, before he was sent onwards to Guantanamo. 

He was released last month and flown home to
Australia. 

The programme also reveals that an official
investigation is under way in Italy into suspicions
that an Islamic militant was kidnapped off the streets
of Milan and flown to Egypt by American agents. 

Executive jets 

Critics of the extraordinary rendition policy told
File On 4 that British citizens have been arrested
abroad and moved by the US to Guantanamo and to Arab
prisons as a result of the sharing of intelligence
with British security services or the British police. 


 Evidence obtained as a result of any acts of torture
by British officials, or with which British
authorities were complicit, would not be admissible in
criminal or civil proceedings in the UK 



Foreign Office statement


Wahab al-Rawi, a British businessman, also claims he
was arrested in the Gambia and questioned by American
agents in November 2002, after the US was tipped off
by British authorities. 

Wahab was freed but his brother and a business partner
were flown on to Guantanamo, where they are still
being held. 

It is known that the American civilian executive jets
used to transport the prisoners around the world often
pass through British airspace and use British
airports. The File On 4 team discovered one was in
Glasgow on Monday. 

A Foreign Office spokesperson told the programme it
totally condemned torture but could not rule out using
any reliable intelligence wherever it came from if it
was going to save lives. 

The US Department of Defense, the CIA, and the State
Department all declined requests for interviews. 

File On 4: BBC Radio 4, Tuesday 8 February, 2005 at
2000 GMT. 



	
	
		
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