7 detainees report transfer to nations that use torture

[cal04]

At least seven US prisoners at Guantanamo Bay say they were transferred to countries known for torture prior to their arrival at the base, according to recently released transcripts from military commission hearings and other court documents. At least three of them allege that they were tortured during interrogations in Jordan, Morocco, and Egypt.

The transcripts represent the first accounts of rendition from prisoners who are still in US custody, and they contradict statements made last year by the Bush administration that all suspects who are ''rendered" to foreign countries are treated in accordance with international laws. In the statements, made during hearings to determine whether the detainees are enemy combatants, some say American forces took them to foreign prisons. Others don't specify who took them abroad, but most say the United States is holding them at Guantanamo based on confessions coerced by foreign interrogators.

Military prosecutors did not challenge the fact that they were sent to other countries, and limited their questioning to whether the detainees were, in fact, tortured, according to the transcripts. As the Pentagon slowly begins to prosecute detainees for terrorism-related offenses, defense lawyers are arguing that those confessions should be thrown out. One of the seven detainees was abruptly released before being charged with terrorism, after his allegations of torture in an Egyptian prison became public.

Another of the seven detainees is on trial for conspiring to set off a nuclear ''dirty bomb" in the United States. But that defendant is arguing that the case against him is built on a confession coerced in Morocco. ''After four years of torture and rendition, you have the wrong person in the stand," Binyam Ahmad Muhammad, an Ethiopian detainee, told a military tribunal earlier this month. Like most of the seven detainees, Muhammad says he was arrested in Pakistan, questioned by Americans, then transferred to a prison abroad, according to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/26/7_detainees_report_transfer_to_nations_that_use_torture/

[cal04]

1. CIA kidnapped terror suspects in the EU: lawmaker

A top European Union lawmaker on Wednesday backed allegations the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had kidnapped and illegally detained terror suspects on EU territory and flown them to countries who used torture.

"The CIA has, on several occasions, clearly been responsible for kidnapping and illegally detaining alleged terrorists on the territory of (EU) member states, as well as for extraordinary renditions," Claudio Fava said in his first interim report of the European Parliament's probe into the alleged CIA abuses.

A Washington Post report last November that the CIA had run secret rendition flights and secret prisons in Eastern Europe for al Qaeda suspects unleashed a spate of investigations which had so far failed to produce a "smoking gun".

But earlier this month the Council of Europe, a human rights organization also investigating the alleged CIA abuses, said at least one European state had admitted to handing over terrorism suspects to foreign agents. After hearing several of the alleged victims of kidnapping and renditions, the interim EU lawmakers' report brings no "smoking gun" but comes to the same conclusions as the Council of Europe.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-04-26T100449Z_01_L26401574_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-EU-CIA.xml

[ShortnFiery]

2. No no no ... nothing to see here ...

And if you're a spook, don't even think about it!

We know that there are new developments in the Duke rape case?

Go there American Sheeple. After all neither you nor your family members are at risk for being snatched up during the cover of night and sent to another nation. No, when they come after Americans, we'll be able to enjoy our incarceration (without representation) at some local detainment facility.

So, since this doesn't involve YOU, continue to distract yourselves ... by the time it goes too far, it still will be none of your concern. :P :sarcasm:

[rodeodance]

3. more and more information of how the US initially handled the arrests

will continue to drip out --.

.....The European Parliament's committee will send a delegation later this week to Macedonia, where German citizen Khaled el-Masri was arrested on December 31, 2003, and from where he was flown to Afghanistan and held for months as a terrorist suspect by the United States.

Masri, later freed without charge and dumped without explanation in Albania, is now suing the former head of the CIA.

Another group of Euro-MPs will head to Washington in early May, seeking meetings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and CIA chief Porter Goss.

[enough]

4. k&r