[Peace-discuss] Bush and torture

Sun Mar 6 14:16:26 CST 2005

[It might be worthwhile to record this program tonight: it runs during the
AWARE meeting, but -- given the NYT's revelation of a Bush directive to
the CIA to send people abroad for torture -- it describes what many must
see as an impeachable offense. --CGE]

	White House Defends Interrogations
	NEW YORK, March 6, 2005

A senior Bush administration official says a secret CIA program to
transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation is a
legal alternative to the cumbersome and expensive process of holding them
in U.S. facilities.

The official told the New York Times the program is not used to send
people to other countries to be tortured, but did not dispute that some
prisoners had been mistreated.

"Nothing is 100 percent unless we're sitting there staring at them 24
hours a day," the official told the Times.

CIA director Porter Goss testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee
last month that the United States has a responsibility to ensure that
transferred prisoners are treated humanely. "But of course once they're
out of our control, there's only so much we can do," he said.

60 Minutes, in a report to be aired Sunday, has videotaped a secret jet
the Central Intelligence Agency is said to be using to deliver the terror
suspects to countries known for torturing people.

The report finds the plane made at least 600 flights to 40 countries, all
of which came after 9/11, including 30 trips to Jordan, 19 to Afghanistan,
17 to Morocco, and 16 to Iraq. The plane also went to Egypt, Libya and
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

60 Minutes' four-month investigation of the CIA's "rendition" program, the
practice of sending suspects to foreign governments for interrogation,
also found a man who says he was mistakenly taken on the plane to a jail
in Afghanistan where he was mistreated for months.

Khaled El-Masri a German citizen, says he was on vacation in Macedonia
when he was arrested by police and held in Macedonia for three weeks and
then brought to the airport, beaten by masked men, drugged and put aboard
the 737.

60 Minutes confirmed that the plane left Skopje, Macedonia, and went to
Baghdad and then Kabul on the day in question. El-Masri says he awoke in a
jail cell where his captors said, "You're in a country without laws and no
one knows where you are."

"It was very clear to me that he meant I could stay in my cell for 20
years or be buried somewhere," El-Masri tells Correspondent Scott Pelley.
"[They asked me] whether I had contacts with Islamic parties like al-Qaeda
or the Muslim Brotherhood or aid organizations, lots of questions."

El-Masri added that his fellow prisoners in the American-run jail were
Saudi Arabians, Tanzanians, a Yemeni and a Pakistani who had lived in the
United States.

El-Masri says he was in solitary confinement for five months and then
released without an explanation as to why he was imprisoned. He may have
been one of the lucky ones because some suspects are "rendered" to their
home countries where torture is practiced.

The jet made 10 trips to Uzbekistan, where the former British ambassador
to the country, Craig Murray, says the jet and its then-owner, Premier
Executive Transport Services, kept a small staff at the airport in
Tashkent.

Murray says Uzbek interrogators use unusually cruel methods. "Techniques
of drowning and suffocation, rape was used ...and also the insertion of
limbs in boiling liquid....It's quite common," says Murray.

He says he knew for sure of two Uzbeks captured in Afghanistan and brought
back for questioning, "I believe it was happening on a regular basis," he
tells Pelley.

Murray says he complained to his superiors that information was being
obtained by torture and sent his deputy to the CIA station chief to
inquire about the practice.

"The CIA definitely knows," he tells Pelley. He says his deputy confirmed
that "this material probably was obtained under torture but the CIA didn't
see that [as] a problem," recalls Murray. He was ordered to return to
London four months ago and has since left the government.

The CIA disputes that. The agency told 60 Minutes the meeting Murray
described didn't happen. The CIA also says it does not knowingly receive
intelligence obtained by torture.

Mike Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and one of
the agents who helped set up the rendition program, thinks protecting
Americans from terrorism is of paramount importance.

"I'm responsible for protecting Americans," he tells Pelley. "The
information that we have received as a result of these programs has been
very useful."

Scheuer won't comment on its legality, but allows that the practice is a
convenience. "It's finding someone else to do your dirty work," he tells
Pelley.

El-Masri believes his abduction and imprisonment was a case of mistaken
identity. When asked what he tells his 7-year-old son about his five-month
imprisonment and who did this to him, El-Masri says, "I tell him it was
the Americans."

Earlier this year, 60 Minutes interviewed a Syrian-born Canadian citizen,
Maher Arar, who says he was sent from the U.S. to Syria to be interrogated
and tortured for a year before he was released without charges.

In January, the United States released Mamdouh Habib from the U.S. prison
camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Australia without charges. He alleges he
was tortured while in custody.

A Milan prosecutor is investigating the February 2003 disappearance of
Imam Hassan Osama Nasr from the streets of Italy, the Los Angeles Times
reports, noting it has all the hallmarks of a U.S. "rendition."