[Peace-discuss] What we're allowing to happen

[C. G. Estabrook]

	New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action     
	By Craig Whitlock
	The Washington Post
	Saturday 21 May 2005

Probe finds 'rendition' of terror suspects illegal.

    Stockholm - The CIA Gulfstream V jet touched down at a small airport
west of here just before 9 p.m. on a subfreezing night in December 2001. A
half-dozen agents wearing hoods that covered their faces stepped down from
the aircraft and hurried across the tarmac to take custody of two
prisoners, suspected Islamic radicals from Egypt.

    Inside an airport police station, Swedish officers watched as the CIA
operatives pulled out scissors and rapidly sliced off the prisoners'
clothes, including their underwear, according to newly released Swedish
government documents and eyewitness statements. They probed inside the
men's mouths and ears and examined their hair before dressing the pair in
sweat suits and draping hoods over their heads. The suspects were then
marched in chains to the plane, where they were strapped to mattresses on
the floor in the back of the cabin.

    So began an operation the CIA calls an "extraordinary rendition," the
forcible and highly secret transfer of terrorism suspects to their home
countries or other nations where they can be interrogated with fewer legal
protections.

    The practice has generated increasing criticism from civil liberties
groups; in Sweden a parliamentary investigator who conducted a 10-month
probe into the case recently concluded that the CIA operatives violated
Swedish law by subjecting the prisoners to "degrading and inhuman
treatment" and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil.

    "Should Swedish officers have taken those measures, I would have
prosecuted them without hesitation for the misuse of public power and
probably would have asked for a prison sentence," the investigator, Mats
Melin, said in an interview. He said he could not charge the CIA
operatives because he was authorized to investigate only Swedish
government officials, but he did not rule out the possibility that other
Swedish prosecutors could do so.

    The basic facts of the Stockholm rendition were reported last year;
this article is based on newly released documents from the parliamentary
probe that provide elaborate details about an operation that normally
unfolds entirely out of public view and about the government deliberations
that preceded it.

    Swedish security police said they were taken aback by the swiftness
and precision of the CIA agents that night. Investigators concluded that
the Swedes essentially stood aside and let the Americans take control of
the operation, moving silently and communicating with hand signals, the
documents show.

    "I can say that we were surprised when a crew stepped out of the plane
that seemed to be very professional, that had obviously done this before,"
Arne Andersson, an assistant director for the Swedish national security
police, told government investigators.

    At 9:47 p.m., less than an hour after its arrival at Bromma Airport,
the jet took off on a five-hour flight to Cairo, where the prisoners,
Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Zery, were handed over to Egyptian security
officials.

    The CIA has not acknowledged playing any part in the expulsion of the
two men. An agency spokesman in Washington declined to comment for this
article, and US Embassy officials in Stockholm also declined to answer
questions.

    CIA officials have testified that they have used rendition for years
after tracking down suspected terrorists around the world. They say the US
government receives assurances of humane treatment from the countries
where the suspects are taken. Human rights groups say that such pledges,
from governments with long histories of torture, are worthless.

    The two Egyptians later told lawyers, relatives and Swedish diplomats
that they were subjected to electric shocks and other forms of torture
soon after their forced return to their country.

    Agiza, a physician, was convicted in an Egyptian military court and
sentenced to 15 years in prison after a trial that lasted six hours. He
was charged with being a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a radical group
that the US government has listed as a terrorist organization. He and his
lawyers have acknowledged that he once worked with Ayman Zawahiri, a
fellow Egyptian and the ideological leader of al Qaeda, but say that he
cut ties with the group many years ago.

    Zery was released from prison in October 2003. Egyptian officials
notified the Swedish government last year that he was no longer under
suspicion. His lawyer said he remained under surveillance.

    The Swedish government kept the CIA's role in the case a secret for
more than three years. Then, in 2004, following unofficial reports of the
rendition, it released documents showing that a US-registered plane had
been used to transport the Egyptians to Cairo but said the details were
classified. It wasn't until March, when the parliamentary investigator
released his findings, that the CIA's direct involvement was publicly
confirmed.

    The revelations created a stir in Sweden, which has long been
outspoken in its support of international human rights. A parliamentary
committee is scheduled to open hearings on government officials' handling
of the expulsion.

    Although the parliamentary investigator concluded that the Swedish
security police deserved "extremely grave criticism" for losing control of
the operation and for being "remarkably submissive to the American
officials," no Swedish officials have been charged or disciplined.

    "It's quite clear that laws were broken. It is against Swedish law and
against international law," said Anna Wigenmark, a lawyer for the Swedish
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, which has worked on behalf of the
Egyptian suspects. She and other human rights advocates have charged that
the treatment of Agiza and Zery also violated the European Convention on
Human Rights.

    "It's unacceptable that something like this could happen on Swedish
soil and yet nothing has been done about it," Wigenmark said.

    Before their expulsion, the two men had lived in Sweden for extended
periods and had applied for political asylum.

    The Swedish government has revealed little about why it suddenly
decided to expel them, three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in
the United States. It has said only that the decision was made on the
basis of secret intelligence information, some of it from foreign
services, indicating that the men posed a security threat. Swedish
officials have refused to disclose any of the evidence or reveal where the
information came from.

    Fresh details of the transfer are contained in more than 100 pages of
interview transcripts with Swedish police officers who witnessed the
events at the Stockholm airport and police commanders who oversaw the
case, as well as in other documents from the national security police. The
records describe a hectic and haphazardly planned effort to deport the
men.

    Swedish security police wanted to arrest the men and put them on a
flight to Cairo immediately to avoid giving their lawyers a chance to file
an emergency appeal in court.

    Swedish government ministers hastily scheduled a meeting for Dec. 18,
2001, to formally approve the expulsion. But the security police were
unable to charter a flight to take the Egyptians to Cairo until the next
morning. Police officials, worried about an overnight delay, turned to the
CIA for help, according to the documents.

    CIA officials told the Swedes they had a private jet with special
security clearances that could fly nonstop to Cairo on a moment's notice.
Andersson, the Swedish police commander in charge of the case,
characterized the offer as a "friendly favor from the CIA which allowed us
to have a plane that had direct access throughout Europe and could take
care of the operation very rapidly."

    About 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 18, the CIA plane left Cairo for Stockholm.
About a half-hour later, the Swedish government ministers voted to expel
Agiza and Zery.

    By 5 p.m., Swedish police had arrested both men and were waiting for
the plane to arrive. Already, however, problems had begun to surface.

    Two unnamed officials from the US Embassy informed Swedish officers
that there would be no room on the jet for them on the trip back to Cairo.
The Swedes complained and were ultimately given two seats on the plane,
but raw feelings persisted.

    "I felt that they were backing into our territory," an unidentified
female Swedish security officer told investigators, according to a
transcript of her interview.

    More conflicts arose after the plane landed. One Swedish officer
walked up the steps of the aircraft to greet the crew and was surprised to
see that the agents - a half-dozen or so Americans and two Egyptians -
were wearing hoods with semi-opaque fabric around the face, even though
the small airport was essentially deserted.

    "I told them that you don't need to wear hoods because there is no one
here," the officer recalled in his statement to investigators. The foreign
agents ignored him.

    The Swedish police said they were also perplexed by a demand from US
agents that they be allowed to strip-search the prisoners, even though the
two men had already been searched and were in handcuffs. The Swedes
relented after the captain of the plane said he would refuse to depart
unless the Americans were allowed to do things their way, the documents
show.

    The prisoners were taken into the airport police station, one by one,
to be searched.

    One agent quickly slit their clothes with a pair of scissors and
examined each piece of cloth before placing it in a plastic bag. Another
agent checked the suspects' hair, mouths and lips, while a third agent
took photographs from behind, according to Swedish officers who witnessed
the searches.

    As the prisoners stood there, naked and motionless, they were zipped
into gray tracksuits and their heads were covered with hoods that, in the
words of one Swedish officer, "covered everything, like a big cone."

    Swedish police later marveled that the whole search procedure took
less than 10 minutes. "It surprised me," one officer told investigators.
"How the hell did they dress him so fast?"

    Paul Forell, a Swedish airport police officer who was on duty that
night, added: "Everything was very smooth, professional. I mean, I
thought, they have done this before."

    Zery later complained to his lawyers that the CIA agents tranquilized
him by inserting suppositories in his anus during the search and that the
two prisoners were forced to wear diapers. Swedish police officers said
they couldn't recall if the Egyptians had been forcibly medicated.

    Investigators did find a report written by one of the Swedish officers
that said Agiza and Zery were both "probably given a tranquilizer before
takeoff."

    While investigators said they could not prove that the prisoners had
been forcibly medicated, such a tactic would have violated Swedish law.

    In a January letter to parliamentary investigators, the new director
of the security police, Klas Bergenstrand, said the decision to rely on
the CIA was a mistake.

    "In my judgment, it is clear that some of the measures adopted after
the two Egyptians had arrived at Bromma Airport were excessive in relation
to the actual risks that existed," Bergenstrand wrote. "For my part, I
would find it alien to use a foreign aircraft with foreign security
staff."

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