PM's daughter takes on CIA over torture operations !!!

nrj

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PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

WASHINGTON: It does not matter if it is Republican President George Bush or Democratic President Barack Obama in the White House; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's daughter Amrit Singh's canvassing for human rights and campaign against secret rendition and torture cuts across party lines — and across countries.

In an exhaustive 214-page report released Tuesday, Singh, currently a senior legal officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, has exposed 54 countries that helped facilitate the Central Intelligence Agency's secret detention, rendition, and interrogation program in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The report draws a stark picture of scores of people, both hardcore al-Qaida types and wayfarers, who were caught in the massive and foggy US counterterrorism drive worldwide after 9/11.

Singh has also named 136 people who were detained and transferred by the CIA and its allied or cooperating intelligence outfits, the first time such an extensive and detailed list has been compiled. She describes how and where they were apprehended, transferred, and interrogated. The list, which includes many Pakistanis, Aafia Siddiqui among them, is the largest one compiled to date, and it reveals how detainees were moved around the world without due process, often to countries which ran secret prisons and torture cells.

The 54 countries which were co-opted in the sweeping CIA drive against terrorism include the usual suspects such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and Libya which have poor or non-existent legal systems, judicial oversight, and human rights. But it also includes western countries such as Australia, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Spain, and Italy, some of which are fierce advocates of civil liberties and human rights.

India is not among the countries named in the report. The list of 136 detainees does not include any Indians, nor were any apprehended in India. A majority of them were detained in Pakistan in raids and many of them are Pakistanis, confirming the country's reputation as a terrorist haven.

Singh, who is the youngest of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's three daughters, was a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberty Union's Immigrants' Rights Project before she joined the National Security and Counterterrorism program at the Open Society Justice Initiative last year. Some of her human rights work is chronicled in a book Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, that she has co-authored. She is married to Barton Beebe, a professor of law at New York University.

She has been a persistent critic of U.S human rights violations, particular during the Bush years, but she has not eased off during the Obama White House either, even as the Democratic President has reneged on some of his commitments. Indeed, the latest report is sharply critical of Obama and his administration.

"The time has come for the United States and its partner governments to admit to the truth of their involvement in secret detention and extraordinary rendition, repudiate these practices, and conduct effective investigations directed at holding officials accountable," Singh writes in her conclusion.

PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention program - The Times of India
 

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Report on CIA rendition reveals massive scale of European assistance

After the 9/11 attacks, President George W Bush famously warned the world: "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."

It turns out that an astonishingly long roster of countries opted for "with us".

Of pre-2004 European Union states, only three – France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – apparently sat out the CIA's global kidnap-and-torture program, known as extraordinary rendition, in which suspects were picked off streets and secretly flown from country to country to face harsh questioning and worse.

A new report by the Open Society Justice Initiative names 54 foreign governments that participated in the CIA program. Countries such as Ireland, Finland and Denmark allowed US agents to secretly transfer terror suspects at their airports. Sweden arranged for suspects to be flown directly to Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak's intelligence-gathering partnership with the US government played out in an unknown number of soundproof cells. The UK government helped with every aspect of rendition, from arresting suspects to submitting questions for interrogation.

European parliament reports have previously detailed trans-Atlantic collaboration on the torture program, the ultimate uselessness of which was reaffirmed by US defense secretary Leon Panetta as recently as this weekend ("I think we could have gotten Bin Laden without that," he said on a Sunday talk show).

But by weaving together official letters, testimony from humans rights organizations and other public sources, the Open Society report draws for the first time a picture of near-total cooperation in European capitals with the Americans' extra-legal strategy to crack the al-Qaida network.

The report also assembles the most comprehensive list to date of terror suspects caught up in the CIA program and tracks the fate of each suspect. Afghan Abdel Aziz Inayatullah spent time at a "black site" in Kabul and now is "believed to be in Guantanamo Bay". Libyan Majid Mokhtar Sasy al-Maghrebi was "released in February 2011" after being "arrested in Pakistan in 2003". Pakistani Abdul Karim Mehmood, nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was "captured in Pakistan in June 2004 and is likely to have been held in CIA custody; his current whereabouts are unknown."

The report lists 136 suspects in all. "There may be many more such individuals, but the total number will remain unknown until the United States and its partners make this information publicly available," writes Amrit Singh, a lawyer with Open Society and the author of the report.

Some countries have acknowledged their participation in the CIA program. Italy has convicted officials on criminal charges for their involvement. Canada apologized to Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was picked up at JFK airport in New York City and flown to Syria, where he was "imprisoned for more than ten months in a tiny grave-like cell, beaten with cables, and threatened with electric shocks," according to the report. Canada, Sweden, Australia and the United Kingdom have issued compensation to extraordinary rendition victims.

Once countries assented to the CIA program, they found their airspace being used frequently for rendition activity. The Danish government has reported "more than 100 flights credibly alleged to be involved in extraordinary renditions had passed through Danish airspace, with 45 stopovers in Danish airports," the report says. A 2007 European Parliament report "express[ed] serious concern about the 147 stopovers made by CIA-operated aircraft at Irish airports that on many occasions came from or were bound for countries linked with extraordinary rendition circuits and the transfer of detainees". Finnish records show 150 landings in Finland by aircraft associated with the CIA program.

Bush warned that he was keeping track of countries that did not cooperate with the US "war on terror." "Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity," he said. The Open Society report is a step toward holding nations accountable for their activity, too.
Report on CIA rendition reveals massive scale of European assistance | World news | guardian.co.uk
 

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More Than 50 Countries Helped the CIA Outsource Torture

In the years after 9/11, the CIA ran a worldwide program to hold and interrogate suspected members of al-Qaida, sometimes brutally. It wasn't alone: The agency had literally dozens of partners that helped in ways large and small. Only it's never been clear just how many nations enabled CIA capture and torture; cooperated with it; or carried it out on behalf of the U.S. — until now.

A new report from the Open Society Foundation details the CIA's effort to outsource torture since 9/11 in excruciating detail. Known as "extraordinary rendition," the practice concerns taking detainees to and from U.S. custody without a legal process — think of it like an off-the-books extradition — and often entailed handing detainees over to countries that practiced torture. The Open Society Foundation found that 136 people went through the post-9/11 extraordinary rendition, and 54 countries were complicit in it.

Some were official U.S. adversaries, like Iran and Syria, brought together with the CIA by the shared interest of combating terrorism. "By engaging in torture and other abuses associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition," writes chief Open Society Foundation investigator Amrit Singh in a report released early Tuesday, "the U.S. government violated domestic and international law, thereby diminishing its moral standing and eroding support for its counterterrorism efforts worldwide as these abuses came to light."

Iran didn't do any torturing on behalf of the CIA. Instead, it quietly transferred at least 15 of its own detainees to Afghan custody in March 2002. Six of those found their way into the CIA's secret prisons. "Because the hand-over happened soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan," Singh writes, "Iran was aware that the United States would have effective control over any detainees handed over to Afghan authorities." At least one of those detainees, Tawfik al-Bihani, ended up at Guantanamo Bay, where his official file makes no mention of his time with the CIA.

Iran's proxy Syria did torture on behalf of the United States. The most famous case involves Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen snatched in 2002 by the U.S. at John F. Kennedy International Airport before the CIA sent him to Syria under the mistaken impression he was a terrorist. In Syrian custody, Arar was "imprisoned for more than ten months in a tiny grave-like cell, beaten with cables, and threatened with electric shocks by the Syrian government," Singh writes.


But it wasn't just Arar. At least seven others were rendered to Syria. Among their destinations: a prison in west Damascus called the Palestine Branch, which features an area called "the Grave," comprised of "individual cells that were roughly the size of coffins." Syrian intelligence reportedly uses something called a "German Chair" to "stretch the spine." These days the Obama administration prefers to call for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, the murderer of over 60,000 Syrians, to step down.

Many, many other countries were complicit in the renditions. For a month, Zimbabwe hosted five CIA detainees seized from Malawi in June 2003 before they were released in Sudan. Turkey, a NATO ally, allowed a plane operated by Richmor Aviation, which has been linked to CIA renditions, to refuel in Adana in 2002 and gave an Iraqi terrorist suspect to the CIA in 2006. Lots of countries played host to CIA rendition flights, including Sri Lanka, Thailand, Afghanistan, Belgium and Azerbaijan. Italy let the plane carrying Arar refuel. Under Muammar Gadhafi, Libya was an eager participant in the CIA's rendition scheme — and the Open Society Foundation sifted through documents found after Gadhafi fell to discover that Hong Kong helped shuttle a detainee named Abu Munthir to the Libyan regime.

The full 54 countries that aided in post-9/11 renditions: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. The Open Society Foundation doesn't rule out additional ones being involved that it has yet to discover.

Singh and the Open Society Foundation don't presume that the CIA is out of the extraordinary renditions game under Obama. Danger Room pal Jeremy Scahill recently toured a prison in Somalia that the CIA uses. While Obama issued an executive order in 2009 to get the CIA out of the detentions business, the order "did not apply to facilities used for short term, transitory detention." The Obama administration says it won't transfer detainees to countries without a pledge from a host government not to torture them — but Syria's Assad made exactly that pledge to the U.S. before torturing Maher Arar.

Much of this is likely to be contained in the Senate intelligence committee's recent report into CIA torture. It's unclear when, if ever, that report will be declassified. But the Open Society Foundation's study into renditions comes right as Obama aide John Brennan — already under pressure to clarify his role, if any, in post-9/11 torture — is about to testify to the panel ahead of becoming CIA director. It remains to be seen if the Senate committee will ask Brennan to clarify if the CIA still practices extraordinary rendition, along with its old friends.
More Than 50 Countries Helped the CIA Outsource Torture | Danger Room | Wired.com
 

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

US, Champion of Human Rights!!
 

anoop_mig25

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

what can u expect from 54 weak nations after US presidents says "You are with USA or you are with them(terrorist)" .
 

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

what can u expect from 54 weak nations after US presidents says "You are with USA or you are with them(terrorist)" .
India said no.
 

SPIEZ

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

Is the PM's daughter an Ameican citizen?
 

anoop_mig25

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

India said no.
Where it is mentioned . If remember correctly we where first nation to offer our service to USA immediately after 9/11 even before USA asked it.
 

The Messiah

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

Where it is mentioned . If remember correctly we where first nation to offer our service to USA immediately after 9/11 even before USA asked it.
There is difference between co-operating for mutual gain and being a lackey which these 54 countries are. Even enemies share intelligence if it benefits them.
 

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

Where it is mentioned . If remember correctly we where first nation to offer our service to USA immediately after 9/11 even before USA asked it.
Offering help to a soverign nation and being lackey to the rogue intelligence agency which doesn't respect the law of the land are both on different ends of the spectrum.
 

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

Where it is mentioned . If remember correctly we where first nation to offer our service to USA immediately after 9/11 even before USA asked it.
Cooperation lost 9/11 against terror is different from offering yourself for rendition. List 9/11, Indian intel gave all the help it could to the US. But that didn't include rendition.
 

asianobserve

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

Spare me the bleeding-heart bullshit! Do you know what I'd do if I was in power again? I'd have two queues at airports: one for flights where we'd done no background checks, infringed on no one's civil bloody liberties, used no intelligence gained by torture. And on the other flight we'd do everything we possibly could to make it perfectly safe. And then we'd see which plane the Rycarts of this world would put their bloody kids on! And you can put that in the book!
The Ghost Writer (2010) - Memorable quotes
 

W.G.Ewald

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

It does not matter if it is Republican President George Bush or Democratic President Barack Obama in the White House; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's daughter Amrit Singh's canvassing for human rights and campaign against secret rendition and torture cuts across party lines — and across countries.
It does not matter if Amrit Singh is canvassing for human rights and campaigning against secret rendition and torture. The issue has been overtaken by events and technology.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/w...ck-a-light-on-drone-strikes-hazards.html?_r=0

Two days later, three members of Al Qaeda came to the mosque in the tiny village of Khashamir after 9 p.m., saying they merely wanted to talk. Mr. Jaber agreed to meet them, bringing his cousin Waleed Abdullah, a police officer, for protection.

As the five men stood arguing by a cluster of palm trees, a volley of remotely operated American missiles shot down from the night sky and incinerated them all, along with a camel that was tied up nearby.
What Standards Must Be Met for the U.S. to Kill an American Citizen? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

A Justice Department white paper, obtained by NBC News, states that it is lawful to kill a United States citizen if "an informed, high-level" government official decides that the target is a ranking Al Qaeda figure who poses "an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States."
 

parijataka

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

US and the West are open societies and democratic countries and the standards they apply to other nations like China, India, Russia will surely apply to them through their own system.
 

aerokan

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Courtesy - Benjamin Franklin


"If there is someone who can convince you that he/she can provide 100% security in exchange for liberty and freedom, then either the person is the greatest con-artist even known or you are incredibly stupid beyond redemption" - Courtesy - Goddamn myself
 

aerokan

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Re: PM's daughter blows whistle on 54 nations that helped US detention

US and the West are open societies and democratic countries and the standards they apply to other nations like China, India, Russia will surely apply to them through their own system.
Seriously?? Do u really believe that? :clobber:
 

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