C.I.A. Torture Flights: Will Negroponte Keep Them Flying?

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022005A.shtml

 

C.I.A. Torture Flights: Will Negroponte Keep Them Flying?

 

 

 

Aboard Air C.I.A.

By Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball and John Barry

Newsweek

 

28 February 2005 Issue

 

The agency ran a secret charter service, shuttling detainees to

interrogation facilities worldwide. Was it legal? What's next? A

NEWSWEEK investigation.

 

 

Like many detainees with tales of abuse, Khaled el-Masri had a hard

time getting people to believe him. Even his wife didn't know what to

make of his abrupt, five-month disappearance last year. Masri, a

German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in

Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003,

then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of

Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was

brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving,

according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high

stairs " like onto a regular passenger airplane " and was chained to

clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.

 

Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S.

prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned

about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released

months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted

road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his

nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. " The man was laughing at me, "

Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month.

" He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe

it. Everyone will laugh.' "

 

No one's laughing these days, least of all the CIA. NEWSWEEK has

obtained previously unpublished flight plans indicating the agency has

been operating a Boeing 737 as part of a top-secret global charter

servicing clandestine interrogation facilities used in the war on

terror. And the Boeing's flight information, detailed to the day,

seems to confirm Masri's tale of abduction. Gnjidic, Masri's lawyer,

called the information " very, very important " to his case, which is

being investigated as a kidnapping by a Munich prosecutor. In what

could prove embarrassing to President Bush, Gnjidic added that a

German TV station was planning to feature Masri's tale ahead of Bush's

much-touted trip to Germany this week. German Interior Minister Otto

Schily recently visited CIA Director Porter Goss to discuss the case,

and German sources tell NEWSWEEK that Schily was seeking an apology.

CIA officials declined to comment on that meeting or any aspect of

Masri's story.

 

The evidence backing up Masri's account of being " snatched " by

American operatives is only the latest blow to the CIA in the ongoing

detention-abuse scandal. Together with previously disclosed flight

plans of a smaller Gulfstream V jet, the Boeing 737's travels are

further evidence that a global " ghost " prison system, where terror

suspects are secretly interrogated, is being operated by the CIA.

Several of the Gulfstream flights allegedly correlate with other

" renditions, " the controversial practice of secretly spiriting

suspects to other countries without due process. " The more evidence

that comes out, the clearer it is that there's been a stunning failure

of accountability, " says lawyer John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

 

CIA officials are increasingly fretful about being saddled with

this secret prison network at a time of intense pressure from lawyers

and human-rights activists. The CIA's anxiety only deepened last week

when President Bush named John Negroponte, his ambassador to Iraq, as

the country's first director of national intelligence. Negroponte, a

demanding career diplomat, will take over the coveted president's

daily brief, or PDB, from Goss. Bush sought to reassure the CIA that

it would still be welcome in the Oval Office. But Bush also signaled

that Negroponte would preside over a major shift in power in

intelligence gathering. " John and I will work to determine how much

exposure the CIA will have to the Oval Office, " the president told

reporters.

 

While it battles for influence in Washington, the agency is also

fighting a rear-guard action against critics at home and abroad. Some

CIA officials fear the White House is now exposing them to legal

peril. New Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under pressure while he

awaited his confirmation hearings late last year, repudiated a

controversial August 2002 memo that CIA officials carefully solicited

from the Justice Department for legal authorization on renditions and

the agency's treatment of Qaeda prisoners. Today the CIA has dozens of

detainees it doesn't know how to dispose of without legal procedures.

" Where's the off button? " says one retired CIA official. " They asked

the White House for direction on how to dispose of these detainees

back when they asked for [interrogation] guidance. The answer was,

'We'll worry about that later.' Now we don't know what to do with

these guys. People keep saying, 'We're not going to shoot them'. "

 

The new evidence supporting Masri's case will only inflame the

debate. According to data filed with European aviation authorities,

the Boeing 737 landed in Skopje on Jan. 23, 2004, after a flight from

the island of Majorca off Spain (a U.S.-friendly government), and left

that night. Masri's passport has a Macedonian exit stamp for Jan. 23.

The flight plan shows that the plane landed the next day in Baghdad

and then went onto Kabul, Afghanistan, on Jan. 25, which also conforms

to Masri's account. According to Federal Aviation Administration

records, the jet was owned at the time by Premier Executive Transport

Services, a now-defunct Massachusetts-based company that U.S.

intelligence sources acknowledge to NEWSWEEK fits the profile of a

suspected CIA front.

 

The Boeing flights are part of a detailed two-year itinerary for the

737 obtained by NEWSWEEK. The jet's record dates to December 2002 and

shows flights up until Feb. 7 of this year. The Boeing 737 may have

served as a general CIA transport plane for equipment and supplies as

well. Among the stops recorded are Libya, where the U.S. government

has been dismantling

 

Muammar Kaddafi's clandestine nuclear program; and Jordan, where

the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that high-level Qaeda

detainees, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were

being held. (A Jordanian spokesman did not respond to a request for

comment.) The Boeing also landed at Guantanamo.

 

Ironically, many U.S. officials say, the CIA secret facilities

have proven very effective for quietly interrogating a handful of

known Qaeda suspects. But when such rough practices " migrated " to

Iraqi war detainees and bigger facilities like Abu Ghraib prison -

under the direction of the Defense Department - the public backlash

compromised the CIA's intel-gathering efforts. Today the agency's

cover has been blown and critics are questioning why no full-time CIA

employees have been prosecuted despite several cases of serious abuse

linked to the agency.

 

Among these cases is that of Manadel al-Jamadi, the Iraqi whose

corpse was notoriously photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu

Ghraib last year. An Associated Press report last week said that

documents show Jamadi died under CIA interrogation while suspended by

his wrists at the prison. But only the Navy SEALs who delivered him to

Abu Ghraib are currently being investigated, officials say.

 

U.S. officials insist the CIA has stopped rendering suspects to

countries where they believe torture occurs. NEWSWEEK has learned that

shortly after a Canadian jihadi suspect of Syrian origin, Maher Arar,

was shipped back to Syria in September 2002, officials began having

grave second thoughts about rendering suspects to that nation. As a

result, the administration made a secret decision to stop sending

suspects to Syria. But officials acknowledge that such scruples are

being ignored when it comes to rendering suspects to allies like Egypt

and Jordan, even though some officials do not believe " assurances "

from these nations that they were not mistreating prisoners. Now the

CIA may have to supply many more assurances - and Khaled el-Masri,

among others, is waiting for them.

 

Go to Original

 

A UK Diplomat says Britain is Part of a Worldwide Torture Plot. Is

He Telling the Truth?

By Raymond Whitaker

The Independent U.K.

 

Sunday 20 February 2005

 

Our former ambassador to Uzbekistan refuses to go quietly. The

Government should come clean about interrogation methods, he tells

Raymond Whitaker.

 

Craig Murray is a very undiplomatic diplomat. Former ambassadors

are supposed to be tending their flowers in Home Counties gardens, but

this one is not. He is, instead, making extraordinary allegations, the

most damaging of which is that Britain is using information obtained

from torture to imprison people indefinitely. So convinced is he of

the truth of this and other claims that he plans to stand against his

former employer, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, at the general

election.

 

Not for this man the emollient, languorous language normally

associated with his profession. Our former ambassador in Uzbekistan is

nothing if not forthright. " Unreliable information, obtained under

torture in countries where it is routine, can be used against people

in Britain, " he told The Independent on Sunday in his first interview

since leaving the Foreign Office last week with a £315,000 payoff. " On

the basis of such information, they can be detained in Belmarsh prison

or in future be put under house arrest for life. It impacts here in

the UK. "

 

The departure of Mr Murray, 46, from the diplomatic service is the

culmination of an extraordinary two-year battle with his masters. His

public denunciations of the Uzbek regime, and private complaints at

American and British support for it, led to a confrontation in which

he was accused of drunkenness and trading visas for sex with local

women, and told to " resign or be sacked " . The charges were leaked;

when his marriage broke up over his relationship with a 23-year-old

Uzbek hairdresser, Nadira Alieva, who now lives with him, that got out

too. Now he plans to expose Britain's " hypocrisy " in the " war on terror " .

 

" We have abandoned the notion of a foreign policy based on the

rule of international law, in favour of one which says might is right,

that there is one superpower and we'll be its best friend, " he says.

" I want to put these issues in front of the voters. "

 

The ex-envoy's stand is almost the only sign of dissent in

official circles over Britain's role as America's closest partner in

the " war on terror " and the invasion of Iraq. Not only has the

Government departed from European human rights law to detain foreign

terror suspects without trial, it is implicated in what critics call a

" web of illegality " spun by the Bush administration. The abuses at Abu

Ghraib prison near Baghdad created a scandal, but evidence continues

to emerge that this was simply the worst example of a pattern of

mistreatment that extends from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to Bagram in

Afghanistan and other facilities around the world, some undisclosed,

in which hundreds of suspects are held in legal limbo.

 

The latest revelations concern the practice of " extraordinary

rendition " . Using unmarked planes, the CIA is delivering prisoners to

regimes which practise torture and then making use of the information

produced. " There is increasing evidence that America is shipping

people round the world to be tortured, " Mr Murray says. " I saw it in

Uzbekistan because I happened to be there, but it's also happening in

countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. "

 

Britain is unapologetic about making use of such information. The

Foreign Office line is that while it totally condemns torture, it

cannot rule out using any reliable intelligence, wherever it comes

from, if it will save lives. But it is the reliability of the

information that Mr Murray questions. In a scathing final memo to the

Foreign Office, he wrote: " We receive intelligence obtained under

torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should

stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign

up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and

UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against

terror ... we are selling our souls for dross. "

 

Eight months later, he says: " What really seems to have angered

them is that I was disputing the quality of the intelligence they were

receiving. I began saying this at the time Britain was putting forward

its dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They were keen on

intelligence that exaggerated the threat. " He adds that he has " a good

deal of experience " in intelligence analysis. " During the first Gulf

war, I worked full-time on analysing Iraq and its WMD. "

 

Mr Murray was Britain's youngest ambassador when he was appointed

to Tashkent in mid-2002, and it did not take him long to realise the

nature of the regime. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the

old Communist Party boss, Islam Karimov, remains in charge of a

Stalinist dictatorship which treats all devout Muslims as potential

subversives, and has been known to boil prisoners alive. A couple of

weeks after he arrived, the new ambassador attended a political trial,

at which he met an old man. " Two of his children had been tortured in

front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with

Bin Laden, " he told the Foreign Office. " Tears were streaming down his

face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. "

 

After three months he said publicly that Uzbekistan was " not a

functioning democracy " . The major political parties were banned, and

there were between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners.

The Americans - who were pouring money, warplanes and military

personnel into Uzbekistan, valuing its position near central Asia's

huge reserves of oil and gas - were upset, but in public the Foreign

Office backed him.

 

Behind the scenes, however, he was getting into a worsening

dispute with his employers over the question of torture. In October or

November 2002, he says, he saw intelligence about an Uzbek dissident,

his cell and its connections with Bin Laden. " I could see from the

codes that it had gone from Uzbek intelligence to the CIA, and was

then issued by MI6 as part of intelligence sharing. I remembered the

old man, and a light went on. " He sent his deputy to check with the

CIA head of station in Tashkent whether the agency had any safeguards

against receiving information obtained under torture. " He told her,

yes, it probably is obtained under torture, but the CIA doesn't see

that as a problem. "

 

Mr Murray says he was probably naive. " I honestly thought that it

was only a matter of pointing out to London how this material was

sourced, and they wouldn't have any truck with it. " But he heard

nothing from the Government, which was preoccupied with the rush to

war in Iraq. After several more complaints, he was summoned to London

for a meeting at the Foreign Office in March 2003. He was told the

information was useful and not illegal to obtain, although it could

not be used in a court of law. His line manager later told him he was

" unpatriotic " .

 

He continued to speak out about human rights in Uzbekistan until

the Foreign Office accusations against him - later withdrawn - and the

subsequent breakdown of his health, which kept him in London for most

of the second half of 2003. When he returned to Tashkent, he says, he

was determined to " keep my head down " . But after the Abu Ghraib

revelations last year, which led the Foreign Office to remind its

diplomats that they should report torture by allies, he discovered

that a meeting in London, which he had not been told about or asked to

attend, had decided to continue receiving Uzbek intelligence material.

 

" This is morally, legally and practically wrong, " he wrote in his

final memo. " It exposes as hypocritical our post-Abu Ghraib

pronouncements and undermines our moral standing. It obviates my

efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture [if] they are

fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results. " When this

memo was leaked to the press, the Foreign Office argued that he could

no longer stay in Tashkent.

 

Now he is free to pursue the issue as a private citizen, Mr Murray

says: " We argue that we don't carry out or instigate torture

ourselves, but if information from it comes our way, we won't refuse

it. But in criminal law, when a known thief asks you to buy a stolen

TV for £10, it is no defence to say that I didn't ask him to steal it

and I wasn't there when he stole it - I just bought the stolen goods. "

 

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