Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

Taken from New York Times, October 9, 2007
By DAVID STOUT

A German citizen who said he was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency and tortured in a prison in Afghanistan lost his last chance to seek redress in court today when the Supreme Court declined to consider his case.

The justices’ refusal to take the case of Khaled el-Masri let stand a March 2 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. That court upheld a 2006 decision by a federal district judge, who dismissed Mr. Masri’s lawsuit on the grounds that trying the case could expose state secrets.

The Supreme Court’s refusal, without comment, to take the case was not surprising, given that a three-judge panel for the Fourth Circuit was unanimous. Nevertheless, today’s announcement prompted immediate expressions of dismay, and it could exacerbate tensions between the United States and Germany.

The Fourth Circuit acknowledged the seriousness of the issues when it dismissed Mr. Masri’s suit. “We recognize the gravity of our conclusions that el-Masri must be denied a judicial forum for his complaint,” Judge Robert B. King wrote in March. “The inquiry is a difficult one, for it pits the judiciary’s search for truth against the executive’s duty to maintain the nation’s security.”

The ordeal of Mr. Masri, who is of Lebanese descent and was apparently the victim of mistaken identity, was the most extensively documented case of the C.I.A.’s controversial practice of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are abducted and sent for interrogation to other countries, including some in which torture is practiced.

The episode has already caused hard feelings between the United States and Germany, whose diplomatic ties were already frayed because of differences over the war in Iraq. Mr. Masri’s lawyer in Germany, Manfred Gnjidic, said the high court’s refusal to consider the case sends a message that the United States expects other nations to act responsibly but refuses to take responsibility for its own actions.

“We are very disappointed,” Mr. Gnjidic said in an interview today with The Associated Press.

“It will shatter all trust in the American justice system.”

Mr. Masri contended in his suit that he was seized by local law enforcement officials while vacationing in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003. At the time, he was 41 years old and an unemployed car salesman.

“They asked a lot of questions — if I have relations with Al Qaeda, Al Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood,” Mr. Masri said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. “I kept saying no, but they did not believe me.”

After 23 days, he said, he was turned over to C.I.A. operatives, who flew him to a secret C.I.A. prison in Kabul. There, Mr. Masri said, he was kept in a small, filthy cell and was shackled, drugged and beaten while being interrogated about his supposed ties to terrorist organizations.

At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri said, he was released in a remote part of Albania without ever having been charged with a crime.

The C.I.A. has never acknowledged any role in Mr. Masri’s detention. But investigations in Europe, as well as news reports in the United States, have bolstered his version of events. German prosecutors issued arrest warrants in January for 13 suspected C.I.A. agents believed to have taken part in the operation that swept up Mr. Masri.

As a practical matter, it is extremely unlikely that President Bush would ever agree to turn the 13 agents over to German authorities. But the warrants against them could hinder their ability to travel in Europe.

When the Fourth Circuit dismissed Mr. Masri’s suit, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the action “truly unbelievable” and “reminiscent of third-world countries.”

The Constitution Project, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to focus attention on constitutional issues, called the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the case “profoundly disappointing.”

“The government’s treatment of Mr. El-Masri has been appalling, and the executive branch should not be permitted to hide its mistakes behind the so-called state secrets privilege,” said the organization’s senior counsel, Sharon Bradford Franklin. “Now that the court has declined to consider this issue, Congress should immediately take up legislation to reform the state secrets privilege and clarify that it does not authorize unchecked power to disregard individual rights.”

Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has introduced legislation to ban extraordinary rendition, said today that “the Bush administration reflexively responds with the ‘state secrets’ defense whenever it is caught bending or simply ignoring the law.”

The chief White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said later that, on the contrary, the administration is “judicious” in citing state secrets to avoid lawsuits. “And the fact that the Supreme Court agreed with us is, in our opinion, a good thing,” Ms. Perino said.

For his part, Mr. Masri was arrested by the German police in May on suspicion of setting a fire that caused $675,000 in damage to a market in a Bavarian town. His lawyer said Mr. Masri had had a dispute with the store, and that his action was the result of not receiving psychological counseling that he had sought. A German judge ordered him held in a psychiatric ward.

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Angela Merkel is no Gerhard Schroder, so I doubt Germany will be doing anything that benefits the interest of its people - this will all probably be forgotten in the interest of national security (US National Security that is). Maybe Merkel should be the one ordered by the German judge to be held in a psychiatric ward! ...by the way does anyone know what happened to the Italian case against the CIA agents?

Iran's parliament approves labeling CIA, U.S. Army terrorist groups

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 30/09/2007
By The Associated Press

Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution to label the CIA and the U.S. Army terrorist organizations.

The move is seen as a diplomatic tit-for-tat after the U.S. Senate voted in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio. The hard-line dominated parliament said the two were terrorists, because they were involved in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, used depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supported the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombed and killed Iraqi civilians and tortured terror suspects in prisons.

The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that - if ratified by the country's hard-line constitutional watchdog - would become law. The government is expected to remain silent over the parliament resolution and wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran.

The Bush administration had already been considering whether to blacklist an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.
The U.S. legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly that his country would defy attempts to impose new sanctions by arrogant powers seeking to curb its nuclear program, accusing them of lying and imposing illegal penalties on his country.

He said the nuclear issue was now closed as a political issue and Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program through its appropriate legal path, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN's nuclear watchdog.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over Washington accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and has been supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weapons used to kill U.S. troops. Iran denies both of the allegations.

Earlier this month, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, named a new head for the elite Revolutionary Guard. He appointed Mohammed Ali Jafari, described as a senior figure in the hard-line force, to replace Yahya Rahim Safavi, who led the Guard for the last decade.

In a new decree, Khamenei also appointed Jafari to run the Basij, groups of volunteers dedicated to support the ruling Islamic establishment, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The appointment effectively merged the two forces. Further intertwining the Guard with the popular Basij force is widely believed to be aimed at undermining U.S. efforts to designate the Guard a terrorist organization.

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Can anyone blame Iran (or even it's people) for declaring the CIA a terrorist organisation? The CIA has a history of destabilising Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. In Iran this process began in 1953 when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize foreign oil companies. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK (trained by the CIA & Mossad), was as brutal as the Gestapo. The Shah was an evil dictor (supported by the US) and kept his people oppressed. For his support, he awarded foreign oil companies to resume extracting oil from Iran but was forbidden to see its accounts (i.e how much oil was extracted and how much money was made) - Sound familiar? His dictatorship made Iranian people more angry towards him and the Western world and bred fundamentalism. It was only until 1979 that the people of Iran were set free by the Islamic revolution that overthrew him. The US backed puppet fled to Egypt, never to return. All foreignors and westernised Iranians had also fled Iran. Iranian students stormed into the US embassy, held 52 embassy employees hostage for a 444 days. The US government severed diplomatic relations and imposed economic sanctions on April 7, 1980 and later that month attempted a failed rescue. Shortly afterwards, Iraq invaded Iran and it was the start of Iraq-Iran war where millions of people died. To get revenge, the US backed Saddam Hussein's Iraq in their war against Iran, helping them with weapons (to fight the Soviet backed Iran) but at the same time secretly allowed Israel to sell American weapons to Iran using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Well you couldn't make it up! The people of Iran are forgiving people, they want a fresh start with the USA, but the USA hasn't forgotten it's embarassing defeat in Iran and want's to make ammends. On July 3, 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 en route to UAE killing all 290 passengers and crew on aboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. The Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time. According to the US government, the Iranian airbus was mistakenly identified as an attacking F14 fighter. The Iranian government maintains that the Vincennes knowingly shot down a civilian aircraft. Today, Iran has changed alot. Whether you like him or not Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tried on numerous occasions to make friendship with the Bush administration. Bush does not want to know. Ahmadinejad recenty went to the States and answered questions by students and public from Columbia University. He has since extended an invitation to U.S. President George W. Bush to speak at an Iranian university - I doubt Bush will ever take that offer. Jaw Jaw is better than War War!

Here's more info of the roles the CIA played in recent time . All information has been extracted from a brilliant site informationclearinghouse.info

The U.S. Congress created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 with the passing of the National Security Act. The official duty of the Central Intelligence Agency is to serve as an intelligence gathering agency.

In reality, the CIA does not only gather information but consistently targets and engages in covert operations, psychological operations, and acts of terrorism both domestically and internationally.

CIA past operations and activities
Operation Phoenix was an assassination program conducted by the CIA during the Vietnam conflict. Its objective was to eliminate Vietnamese who might oppose the U.S but also to terrorize the entire population of South Vietnam and to suppress opposition to the occupying U.S. forces. Over 20,000 Vietnamese were murdered, often at random.

During the 1980s the CIA used profits from its cocaine smuggling activities to finance the Contras in Nicaragua who were responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of civilians, and it attempted to disrupt the country's economy, in order to destabilize the legitimate Sandinista government. For this, the U.S. was condemned in the World Court for "unlawful use of force," and it rejected a U.N. security council resolution calling upon it to observe international law. We must note that George Bush Sr. was vice president at the time .

On Sept. 11, 1973, the CIA planned and organized the military coup d'etat in Chile which overthrew the legitimately elected government of Salvador Allende and brought to power the regime of General Augusto Pinochet. This regime abducted, tortured and killed thousands of Chilean citizens in an attempt to suppress opposition.

It appears that Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well-aware of Operation Condor. The first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro groups, and fascist movements such as the Triple A set up in Argentina by Jose Lopez Rega ("personal secretary" of Juan and Isabel Peron), and Rodolfo Almiron. The post-junta truth commission found that the Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines in the so-called "dirty war" against "subversion" and "terrorists" between 1976 and 1983; human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000. We must note that George Bush Sr, was head of the CIA at the time it began and vice president at the time it ended.

Operation CHAOS was the most vicious aggressive domestic surveillence operation conducted on American antiwar groups and activists like Abbie Hoffman, whose objectives were to:

1. Gather information on their immorality.
2. Show them as scurrilous and depraved.
3. Call attention to their habits and living conditions.
4. Explore every possible embarrassment.
5. Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them.
6. Send articles to newspapers showing their depravity.
7. Use narcotics and free sex for entrapment.
8. Have members arrested on marijuana charges.
9. Exploit the hostilities between various persons.
10. Use cartoons and photographs to ridicule them.
11. Use disinformation to confuse and disrupt.
12. Get records of their bank accounts.
13. Obtain specimens of handwriting.
14. Provoke target groups into rivalries that resulted in deaths.

The CIA was allegedly involved in the April 2002, Venezuela failed coup that tried to overthrow President Hugo Chavez, who was democratically elected.

In 2002 the CIA distorted Iraq data to the media in order to justify George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Most recently, former CIA employee, Luis Posada Carriles, who is believed to be the mastermind behind the 1976 Cubana de Aviacion bombing which killed 73 people, walked free from a U.S. court Tuesday following a court ruling for his liberation.

These are only a handful of operations; there have literally been hundreds and many are still classified as secret by the U.S. government.

For a time-line checkout here.

CIA Conspired With Mafia To Kill Castro

Taken from The Guardian, UK, June 27, 2007
By Simon Tisdall

The CIA conspired with a Chicago gangster described as "the chieftain of the Cosa Nostra and the successor to Al Capone" in a bungled 1960 attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba's communist revolution, according to classified documents published by the agency yesterday.


The Cuban president Fidel Castro, seen here in 1959. Photograph: Reuters

The disclosure is contained in a 702-page CIA dossier known as the "Family Jewels" compiled at the behest of then agency director James Schlesinger in 1973. According to a memo written at the time, the purpose of the dossier was to identify all current and past CIA activities that "conflict with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947" - and were, in other words, illegal.

The dossier covers operations including domestic surveillance, kidnapping, infiltration of anti-war movements, and the bugging of leading journalists.

But its detailed information on assassination attempts against foreign leaders is likely to attract most attention.

The plot to kill Mr Castro, whom the US government at the time considered a threat to national security and a stooge of the Soviet Union, begins quietly and sinisterly in August 1960.

The documents released yesterday describe how a CIA officer, Richard Bissell, approached the CIA's Office of Security to establish whether it had "assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro".

The dossier continues: "Because of its extreme sensitivity, only a small group was made privy to the project. The DCI (Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles) was briefed and gave his approval."

Following the meeting with the Office of Security, Bissell employed a go-between, Robert Maheu, and asked him to make contact with "gangster elements". Maheu subsequently reported an approach to Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas. Roselli is described as "a high-ranking member of the 'syndicate' (who) controlled all the ice-making machines on the (Las Vegas) Strip and (who) undoubtedly had connections leading into the Cuban gambling interests".

The CIA is careful to cover its tracks. According to the dossier, Maheu told Roselli that he (Maheu) has been retained by international businesses suffering "heavy financial losses in Cuba as a result of Castro's action. They were convinced that Castro's removal was the answer to their problem and were willing to pay the price of $150,000 (£75,000) for its successful accomplishment".

Roselli was also told that the US government was not, and must not become aware of the operation.

Roselli in turn led the CIA to a friend, known as Sam Gold. In September 1960, Maheu was introduced to Gold and his associate, known as Joe. In a development that appears to underscore the amateurishness of the whole operation, Maheu subsequently accidentally spotted photographs of "Sam and Joe" in Parade magazine.

Gold was in fact Momo Salvatore Giancana, "the chieftain of Cosa Nostra (the mafia) and the successor to Al Capone". Joe was actually Santos Trafficante, Cosa Nostra boss of Cuban operations.

At a meeting at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Gold/Giancana suggested that rather than try to shoot or blow up Mr Castro, "some type of potent pill that could be placed in Castro's food or drink would be much more effective".

He said a corrupt Cuban official, named as Juan Orta, who was in debt to the syndicate and had access to the Cuban leader, would carry out the poisoning. The CIA subsequently obtained and supplied "six pills of high lethal content" to Orta but after several weeks of abortive attempts, Orta demanded "out" of the operation.

Another disaffected Cuban was recruited to do the job, but he demanded money up front. In the event, the dossier relates, "the project was cancelled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode" (in April, 1961).

Yesterday's document release under the Freedom of Information Act also reveals details of CIA bugging and surveillance operations and the handling of a Soviet defector and KGB agent, Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, in 1965-67. Also made public are 147 pages of documents relating to CIA assessments of the Soviet and Chinese cold war leaderships.

"The CIA fully understands it has an obligation to protect the nation's secrets, but it also has a responsibility to be as open as possible," CIA director Michael Hayden said yesterday. "The declassification of historical documents is an important part of that effort."

The documents are available at: www.foia.cia.gov/

CIA Reveals Decades Of Plots, Kidnaps And Wiretaps

The New York Times today reported that for four years, Vice President Dick Cheney had resisted routine oversight of his office’s handling of classified information, and when the National Archives unit that monitors classification in the executive branch objected, the vice president’s office suggested abolishing the oversight unit, according to documents released yesterday by a Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California. What is Cheney trying to hide from the public in the week that this is happening...

Taken from The Guardian, UK, June 23, 2007
By Simon Tisdall

The CIA is to declassify secret records detailing operations including illegal domestic surveillance, assassination plots and kidnapping, undertaken from the 1950s to the early 1970s, at the height of the cold war and the Vietnam conflict.The records were compiled in 1973 at the behest of the then CIA director, James Schlesinger, and collected in a 693-page dossier known as the "family jewels". Although some of its contents have been leaked, the CIA has refused until now to put the full dossier in the public domain.

Mr Schlesinger acted after discovering that veteran CIA officers whose burglary of a Washington hotel room triggered the Watergate scandal, had received the agency's cooperation in carrying out "dirty tricks" for President Richard Nixon.According to the National Security Archive at George Washington University, Mr Schlesinger directed his officials to collate details of any other current or past agency activity that "might fall outside CIA authority" - that was, in other words, illegal. The results of the internal trawl were breathtaking. But within months of finalising the dossier, William Colby replaced Mr Schlesinger as CIA chief.

When the New York Times published a report on the CIA's domestic surveillance operations in December 1974, apparently based in part on the dossier, panic erupted inside the administration of President Gerald Ford, who had succeeded Nixon. At a damage-limitation meeting in January 1975 with James Wilderotter, the deputy attorney-general, Colby laid bare the "skeletons" in the dossier.

Minutes of the meeting, obtained by the National Security Archive and posted at gwu.edu yesterday, list the skeletons one by one.

Domestic operations include the illegal detention and interrogation of a Russian defector, the wiretapping of columnists Robert Allen and Paul Scott, and the surveillance of other journalists including the late Jack Anderson. Several illegal break-ins are also listed.

In the minutes, Colby says some US citizens had been subjected to "unwitting" CIA drug experiments to induce "behaviour modification". The CIA also illegally amassed 9,900 files on Americans involved in anti-war activities.

The minutes state that the CIA "plotted the assassination of some foreign leaders including [Fidel] Castro, [Patrice] Lumumba [Democratic Republic of Congo] and [Rafael] Trujillo [Dominican Republic]." They go on: "With respect to Trujillo's assassination on May 30 1961, the CIA had 'no active part' but had a 'faint connection' with the groups that in fact did it."

In an official record of a White House meeting with President Ford the next day, on January 4 1975, a rattled Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state and national security adviser, argues that the existence of the "family jewels" dossier, and its partial leaking, may turn into a major scandal - with the FBI investigating the CIA.

"What is happening is worse than in the days of McCarthy. You will end up with a CIA that does only reporting, not operations ... What Colby has done is a disgrace," Mr Kissinger tells Ford.

"All these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. If they come out, blood will flow. For example, Robert Kennedy [the former attorney-general] personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro."

Announcing the decision to release the dossier next week, plus 11,000 pages of "hard target" intelligence gathered about the USSR and China from 1953-73, General Michael Hayden, the CIA director, said they offered a "glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency".

Italians Debate Indictments Of Americans

Taken from Yahoo News, Fri Mar 16, 2006
By MARIA SANMINIATELLI, Associated Press

ROME - Lawyers for the Italian government appealed to a top court seeking to annul the indictments against 26 Americans - mostly CIA agents - and several Italians who face trial in Milan in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorist suspect, a lawyer said Friday.

Attorneys for the state claim that the judiciary - in this case, the Milan judge who issued the indictments - overstepped its authority, relying on secret documents and violating state secrets, said Luigi Panella, a lawyer for Italian secret service agent Marco Mancini, who also was ordered to stand trial.

Prosecutors in Milan declined comment.

The Constitutional Court, which also is examining a previous, similar appeal saying prosecutors had overstepped their authority, was expected to discuss the case April 18.

"We will respect the decision of the Constitutional Court," Panella said.

The Americans and Italian agents were indicted in February in the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Their trial is scheduled to open in June.

It would be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition program to secretly transfer terror suspects to third countries, where critics say they may have been tortured.

Italian prosecutors say Nasr — suspected of recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes — was kidnapped from the streets of Milan in February 2003 by CIA agents with help from Italian agents. He was allegedly taken to Aviano Air Base near Venice, then to Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, and finally to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years until Feb. 11. Nasr said he was tortured.

The Americans have all left Italy, and a senior U.S. official has said they would not be turned over for prosecution even if Rome requests it.

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi has maintained that his government and Italian secret services were not informed about the operation and did not take part in it.

Premier Romano Prodi's government, while so far making no decision, has signaled that it would not press Washington on an extradition request.

The Italian government has tried to avoid souring relations with Washington following the indictments of the 26 Americans and, in a separate case, of a U.S. soldier who shot dead an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad in 2005.

Italy: CIA Agents Must Be Charged Over ‘Kidnap And Torture’, Says Judge

Taken from The Times, UK, February 17, 2007
By Richard Owen

An Italian judge yesterday ordered 26 Americans, most of them believed to be CIA agents, to stand trial for the kidnapping and torture of a Muslim cleric.

In the first criminal court case arising from the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme, the judge also indicted five Italians, including the former head of Italy’s military intelligence.

The trial threatens embarassing revelations over the CIA programme in which terror suspects were seized in one country and taken to another. The tactic has been one of the most controversial in the US led War on Terror.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was allegedly kidnapped on a Milan street in February 2003 by CIA agents in collusion with their Italian counterparts. He was flown from Aviano to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and then to Egypt, where he claims that he was tortured. He was released in Cairo this week.

The trial is likely to encourage prosecutors in other European countries to pursue similar cases. A prosecutor in Munich has issued arrest warrants against 13 people for an alleged kidnapping of a German citizen.

It will also increase pressure on other European Governments to disclose the extent of their cooperation with the rendition programme. The Government in Spain has agreed to declassify an intelligence report on the CIA’s use of Spanish airports after a request from a judge.

A European Parliament report into rendition, approved this week, claims that Britain allowed 170 secret CIA flights connected to the illegal seizure of terror suspects to make stopovers at its airports, second in number only to Germany.

Washington acknowledges secret transfers of terror suspects to third countries but denies using torture.

Yesterday Caterina Interlandi, a Milan judge, set a trial hearing for June 8. The US citizens charged include Bob Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan and Jeff Castelli, described as head of CIA operations in Italy. None of the Americans is expected to return to stand trial in Italy, where defendants can be tried in absentia.

It is unclear whether the centre-left Government of Romano Prodi will seek their extradition. The previous Italain Government, headed by the staunchly pro-American Silvio Berlusconi, rejected earlier extradition requests.

The Italians who will stand trial include Nicolò Pollari, then head of Sismi, Italy’s military intelligence service. In preliminary hearings Mr Pollari denied that Italian intelligence had any role in the kidnapping. He complained that he was unable to defend himself because documents which would prove his case were classified. Prosecutors say that the kidnapping was a breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised Italy’s antiterrorism efforts.

A key witness in the trial will be Luciano Pironi, an Italian police officer who has admitted stopping Abu Omar so that CIA agents could seize him, for which he is serving a 21-month prison sentence. He claimed that the operation was approved by both the Italian and US Governments, but that he was told the purpose was to recruit the imam as an informer, not to fly him abroad to be tortured.

Guido Meroni, who represents six of the accused Americans, claimed that the evidence against them was circumstantial, based on telephone interceptions and their presence in hotels close to the kidnapping operation.

At the time of his abduction Mr Hassan was under investigation for alleged links to the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam. He has vowed to return to Italy and sue Mr Berlusconi for €10 million (£6.7 million) in compensation.

Mr Hassan claims that he was bundled into a white van, beaten and blindfolded as he made his way to the mosque. During interrogations he was blindfolded “with my hands tied up to my back, totally naked, and my body hanging from the ceiling by my feet while my head was suspended upside down”.

He said that he was held “in a tiny cell, [with] no lavatory, weak lighting and a very small hole in the ceiling for ventilation.” He added: “I was subjected to electric shocks all over my body specially in my head, nipples, testicles and penis.”

The US Administration was saying little about the arrests. Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said: “It’s a judicial matter in Italy.” Any view about possible prosecutions or extraditions would remain a matter for “internal dialogue,” he added.

Spotlight on abduction
# The CIA practice of extraordinary rendition was revealed in November 2005. It involves the US transfer of untried terror suspects, or those suspected of links to terror groups, to camps overseas, with flights using European airports as stopovers.

# President Bush admitted in September 2006 that 14 suspects had been detained in secret centres abroad, but declined to say where.

# At least 1,245 flights were operated by the CIA through European airspace and airports between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2005, according to a report for the European Parliament this week.

# The most stopovers were logged for Germany (336) followed by Britain (170) and Ireland (147).

# The flights were allowed by 14 EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.

CIA Man Sentenced For Afghan Abuse

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, 13 Feb 2007

A former CIA contractor has been sentenced to eight years and four months in prison for assaulting an Afghan prisoner who later died.

David Passaro, the first civilian to be charged with abusing a detainee in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced on Tuesday after being found guilty last August.

He was sentenced to 100 months on a felony count of assault causing serious injury and six months each on three misdemeanour counts of simple assault, to run concurrently.

Death after interrogation
Passaro, a former Special Forces medic, was convicted last August of beating Abdul Wali, who died of his injuries two days after a June 2003 interrogation.

Prosecutors said Passaro beat the prisoner so badly that he pleaded to be shot to end his pain.

The indictment said Passaro worked at a US military base in Afghanistan that was frequently subjected to rocket attacks and Wali was a suspect in the attacks.

Passaro's lawyers portrayed their client as someone who went out of his way to offer care to Wali.

They said Passaro even performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in an unsuccessful bid to revive him.

Guidelines broken
Guidelines given to interrogators have been an issue since a scandal broke over the abuse and humiliation of prisoners by Americans at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.

Prisoners released from the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where the United States is holding suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda members, also say they were tortured or abused.

Critics say US government guidelines on what constitutes torture, issued since the September 11 attacks, have created a climate in which abuses of detainees have flourished.

Spain Furious As US Blocks Access To Madrid Bombing 'Chief'

Taken from The Times, UK , 15.02.07
By Sean O’Neill

Exclusive: on the first day of the Madrid bombing trial, the splits that have emerged between Spain and the US over the War on Terror, which have their roots in the Iraq conflict, are laid bare

The al-Qaeda leader who created, trained and directed the terrorist cell that carried out the Madrid train bombings has been held in a CIA “ghost prison” for more than a year.

Spanish officials told The Times last night that they are furious to have been denied access to Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, a Syrian-born terrorist who has been part of the al-Qaeda leadership since the late 1980s.

"This is Spain's most wanted man in the terrorist world - it is galling to know that he is in the hands of an ally and they will not help us," a Spanish official said.

Madrid’s anger became known on the day that 29 men went on trial in the Spanish capital in connection with the bomb attacks which killed 191 people in March 2004.

Setmarian, 49, who lived in Madrid, married a Spanish woman and holds Spanish citizenship, inspired and established Spain’s first Islamist terror cells.

Searches after the March 2004 bombings uncovered documents which appeared to link the terrorists to Setmarian and he his thought to have issued a coded order giving the go-ahead for the attack.

Setmarian was in Afghanistan in late 2001 when the Taleban regime fell and moved with his family to Pakistan where he continued to be active in al-Qaeda.

A tall man with a pale complexion and flame red hair, Setmarian travelled widely and was often mistaken for a Westerner. He was frequently described as having “Irish looks”.

During the mid-1990s he lived in London where he associated with Abu Hamza al-Masri and succeeded the radical cleric as editor of al-Ansar, a propaganda magazine for Algerian terror groups. He also associated with Abu Qatada, the extremist Jordanian cleric currently in prison in Britain.

His suspected role in the Madrid attacks and his knowledge of London meant that he was initially suspected of having played a part in the planning of the 7/7 suicide bomb attacks in 2005.

At the time of those attacks he was still at large in Pakistan where two of the London bombers are known to have received military and explosives training.

Setmarian, who pledged lifelong allegiance to bin Laden and the global jihad, has boasted on al-Qaeda websites of training thousands of foreign recruits at camps where he specialised in bombmaking and the use of poisons.

He was detained in October 2005 as he shopped for breakfast in Quetta, close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Pakistani intelligence agents shot Setmarian’s Saudi bodyguard dead but were under specific instructions to take Setmarian alive.

The FBI had offered a $5 million reward for his capture and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan stated in his recent memoirs that his country has received substantial sums in bounties from the US authorities.

Within a month of his capture Setmarian was handed over to the United States authorities and spirited away for interrogation at one of their secret prisons. His first stop was probably Bagram airbase, near Kabul, but his current whereabouts are unknown.

Setmarian’s wife and three children moved from Pakistan following his detention and are now believed to be living in Qatar where she is reported to be an English teacher at a private school.

Spanish intelligence agents were said to have been allowed to question inmates of Guantanamo Bay about Setmarian in 2002. But access to suspects in US custody was blocked after Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq following the Madrid bombs.

Spain has made repeated requests to both Pakistan and the US to locate and speak to Setmarian about the train bombings but to no avail. The Spanish courts have discovered that they cannot issue an extradition request because the man they want to talk to has not been officially arrested.

EU Endorses Damning Report On CIA

Taken from The BBC, 14 February 2007

The European parliament has approved a damning report on secret CIA flights, condemning member states which colluded in the operations.

The UK, Germany and Italy were among 14 states which allowed the US to forcibly remove terror suspects, lawmakers said.

The EU parliament voted to accept a resolution condemning member states which accepted or ignored the practice.

The EU report said the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture.

The report was adopted by a large majority, with 382 MEPs voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining.

Vigilance
The final version denounces the lack of co-operation of many EU member states and it condemns the actions of secret services and governments who accepted and concealed renditions.

It is unlikely, the report says, that European governments were unaware of rendition activities on their territory, something the British government, among others, has denied.

"This is a report that doesn't allow anyone to look the other way. We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again," said Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava, who drafted the document.

The parliament also called for an "independent inquiry" to be considered and for closure of the US' Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Human rights campaigning group Amnesty International welcomed the EU lawmakers' vote, but urged member states to carry out independent investigations.

Revealing facts
Although the report has no force in EU law, Mr Fava said during the parliamentary debate that the related investigation, over a year, had uncovered much new evidence.

Many of those taken from EU states were subjected to torture to extract information from them, the report said.

It said there was a "strong possibility" that this intelligence had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained.

It also uncovered the use of secret detention facilities used as the flights made their journey across Europe towards countries such as Afghanistan.

It was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centres were operated in Poland and Romania, the report said.

'Incommunicado detention'
Centre-right MEPs - the largest group in parliament - have been highly critical of the report, saying it is primarily motivated by anti-Americanism.

EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said the commission would act on the truth, even if it were uncomfortable or unpalatable. But he called for a relaunching of the Euro-Atlantic relationship and said Europe must continue to work with its US partners.

During the course of their investigation, delegations of MEPs travelled to countries including Romania, Poland, the UK, the US and Germany to investigate claims of European involvement in so-called extraordinary renditions.

The governments of Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the UK were criticised for their "unwillingness to co-operate" with investigators.

The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".

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Further information:

Full List of Countries that took part:
Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom

BBC: Key excerpts of report

Pentagon Report Condemns Misleading Iraq Intelligence

Taken from The Guardian, UK, February 9, 2007
By Mark Tran

The row over the use - or misuse of intelligence - in the run-up to the Iraq war reignited today when a watchdog concluded that top Pentagon officials wrongly insisted on a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

The Pentagon's acting inspector general, Thomas Gimble, told the senate armed services committee that the office headed by Douglas Feith, formerly the number three man at the defence department, took "inappropriate" actions in pushing the al-Qaida connection not backed up by America's intelligence agencies.



But Mr Gimble said the actions of the office of the undersecretary of defence for policy "were not illegal or unauthorised".

"I can't think of a more devastating commentary," the Democratic senate armed services committee chairman, Carl Levin, said.

Mr Feith ran the Pentagon's secretive office of special plans when the Bush administration was making the case for invading Iraq. Created by the then-secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the office reviewed intelligence on Iraq as the Bush administration lacked full confidence in information coming from the CIA.

Mr Feith, who resigned in 2005, was a major cheerleader for invading Iraq, to the irritation of some of the Pentagon's generals. General Tommy Franks, the military commander of the 2003 war in Iraq, once referred to Mr Feith as "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth".

A summary of the inspector-general's report cited the defence policy office's allegations of links between Iraq and al-Qaida, in particular an alleged 2001 meeting in Prague between Mohamed Atta, the leader of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre, and an Iraqi intelligence officer. The claim turned out to be unfounded.

"That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war," Carl Levin, the chairman of the senate armed services committee, who has accused the administration of manipulating intelligence material before the war, told the Associated Press.

The Pentagon report was requested in 2005 by a Republican senator, Pat Roberts, Mr Levin's predecessor on the senate intelligence committee. The committee and a number of official inquiries had criticised the administration's prewar intelligence, but Democratic senators, led by Mr Levin, demanded further investigation of Mr Feith's operation.

Mr Feith told the Associated Press that he was pleased to hear that the report had concluded that his office's activities were neither illegal nor unauthorised. He took strong issue, however, with the finding that some activities had been "inappropriate".

He described as "bizarre" the inspector general's conclusion that some intelligence activities by the office of special plans were inappropriate but not unauthorised.

Afghanistan and the war against drugs

Last week the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called on Russia and Europe to do more to stem drug trafficking from Afghanistan warning that it is fuelling a Taliban resurgence and threatens to undermine Afghanistan.

"I'm concerned about the role that narcotics are playing in this sense: when there's that much money involved, you have to worry that it is going to be attractive," he told reporters.

The United States currently has 23,000 troops in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld put the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) at about another 15,000 to 20,000 and Afghan security forces at about 70,000.


Some facts you might NOT know:

Afghanistan is the world’s largest grower of opium poppies. This tiny country produces nearly three quarters of the world’s opium supply.

When the Taliban came into power in 1997 they began cracking down on the opium growers. We may have detested the Taliban and their (so called) oppressive regime but at least they did something positive!

Poppy fields were burned and the heroin processing plants were shut down. Within a few years opium production in Afghanistan had plummeted from CIA estimated 4,042 tons per year to only 81.3 tons per year

In 2001 The United States provided $43 million worth of supplies (primarily wheat) to humanitarian relief organizations in Afghanistan. This was widely reported by critics of U.S. policy to be a $43 million reward to the Taliban for reducing poppy production.

Global Oil companies also had an interest in Afghanistan to build pipelines through Afghanistan to link Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves to Central and South Asia. Members of the Taliban had visited the US to look at the plans for this operation.

All was going well…. until 9/11. The group that was bankrolled by the United States to fight off the Russians (as part of group of Mujahideen) did the unthinkable and attacked America (well Al-Qaeda to be specific who were protected bt the Taliban in Afghanistan).

The United States decided to find the culprits and occupied Afghanistan later in 2001. Poppy production hit a record high since the fall of the Taliban government. In 2004, under the U.S. occupation, an estimated 4,950 metric tons of opium gum potentially producing 582 metric tons of heroin were harvested. Most of these opium would be sold in Europe and not the United States.


Why didn’t the Americans destroy the poppy fields and the heroin processing plants?

In order to minimize American casualties during the invasion, U.S. forces allied themselves with a group known as the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance was a band of warlords who, in addition to controlling their own private armies, also controlled much of the drug trade in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance is also supported and funded by several countries, including Russia, Iran and India.

Many warlords joined the Northern Alliance in order to defend their poppy fields against the Taliban’s crackdown. In exchange for their help against the Taliban, America allowed Northern Alliance members to continue growing poppies with relative impunity. Not only had the drug trade blossomed since the American invasion, it also had become far more profitable.

The current Afghan government has promised to crack down on drug trafficking, but their efforts have yielded few tangible results. The poppy growers have simply moved their fields away from government controlled areas and into the wild hinterlands controlled by the warlords.


So what should be done - What are the solutions?

Donald Rumsfeld is right in saying that Europe needs to do more in stopping the drug trafficking but so do the Americans.

With so many troops in Afghanistan I find it hard to understand why the Afghan government & the US find it difficult to destroy poppy crops. Maybe it is not in their best interest to do so? Maybe it would be better to reintroduce the Taliban? At least when they were in power they controlled the drug trade and stabilised the country.

Secondly, we need to get a better understanding why farmers grow Opium. Opium is not just a crop in Afghanistan; it is a way of life. It is used for trading with other goods, a form or barter. Farmers need to be introduced to alternative crops as a means of income. The Afghan government needs to subsidize these farmers, ensure proper infrastructure is in place to help the farmers and have stronger law enforcement in place.

Finally, the Americans (and United Nations) clearly need to do more. Now that they have established a correlation between the farming of opium and funding of terrorist (what took them so long?) Will they be going after the Northern Alliance (and its Warlords) rather than the Taliban? Do they know the difference? Have they realised that they “themselves” are responsible for the situation? Do they care? If they do maybe they will take it seriously and prioritised the war against drugs in this region.