Secrets of Iraq's death chamber

Prisoners are being summarily executed in the government's high-security detention centre in Baghdad.

Taken from The Independent, UK, Tuesday, 7 October 2008

By Robert Fisk

Like all wars, the dark, untold stories of the Iraqi conflict drain from its shattered landscape like the filthy waters of the Tigris. And still the revelations come.

The Independent has learnt that secret executions are being carried out in the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki's "democratic" government.

The hangings are carried out regularly – from a wooden gallows in a small, cramped cell – in Saddam Hussein's old intelligence headquarters at Kazimiyah. There is no public record of these killings in what is now called Baghdad's "high-security detention facility" but most of the victims – there have been hundreds since America introduced "democracy" to Iraq – are said to be insurgents, given the same summary justice they mete out to their own captives.

The secrets of Iraq's death chambers lie mostly hidden from foreign eyes but a few brave Western souls have come forward to tell of this prison horror. The accounts provide only a glimpse into the Iraqi story, at times tantalisingly cut short, at others gloomily predictable.

Those who tell it are as depressed as they are filled with hopelessness.

"Most of the executions are of supposed insurgents of one kind or another," a Westerner who has seen the execution chamber at Kazimiyah told me. "But hanging isn't easy." As always, the devil is in the detail.

"There's a cell with a bar below the ceiling with a rope over it and a bench on which the victim stands with his hands tied," a former British official, told me last week. "I've been in the cell, though it was always empty. But not long before I visited, they'd taken this guy there to hang him. They made him stand on the bench, put the rope round his neck and pushed him off. But he jumped on to the floor. He could stand up. So they shortened the length of the rope and got him back on the bench and pushed him off again. It didn't work."

There's nothing new in savage executions in the Middle East – in the Lebanese city of Sidon 10 years ago, a policeman had to hang on to the legs of a condemned man to throttle him after he failed to die on the noose – but in Baghdad, cruel death seems a speciality.

"They started digging into the floor beneath the bench so that the guy would drop far enough to snap his neck," the official said. "They dug up the tiles and the cement underneath. But that didn't work. He could still stand up when they pushed him off the bench. So they just took him to a corner of the cell and shot him in the head."

The condemned prisoners in Kazimiyah, a Shia district of Baghdad, are said to include rapists and murderers as well as insurgents. One prisoner, a Chechen, managed to escape from the jail with another man after a gun was smuggled to them. They shot two guards dead. The authorities had to call in the Americans to help them recapture the two. The Americans killed one and shot the Chechen in the leg. He refused medical assistance so his wound went gangrenous. In the end, the Iraqis had to operate and took all the bones out of his leg. By the time he met one Western visitor to the prison, "he was walking around on crutches with his boneless right leg slung over his shoulder".

In many cases, it seems, the Iraqis neither keep nor release any record of the true names of their captives or of the hanged prisoners. For years the Americans – in charge of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad – did not know the identity of their prisoners. Here, for example, is new testimony given to The Independent by a former Western official to the Anglo-US Iraq Survey Group, which searched for the infamous but mythical weapons of mass destruction: "We would go to the interrogation rooms at Abu Ghraib and ask for a particular prisoner. After about 40 minutes, the Americans brought in this hooded guy, shuffling along, shackled hands and feet.

"They sat him on a chair in front of us and took off his hood. He had a big beard. We asked where he received his education. He repeatedly said 'Mosul'. Then he said he'd left school at 14 – remember, this guy is supposed to be a missile scientist. We said: 'We know you've got a PhD and went to the Sorbonne – we'd like you to help us with information about Saddam's missile project'. But I said to myself : 'This guy doesn't know anything 'bout fucking missiles.' Then it turned out he had a different name from the man we'd asked for, he'd been picked up on the road by the Americans four months earlier, he didn't know why. So we said to the Americans: 'Wrong gentleman!' So they put the shackles on him and took him back to his cell and after 20 or 30 minutes, they'd bring someone else. We'd ask him where he went to school and he told us he had never been to school.

"Wrong person again. It was a complete farce. The incompetence of the US military was astounding, criminal. Eventually, of course, they found the right guy and brought him in and took his hood off. He was breathing heavily, overweight, pudgy, disoriented, a little bit scared."

On this occasion, the Americans had found the right man. The British and American investigators asked the guards to remove the man's shackles, which they did – but then they tied one of the man's legs to the floor. Yes, he had a PhD.

Again, the official's testimony: "We went through his history, what he'd worked on – he was obviously just a minor functionary in one of Saddam's missile programmes. Iraqi scientists didn't have the knowledge how to make nuclear missiles nor did they have the financial support necessary. It just remained in the dreams of Saddam."


The scientist-prisoner in Abu Ghraib miserably told his captors that he'd been arrested by the Americans after they'd knocked on his front door in Baghdad and found two Kalashnikov rifles a woman's hijab, verses from the Koran and, obviously of interest to his captors, "physics and missile textbooks on his bookshelves." But this supposedly valuable prisoner was never charged or previously interviewed even though he admitted he was a rocket scientist.

"I don't know what happened to him," the former official told me. "I tried to tell the UK and the US military that we've arrested this man but that he's got a wife, children, a family. I said that by locking up this one innocent person, you've got 50 men radicalised overnight. No, I don't know what happened to him."

For many of the investigators working for the Anglo-American authorities in Baghdad, the trial for the crime for which the Iraqi dictator was himself subsequently hanged was a fearful experience that ultimately ended in disgust. Through captured documents, they could see the dark, inner workings of Saddam's secret police. The idea of the Saddam trial was less to bring members of the former regime to justice than to show Iraqis how justice and the rule of law should operate.

"It was exhilarating to see Saddam being cross-examined," one of the court investigators said. "The low point was when he was executed. What drove me on was seeing how Saddam dealt with his victims – I was looking at a microcosm of all the deaths that had taken place in Iraq. But when he was executed, it was done in such a savage way."

Saddam Hussein was hanged in the same "secure" unit at Kazimiyah where Mr al-Maliki's people, in an echo of Saddamite Baathist terror, now hang their victims.

Iraq The death penalty
* The death penalty in Iraq was suspended after Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003. It was reinstated by the interim government in August 2004.
* The United Nations, the European Union and international human rights organisations all spoke out against the reintroduction.
* At the time, the government claimed the death penalty was a necessary measure until the country had stabilised. Amnesty International claims that "the extent of violence in Iraq has increased rather than diminished, clearly indicating that the death penalty has not proved to be an effective deterrent."
* Saddam, left, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and Iraq's former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar were hanged at the end of 2006 for their part in the killings of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail in 1982. Illicit videos of all three executions later became public. Saddam's body could be seen on a hospital trolley, his head twisted at 90 degrees. Barzan – Iraq's former intelligence chief –was decapitated by the noose. Officials said it was an accident.
* According to Amnesty, there were at least 33 executions reported in Iraq last year. About 200 people were estimated to have been sentenced to death.

Afghan president 'pardoned rapists'

Taken from the Independent, UK,
By Kate Clark in Kabulm, 24 August 2008

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has pardoned three men who had been found guilty of gang raping a woman in the northern province of Samangan.

The woman, Sara, and her family found out about the pardon only when they saw the rapists back in their village.

“Everyone was shocked,” said Sara’s husband, Dilawar, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “These were men who had been sentenced and found guilty by the Supreme Court, walking around freely.”

Sara’s case highlights concerns about the close relationship between the Afghan president and men accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.

The men were freed discreetly but the rape itself was public and brutal. It took place in September 2005, in the run up to Afghanistan’s first democratic parliamentary elections.

The most powerful local commander, Mawlawi Islam, was running for office despite being accused of scores of murders committed while he had been a mujahedeen commander in the 1980s and a Taliban governor in the 1990s, and since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Sara said one of his sub-commanders and body guards had been looking for young men to help in the election campaign.

“It was evening, around the time for the last prayer, when armed men came and took my son, Islamuddin, by force. I have eye-witness statements from nine people that he was there. From that night until now, my son has never been seen.”

Dilawar said his wife publicly harangued the commander twice about their missing son. After the second time, he said, they came for her. “The commander and three of his fighters came and took my wife out of our home and took her to their house about 200 metres away and, in front of these witnesses, raped her.”

Dilawar has a sheaf of legal papers, including a doctors’ report, which said she had a 17mm wound in her private parts cut with a bayonet. Sara was left to stumble home, bleeding and without her trousers.

When I met the couple in May 2006, they were in hiding and struggling to pursue the four men through the courts, petitioning the parliament, the president, human rights organisations and the United Nations. Sara and Dilawar say that one of the men involved in the attack used money and connections to repeatedly evade justice, particularly after his boss, Mawlawi Islam, became an MP and, they allege, was fully able to protect him.

In January 2007, Mawlawi Islam was assassinated. However, the other three men accused of the gang rape were put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Abdul Basir died in jail. The other two rapists, Nur Mohammad and Kheir Mohammad, were released last May. The commander was found not guilty.

A copy of the pardon was numbered, dated in May and appeared to bear the personal signature of Hamid Karzai. It recommended the men’s release because, it said, “they had been forced to confess to their crimes.”

When showed copies of the presidential pardon and court papers, President Karzai’s spokesman, Hamayun Hamidzada, was visibly shocked and said that if the documents proved genuine, Mr Karzai would be “upset and appalled.”

He said it was impossible that President Karzai could knowingly have signed a pardon for rapists, but refused to speculate on how the pardon could have come about. He promised an investigation into all aspects of the case, including the - as yet unsolved - mystery of Sara’s missing son.

He denied that there was one law for the rich and well-connected in Afghanistan and another for people like Sara. “There are difficulties - we’re rebuilding institutions, including our justice institutions and there are shortcomings, but the president and the government are committed to the rule of law on all equally.”

A UN human rights official said that, although she could not remember a similar case of the president giving a pardon in such a serious case, corruption in the police and courts was endemic.
The MP, Mir Ahmad Joyenda, said cases similar to Sara’s were actually becoming more common. The police and the courts, he said, were usually under the sway of local commanders.

“The commanders, the war criminals, still have armed groups,” he said. “They’re in the government. Karzai, the Americans, the British sit down with them. They have impunity.

They’ve become very courageous and can do whatever crimes they like.”

Sara and Dilawar are again in hiding, having felt too vulnerable to stay in their village. Dilawar was prepared to discuss the case. In Afghanistan, speaking about rape means risking further dishonour, but when asked whether he minded Sara’s story being publicised, Dilawar said, “We’ve already lost our son, our honour, we’ve sold our land to pay for legal costs and we’ve lost our home – what else can we lose?”

Ethiopia committing war crimes - says HRW

Taken from Yahoo News, 12 June 2008
By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya - Ethiopia's government is committing war crimes in its military campaign against rebels in the Ogaden region, a rights group charged Thursday in a report that complained the U.S. and other Western governments have remained silent about abuses.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Ethiopian troops are beating and strangling civilians, staging public executions and burning villages in Ogaden. It said the allegations were based on more than 100 eyewitness accounts.

An Ethiopian official denied the charges.

A State Department spokesman, Gonzalo Gallegos, said officials had not seen the report. He declined to comment generally about the insurgency in the Ogaden.

Washington looks to Ethiopia for help in the fight against Islamic extremists in East Africa, where al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for several attacks, including the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 225 people. Ethiopia is helping the U.N.-backed government in neighboring Somalia against Muslim insurgents.

"The silence of the U.S. government is not a silence based on ignorance," said Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. "They are ignoring the information available to them."

Ethnic Somalis have been fighting for more than a decade seeking greater autonomy in the desolate Ogaden, which is being explored for oil and gas. Ethiopian forces stepped up operations after rebels attacked a Chinese-run oil exploration field in April 2007, killing 74 people.

"The Ethiopian army's answer to the rebels has been to viciously attack civilians in the Ogaden," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director for Human Rights Watch.

The group also said the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front has violated humanitarian law by conducting the oil attack and by setting land mines along roads. Ethiopia accuses the rebels of being financed by its archenemy, Eritrea.

Bereket Simon, special adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, denied all allegations in the report.

"It's not true," he said. "It's the same old fabrication."

Asked whether an internal investigation was planned, he said: "How can we investigate lies and innuendoes? How can we try to disprove lies by investigating?"

Gagnon chided Ethiopia's leading donors, including the United States, Britain and the European Union, accusing them of ignoring what is happening in Ogaden.

"These widespread and systematic atrocities amount to crimes against humanity," she said. "Yet Ethiopia's major donors, Washington, London and Brussels, seem to be maintaining a conspiracy of silence around the crimes."

Gagnon said Western governments and institutions give at least $2 billion in aid to Ethiopia every year.

"Influential states use many excuses, such as lack of information and strategic priorities, to downplay the grave human rights concerns in Somali Region," she said. "But crimes against humanity can't be swept under the carpet."

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It is sad that the Ethopian regime does not get regular mention of their war crimes in the news (let alone from our politicians) - it seems that certain news pieces have a higher agenda than others. Another case where Oil is more important than people? or maybe a case like Israel where human rights crimes are ignored as Ethopia (like Israel) is a friend of the west. Looks like more double standards by the United States, Britain and the European Union.

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

Taken from The Guardian, Monday June 2 2008
Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.


An amphibious assault vehicle leaves the USS Peleliu, which was used to detain prisoners, according to the human rights group Reprieve. Photograph: Zack Baddor/AP

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

Reprieve believes prisoners may have also been held for interrogation on the USS Ashland and other ships in the Gulf of Aden during this time.

The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.

"By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them."

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, called for the US and UK governments to come clean over the holding of detainees.

"Little by little, the truth is coming out on extraordinary rendition. The rest will come, in time.

Better for governments to be candid now, rather than later. Greater transparency will provide increased confidence that President Bush's departure from justice and the rule of law in the aftermath of September 11 is being reversed, and can help to win back the confidence of moderate Muslim communities, whose support is crucial in tackling dangerous extremism."

The Liberal Democrat's foreign affairs spokesman, Edward Davey, said: "If the Bush administration is using British territories to aid and abet illegal state abduction, it would amount to a huge breach of trust with the British government. Ministers must make absolutely clear that they would not support such illegal activity, either directly or indirectly."

A US navy spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, told the Guardian: "There are no detention facilities on US navy ships." However, he added that it was a matter of public record that some individuals had been put on ships "for a few days" during what he called the initial days of detention. He declined to comment on reports that US naval vessels stationed in or near Diego Garcia had been used as "prison ships".

The Foreign Office referred to David Miliband's statement last February admitting to MPs that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, US rendition flights had twice landed on Diego Garcia. He said he had asked his officials to compile a list of all flights on which rendition had been alleged.

CIA "black sites" are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.

In addition, numerous prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.

A NOT so merry Christmas in occupied Bethlehem

Bethlehem's struggles continue
Taken from Al-Jazeera news Agency, DECEMBER 25, 2007

By Christian Porth in the West Bank

A normally empty Manger Square was filled beyond capacity on Christmas day as thousands of Palestinians, dignitaries and foreigners descended on the little town of Bethlehem to welcome Michel Sabah the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.



The Patriarch's yearly visit was meant to kick off Christmas festivities but this year, as in others, the spirit of the festive season is uniquely intertwined with the fate of all Palestinians, who say the city has suffered from years of Israeli occupation.

And like previous years, despite a boost in tourism, celebrations in Bethlehem have been marred by a poor economic and security situation.

While Bethlehem is the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ atop a hill just 10km away from Jerusalem, the site of Christ's crucifixion, a 10-meter high concrete wall put up by Israel and several military checkpoints keep the two cities very much apart.

Fairy tale Christmas
It is such barriers and restrictions borne of Israeli occupation that has made Christmas bittersweet for Palestinians.

Maxim Sansour, founding board member of Open Bethlehem, an international campaign to address the state of emergency facing Bethlehem, said the city's greatest problems largely go unaddressed every Christmas.

He said: "Christmas comes and goes, but our problems remain."

Issues of growing Israeli settlements which lie immediately on the border of Bethlehem and demolitions of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of the city have made life difficult for Palestinians.

Sansour says Bethlehem will always continue to struggle as long as such Palestinian issues of statehood, economic viability and sustenance under occupation remain unaddressed.

Sansour also believes that visitors and pilgrims who do come show support but at the same time many are also in Bethlehem as part of "the fairy-tale story of Christmas".

Father Garret Edmonds, a Franciscan monk from California who works with pilgrim groups in Palestine and is spending his fifth Christmas in Bethlehem, said: "There are moments of hope but then everything returns to the status quo. It goes on and off like this all the time."

Father Edmonds also highlighted the increasing erosion of the Church and the increasing number of Christians choosing to emigrate from in Palestine.

"It's important to have a viable, living Church, but if things continue the way they are in 25 years there might not be a living church. Bethlehem could become one giant museum," he said.

Life under occupation
In 2006, Open Bethlehem released the results of a questionnaire which examined the reasons behind the high rate of Christian emigration from Bethlehem.

Of 2000 Palestinians surveyed in Bethlehem, 76 per cent said Israeli occupation was the main reason for leaving. Sixteen per cent of the Christians in the city said they are in the process of emigrating, compared to eight per cent of the Muslims.

Many Palestinians also said that foreigners and pilgrims coming to Bethlehem do not experience daily life under occupation.

Palestinians who have Israeli permission to travel between Bethlehem and the West Bank say they are subjected to fingerprint and document scanning, full body searches, and long waits before they are let through.

Some are not even allowed to visit friends and family simply because they live on the wrong side of the wall or in some cases the soldier manning a checkpoint might not feel like letting them through.

Brother Jack Curran, Vice President of Development for Bethlehem University, said: "I have colleagues who haven't been to Jerusalem in years and I can come and go as freely as I want. I feel ashamed of the privilege I have and it's easy to take for granted, I always have to remember that."

"But it is also a privilege that the Palestinians deserve."

Brother Curran, a member of the Lasallian order, felt that Christmas in Bethlehem is not truly reflected because of what he says are the injustices being heaped upon the Palestinians daily.

"The story can't be told without looking seriously at these things," he said.

"Without foreigners," Curran explained, "it would also be a lot worse. We must act as the witnesses and truth tellers, but not just once a year."

Sustain support

Christmas generates a great deal of positive media attention for both Bethlehem and Palestine every year. It is a chance for the world to show the Palestinians some sympathy and solidarity but Sansour said that it never carries on.



"We love good feelings and the Palestinian people deeply appreciate the show of support, but it must be a sustained kind of support."

Bethlehem is a small town; according to the Palestinian Central bureau of Statistics its population in 2006 stood just shy of 30000, and has a very small and localized economy which is dominated by the tourist industry.

According to Open Bethlehem, tourism accounts for 65 per cent of Bethlehem's economy. In November, 80,000 visitors arrived in the city. This was boosted by a further 20,000 in the days leading to Christmas.



Sansour said that while tourism represents a significant portion of Bethlehem's economy many of the tourist operators are Israeli which means that most of the tourists who do come stay for only a short time and promptly return to Jerusalem.

"They come here, take their Disneyland photos and drink some tea from a local shop and go back to Jerusalem," Sansour said.

"Maybe they'll stop by and buy some wood carvings from a shop where the Israeli operators get a commission, but that's about it," he added.

Christmas surge
Most of Bethlehem's local businessmen wait all year just for the Christmas season to come in hopes of boosting their incomes and providing for their families.

It's not surprising given that the poverty rate stands at 60 per cent while unemployment stands at 55 per cent, a slight increase from last year but not overly significant according to George Saadeh, Bethlehem's deputy mayor.

Abed Ibrahim, who works at a sweets shop, said: "Christmas [is] the only time of the year that anyone makes any money."

"It's good for now. But next year it will be bad again until the next Christmas. Nothing will change," he said

Ibrahim added: "Fast dollars won't solve our business problems."

Ameer Jaber, who operates a stall selling boiled corn and roasted peanuts, feels the Palestinians need the kind of media exposure they received for Christmas year-round and not just in Bethlehem, but all over Palestine.

He said: "You foreigners come and help us, but then you leave when you have your pictures and reports, but we're still here and you'll have the same story next year unless we get your help."

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People seem to think that it is only Palestinains Arabs (i.e Muslims) that are occupied and hence not give a second though, but the fact of the matter is that Arab Christians have been living in Palestine peacefully for centuries (well until it had been occupied illegally by Israel). Arab Muslims and Christians in occupied Palestine have been treated harshly, with boarder controls, illegal walls, controls of economic, social and religious activity by the Israelis, leading to many Arab Christians to leave their homes in Palestine and emigrate to another country. This has been happening for decades but you will not get a mention of their plight by the Pope or the archbishop of Canterbury. Maybe Arab Christians are not as important as European/ American Christians? Maybe Bethlehem is not important.

Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention

Taken from the Independent, UK, 27 October 2007
By Leonard Doyle in Washington

An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a devastating attack on the legal process for determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are "enemy combatants".

The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as "unconscionable".

His critique will be the centrepiece of a hearing on 5 December before the US Supreme Court when another attempt is made to shut the prison down. So nervous is the Bush administration of the latest attack – and another Supreme Court ruling against it – that it is preparing a whole new system of military courts to deal with those still imprisoned.

The whistleblower's testimony is the most serious attack to date on the military panels, which were meant to give a fig- leaf of legitimacy to the interrogation and detention policies at Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The major has taken part in 49 status review panels.

"It's a kangaroo court system and completely corrupt," said Michael Ratner, the president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is co-ordinating investigations and appeals lawsuits against the government by some 1,000 lawyers. "Stalin had show trials, but at Guantanamo they are not even show trials because it all takes place in secret."

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held for 558 detainees at the Guantanamo in 2004 and 2005. All but 38 detainees were determined to be "enemy combatants" who could be held indefinitely without charges. Detainees were not represented by a lawyer and had no access to evidence. The only witnesses they could call were other so-called "enemy combatants".

The army major has said that in the rare circumstances in which it was decided that the detainees were no longer enemy combatants, senior commanders ordered another panel to reverse the decision. The major also described "acrimony" during a "heated conference" call from Admiral McGarragh, who reports to the Secretary of the US Navy, when a the panel refused to describe several Uighur detainees as enemy combatants. Senior military commanders wanted to know why some panels considering the same evidence would come to different findings on the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority in China.

When the whistleblower suggested over the phone that inconsistent results were "good for the system ... and would show that the system was working correctly", Admiral McGarragh, he said, had no response. The latest criticism emerged when lawyers investigating the case of a Sudanese hospital administrator, Adel Hamad, who has been held for five years, came across a "stunning" sworn statement from a member of the military panel. The officer they interviewed was so frightened of retaliation from the military that they would not allow their name to be used in the statement, nor to reveal whether the person was a man or woman.

Two other military lawyers have also gone public. In June, Army Lt-Col Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran in US military intelligence, became the first insider to publicly fault the proceedings. In May last year, Lt-Com Matthew Diaz was sentenced to six months in prison and dismissed from the military after he sent the names of all 551 men at the prison to a human rights group.

William Teesdale, a British-born lawyer investigating Mr Hadad's case, said he was certain of his client's innocence, having tracked down doctors who worked with him at an Afghan hospital. "Mr Hamad is an innocent man, and he is not the only one in Guantanamo."

Palestinian inmate dies of wounds

Extracted from BBC, Tuesday, 23 October 2007

A Palestinian prisoner has died of wounds he suffered in a riot at a jail in southern Israel.

Israeli prison officials said the man had been hit by what they called non-lethal objects fired by guards during Monday's riot.

They did not disclose the precise devices used on security grounds.

Palestinians say the guards provoked the riot by searching sleeping quarters at night, and then used unacceptably violent methods to regain control.

The Israeli authorities described the search as routine and said guards had used the correct response in view of the danger to their lives.

Fifteen Palestinians and 15 guards were hurt in Monday's riot, Israeli officials said.

More than 2,000 Palestinians are held in Ketziot Prison, in the Negev desert in southern Israel.

There are more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, many being held without ever having faced trial, the BBC's correspondent in Ramallah, Aleem Maqbool, says. While some have been charged with security offences, most here consider them all to be political prisoners and their release is a key Palestinian demand in the negotiations aimed at ending the conflict, he adds.

Angry demonstrations
Prison authorities identified the man dead inmate only as a 30-year-old male serving a two-year sentence.

Ashraf Ajrami, the Palestinian Authority's minister for prisoner affairs, identified him as Mohammad al-Ashkar, a member of the Islamic Jihad militant group.

Hundreds of Palestinians have come out in protest in the West Bank and Gaza against Ashkar's death and calling for Palestinian prisoners to be released.

At one point early on Monday, some of the prison was on fire as inmates battled with their guards.

Palestinian officials say they believe the number of wounded is far higher and that 10 of the injured prisoners needed hospital treatment.

Gujarat riots a genocide; Modi sanctioned it: Tehelka

Taken from rediff.com, October 25, 2007 21:19 IST
By Onkar Singh in New Delhi

Investigative weekly Tehelka on Thursday claimed to have unravelled the truth behind the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Tehelka claimed it had 'irrefutable' evidence that the killings of Muslims post-Godhra train carnage in Gujarat was 'not a spontaneous swell of anger but a genocide' planned and executed by top functionaries of the Sangh Parivar and state authorities 'with the sanction' of Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Tehelka Editor-in-Chief Tarun Tejpal claimed that the magazine had carried out a sting operation over the last six months by talking to a number of Sangh Parivar leaders, including Godhra BJP MLA Haresh Bhatt, Shiv Sena leader Babu Bajrangi, who was earlier in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and VHP leaders Anil Patel and Dhawal Jayanti Patel, to bring out the truth.

"We have evidence that bombs were being made in the VHP office premises," Harinder Baweja, Editor (Investigations), told rediff.com.

"In Tehelka's ground breaking investigations, for the first time, hear the truth of the genocidal killings from the men who actually did it. In shocking disclosures, Chief Minister Narendra Modi came and patted the back of criminals, and told them that they had done a good job," Baweja said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has reacted sharply to the magazine's report stating that Tehelka was acting as CIA (Congress Investigating Agency) and it was a collusive sting, which could hardly be called investigative journalism.

Party spokesman Prakash Javedekar said the 'dirty tricks department' of the Congress was at work again in view of the assembly elections in Gujarat.

None of the leaders caught on camera in the expose was available for comments, except Gujarat VHP leader Dhawal Jayanti Patel who said Bajrangi had not talked to him during the riots and that he had not seen the sting operation.

Bhatt was purportedly caught on tape saying he was present in a meeting in which Modi allegedly gave him three days time 'to do whatever they wanted.'

"After three days, he (Modi) asked to stop and everything came to a halt," Bhatt said, adding that the chief minister thanked them after the Naroda Patiya masssacre.

The magazine claimed that Dhawal Jayanti Patel told its undercover reporter that the VHP activists made lots of bombs in a factory owned by him. A BJP MLA was shown as saying they even made rocket launchers, which were used in the pogrom.

It also claimed that it has exposed 'a trail of lies and coercions' that establishes the fire in coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra on February 27, 2002 was a case of spontaneous mob fury and not a pre-meditated conspiracy as stated by the Gujarat government.

Additional Reportage: PTI

Shin Bet prevented medical care to Palestinian cancer patient

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 24/10/2007
By Amira Hass

The Shin Bet is refusing to allow a 21-year-old Rafiah man who is sick with cancer and in need of immediate medical care to come to Israel, even though he obtained permission from the Israeli Defense Forces' Coordination and Liaison Administration.

The Shin Bet also arrested the patient's father, who accompanied him to the hospital. Mahmoud Abu Taha was diagnosed with cancer of the small intestine in August 2007. Treatment in Gaza was unsuccessful, and he lost a third of his body weight. In addition, he is not taking all of the vitamins he needs because of the shortage of medications in Gazan hospitals.

Because of his serious condition, the doctors decided to postpone chemotherapy and send him to Tel HaShomer hospital in Ramat Gan. According to Mahmoud's brother, Hanni Abu Taleh, on October 18, they received permission shortly after they filed a request with the IDF. The father and his sick son drove in an ambulance to Erez Crossing, and after a half-hour wait, the father's name was called on the loudspeaker. According to the brother, the patient continued to wait in the ambulance, lying on a stretcher and attached to an oxygen tank and an infusion. After two hours, it was announced on the loudspeaker that he was denied entrance into Israel.

They returned to the hospital in Khan Yunis. At the same time, a person who identified himself as an officer with the Shin Bet called Hanni and told him that his father had been arrested. The family filed another request for Mahmoud to come for medical treatment at Tel HaShomer, but they still have not received a reply. The Shin Bet maintains that "Abu Taha arrived at the Erez Crossing during a specific warning of a terror attack at the border crossing. Due to the fact that it was not allowed to carry out a security check on him, he was prevented from exiting to Israel." The Shin Bet also said that the father of Mahmoud was arrested on suspicion of involvement in terror acitivites.

----------------------------------------------------
The Shin Bet security service have a history of preventing medication going into occupied Palestine as well as allowing medical treatment of Palestinians into Israel. Only a few weeks ago Israeli rights group - Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) reported due to the the Shin Bet organization, in many cases, patients have been denied urgent, life-saving treatment. The report says that the Shin Bet automatically refuses entry permits, and reconsiders its decisions only if legal action is begun. SO why is healt care so rubbish in Occupied Palestine? Could it be that Israel refuses to hand over Palestinian tax payers money so that Palestinians cannot finance themselves? Maybe. Here is a good talkback found in

A jewish racise on the website talkback asked "Give one example of a Jew treated in an Arab WB or Gaza hospital"

Here was a good reply from a sensible person...
Title: #17 Pt 1 - No Israeli would need it,
Name: Rebekah S, City:Washington DC
because Israeli healthcare has not been systematically undermined as it has for Palestinians under Israeli rule. In contrast, healthcare in Gaza was stripped so bare between 1967 and the Oslo Accords, that the PA - which cannot possibly afford to build from scratch an advanced health care system, and which in the case of cancer patients would not be able to do so anyway seeing as Israel refuses to allow radiotherapy equipment into Gaza for "security reasons" - has to pay for advanced treatments abroad. About one-sixth go to Israel, and the PA pays for it. About two-thirds go to Egypt, but the Rafah crossing to Egypt remains closed as long as Israel does not allow the EU monitors based in Ashqelon to enter the Strip and reach the crossing. So a cancer patient today cannot get advanced treatment in Gaza because the Israelis say that would be a security risk, he cannot go to Egypt for it because Israel keeps Rafah closed to punish the Gaza coup, and now he cannot enter Israel either.


LATEST UPDATE: 30 OCTOBER 2007
This week it has been reveale dthat Prime Minister Olmert is to undergo operation for prostate cancer but at the same time the Cancer patient that was prevented from entering the hospital has died.

Israel shaken by troops' tales of brutality against Palestinians

A psychologist blames assaults on civilians in the 1990s on soldiers' bad training, boredom and poor supervision

Taken from The Observer (Guardian online), UK
By Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem

A study by an Israeli psychologist into the violent behaviour of the country's soldiers is provoking bitter controversy and has awakened urgent questions about the way the army conducts itself in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Nufar Yishai-Karin, a clinical psychologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers and heard confessions of frequent brutal assaults against Palestinians, aggravated by poor training and discipline. In her recently published report, co-authored by Professor Yoel Elizur, Yishai-Karin details a series of violent incidents, including the beating of a four-year-old boy by an officer.

The report, although dealing with the experience of soldiers in the 1990s, has triggered an impassioned debate in Israel, where it was published in an abbreviated form in the newspaper Haaretz last month. According to Yishai Karin: 'At one point or another of their service, the majority of the interviewees enjoyed violence. They enjoyed the violence because it broke the routine and they liked the destruction and the chaos. They also enjoyed the feeling of power in the violence and the sense of danger.'

In the words of one soldier: 'The truth? When there is chaos, I like it. That's when I enjoy it. It's like a drug. If I don't go into Rafah, and if there isn't some kind of riot once in some weeks, I go nuts.'

Another explained: 'The most important thing is that it removes the burden of the law from you. You feel that you are the law. You are the law. You are the one who decides... As though from the moment you leave the place that is called Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] and go through the Erez checkpoint into the Gaza Strip, you are the law. You are God.'

The soldiers described dozens of incidents of extreme violence. One recalled an incident when a Palestinian was shot for no reason and left on the street. 'We were in a weapons carrier when this guy, around 25, passed by in the street and, just like that, for no reason - he didn't throw a stone, did nothing - bang, a bullet in the stomach, he shot him in the stomach and the guy is dying on the pavement and we keep going, apathetic. No one gave him a second look,' he said.

The soldiers developed a mentality in which they would use physical violence to deter Palestinians from abusing them. One described beating women. 'With women I have no problem. With women, one threw a clog at me and I kicked her here [pointing to the crotch], I broke everything there. She can't have children. Next time she won't throw clogs at me. When one of them [a woman] spat at me, I gave her the rifle butt in the face. She doesn't have what to spit with any more.'

Yishai-Karin found that the soldiers were exposed to violence against Palestinians from as early as their first weeks of basic training. On one occasion, the soldiers were escorting some arrested Palestinians. The arrested men were made to sit on the floor of the bus. They had been taken from their beds and were barely clothed, even though the temperature was below zero. The new recruits trampled on the Palestinians and then proceeded to beat them for the whole of the journey. They opened the bus windows and poured water on the arrested men.

The disclosure of the report in the Israeli media has occasioned a remarkable response. In letters responding to the recollections, writers have focused on both the present and past experience of Israeli soldiers to ask troubling questions that have probed the legitimacy of the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces.

The study and the reactions to it have marked a sharp change in the way Israelis regard their period of military service - particularly in the occupied territories - which has been reflected in the increasing levels of conscientious objection and draft-dodging.

The debate has contrasted sharply with an Israeli army where new recruits are taught that they are joining 'the most ethical army in the world' - a refrain that is echoed throughout Israeli society. In its doctrine, published on its website, the Israeli army emphasises human dignity.

'The Israeli army and its soldiers are obligated to protect human dignity. Every human being is of value regardless of his or her origin, religion, nationality, gender, status or position.'

However, the Israeli army, like other armies, has found it difficult to maintain these values beyond the classroom. The first intifada, which began in 1987, before the wave of suicide bombings, was markedly different to the violence of the second intifada, and its main events were popular demonstrations with stone-throwing.

Yishai-Karin, in an interview with Haaretz, described how her research came out of her own experience as a soldier at an army base in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. She interviewed 18 ordinary soldiers and three officers whom she had served with in Gaza. The soldiers described how the violence was encouraged by some commanders. One soldier recalled: 'After two months in Rafah, a [new] commanding officer arrived... So we do a first patrol with him. It's 6am, Rafah is under curfew, there isn't so much as a dog in the streets. Only a little boy of four playing in the sand. He is building a castle in his yard. He [the officer] suddenly starts running and we all run with him. He was from the combat engineers.

'He grabbed the boy. I am a degenerate if I am not telling you the truth. He broke his hand here at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock...

'The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing."

Yishai-Karin concluded that the main reason for the soldiers' violence was a lack of training. She found that the soldiers did not know what was expected of them and therefore were free to develop their own way of behaviour. The longer a unit was left in the field, the more violent it became. The Israeli soldiers, she concluded, had a level of violence which is universal across all nations and cultures. If they are allowed to operate in difficult circumstances, such as in Gaza and the West Bank, without training and proper supervision, the violence is bound to come out.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said that, if a soldier deviates from the army's norms, they could be investigated by the military police or face criminal investigation.

She said: 'It should be noted that since the events described in Nufar Yishai-Karin's research the number of ethical violations by IDF soldiers involving the Palestinian population has consistently dropped. This trend has continued in the last few years.'

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?

Another security firm involved in Iraq shooting

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, 10 October 2007
Reuters/AFP/AAP

A foreign security company staffed mainly by Australian guards said one of its security teams was involved in Tuesday's fatal shooting in central Baghdad.

The Iraqi government said two women were shot dead by foreign security guards.

The scene of the incident was near a base of Unity Resources Group (URG), which is staffed mainly by Australian guards.

The Australian head of the security company, Michael Priddin, confirmed the company had been involved in the shooting incident.

"We deeply regret this incident and we will continue to pass on further information when the facts have been verified and the necessary people and authorities have been notified," Mr Priddin told ABC Radio this morning.

Mr Priddin said the exact circumstances of the incident were still to be determined and the company was working with Iraqi authorities to do so.

"In essence, what we know is that one of our security teams was involved in a shooting incident on Tuesday at approximately 1.40 in the afternoon in the Karrada area of Baghdad," he said.

"One of our security teams which was mobile was approached at speed by a vehicle which had failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings which included hand signals and signal flares.

Finally shots were fired at the vehicle and the vehicle itself stopped."

Security organisations in Iraq are under intense scrutiny after guards from the US security firm Blackwater allegedly opened fire without provocation in Baghdad last month and killed 17 people while escorting a convoy of US diplomats.

Several witnesses said the convoy had headed in the direction of the URG base - a hotel complex sealed off behind high concrete walls and sand bags.

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Well you couldn't make it up... The fact is that over the years while British and American soldiers have faced courts martial over alleged crimes carried out in Iraq, not one security contractor has been prosecuted at home or in Iraq despite a significant number of allegations of abuse. The media have only recently been tuning into these stories.

Iraq seeks $9m for each Blackwater victim

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, October 10, 2007
By Anne Davies and agencies

IRAQI authorities have demanded $US8 million (8.9 million Australian dollars) in compensation for the families of each of the 17 people killed when Blackwater USA guards opened fire on a crowded square last month.

A report issued by the Iraqi Government, which calls on the US Government to end its relationship with the controversial security firm within six months, is set to further raise tensions between the Government of the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and the White House.
The report said the compensation - totalling $US136 million - was so high "because Blackwater uses employees who disrespect the rights of Iraqi citizens even though they are guests in this country".

The US military pays compensation to the families of civilians killed in battles or to cover property damage, but at far lower amounts. The Iraqi Government has called on US authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts and has disputed US claims that a law agreed to in 2004 grants the Blackwater guards immunity.

"The investigation committee appointed by [Mr Maliki] has finished its inquiry and has found that there was no evidence that the convoy of Blackwater came under fire directly or indirectly," a Government statement said, quoting the inquiry's findings. "Employees of the company violated the rules governing use of force by security companies. They have committed a deliberate crime and should be punished under the law."

The Iraqi Government would now take "judicial measures to punish the company", the statement said.

The US embassy was tight-lipped on whether those involved in the killings would be handed over for prosecution in a case that has thrown the spotlight on the murky world of private security operators in Iraq.

"This and other matters will be discussed by the joint commission as they proceed with their work [so it is] best not to prejudge the outcome of their discussions," an embassy spokeswoman, Mirembe Nantongo, told AFP, referring to a joint Iraq-US inquiry into the shootings.

Blackwater USA has more than 1000 contractors in Iraq protecting US diplomats, reconstruction and aid officials. On September 16 an operation went horribly wrong when a convoy entered the crowded Nisoor Square and the square was sprayed by machine-gun fire.

Since then, it has been revealed that the company has been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2004.

Blackwater officials have claimed that the convoy on September 16 was under attack from gunfire, but no Iraqi witnesses have corroborated the report.

The report found that Blackwater guards also had killed 21 Iraqi civilians and wounded 27 in previous shootings since it took over security for US diplomats in Baghdad after the US invasion.The Iraqi Government did not say whether it would try to prosecute in those cases.

The US has not made conclusive findings about the shooting, though there are multiple investigations under way and Congress has opened inquiries into the role of private security contractors.

Rights Group: Israel Ruining Economy In Gaza Strip

Taken from The Jersualem Post, Jul. 4, 2007
By Dan Izenberg

The virtually total closure imposed on the Gaza Strip since Hamas's takeover in June has almost destroyed the Palestinian economy and threatens to turn its 1.4 million residents into charity cases, Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, charged in a report released Wednesday.

Israel has completely shut down the Karni crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, which was the primary artery for the import and export of almost all commercial items including goods and raw materials.

Since the closure, import of humanitarian goods has been allowed through the Kerem Shalom, Sufa and Erez crossings, but their capacities are highly limited, according to the report.

The new policy, which, according to Gisha, is aimed at bringing the Hamas government to its knees, has exacerbated the already dire economic plight of the population.

Seventy-five percent of Gaza's factories have shut down because of the closure. The rest are operating on borrowed time, until the stocks of raw materials are exhausted.

Eighty-five percent of the population is already dependent on food aid from international organizations and the number is growing.

There is a severe shortage of raw materials including flour and sugar for domestic and industrial consumption. The price of flour has increased by 34 percent, powdered milk by 30% and rice by 20%.

Israel has erased from its computers the customs code used to identify goods entering Gaza and issued orders not to release them until further notice. This policy has cost Palestinian importers $1.5 million in the first two weeks of the closure, including fines paid for the use of rented containers, breach of contracts and damage to goods stored in warehouses for extended periods of time, the organization said.

The policy has also paralyzed agricultural exports from Gaza to Israel, the West Bank and other countries.

According to Gisha, Israel still occupies Gaza despite the disengagement largely because it controls all the land border crossings and controls and prohibits access to the area by air and sea. Therefore, Israel is obliged by international law to protect the civilian population under its control.

"Instead," Gisha charged, "it has adopted a policy of collective punishment, in violation of international humanitarian law, which explicitly provides that no person shall be punished for a deed he did not commit."

We Got It Wrong, Says Former Torturer

Taken from The Sydney morning Herald, June 11, 2007
By Tim Shipman (of Cox Newspapers)

A FORMER US Army torturer has described the traumatic effects of American interrogation techniques in Iraq - on their victims and on the perpetrators themselves.

Tony Lagouranis said he conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonising stress positions, kept suspects awake for weeks on end, used dogs to terrify prisoners and subjected others to hypothermia.

But he said he was deeply scarred by the realisation that what he did had contributed to the plight of US forces in Iraq.

Mr Lagouranis, 37, said he suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks after returning to Chicago, where he works as a pub doorman.

Between January 2004 and January 2005, first at Abu Ghraib prison and then in Mosul, in northern Babil province, he tortured suspects, most of whom he said were innocent. He realised he had entered a moral dungeon when he found himself reading a Holocaust memoir, hoping to pick up torture tips from the Nazis.

Mr Lagouranis told The Sunday Telegraph: "When I first got back I had a lot of anxiety. I had a personal crisis because I felt I had done immoral things and I didn't see a way to cope with that."

Disturbingly for the British military, which has distanced itself from the worst excesses of Abu Ghraib, Mr Lagouranis says the Americans learnt much of their uncompromising approach from British interrogators.

"We heard about interrogators in Northern Ireland who were successful. Some of our interrogators went on the British interrogation course, which was tough. People wanted to emulate that, but we went too far."

Mr Lagouranis said he never beat a prisoner. "[But] these coercive techniques - isolation, dogs, sleep deprivation, stress positions, hypothermia - crossed a legal line because they violated the Geneva Conventions," he said.

His story raises disturbing questions about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques. British intelligence has used information supplied under torture in Uzbekistan, and the Government has been accused of turning a blind eye to suspects being abducted and sent to secret prisons where they could be tortured.

Mr Lagouranis, who has written a recently published book about his experiences, said these techniques were developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War because they are successful in breaking a person's will and spirit. "That doesn't mean they work in terms of extracting intelligence," he said. "I didn't get actionable intelligence using the harsher methods; I got it using manipulation and lying and by promising them things I didn't deliver on."

Mr Lagouranis is scathing about a system in which inexperienced young interrogators copied what they saw in Hollywood and on television programs such as 24, whose lead character Jack Bauer regularly uses torture on terrorists.

In the book, Fear Up Harsh - a term for intimidating a prisoner by shouting at him - he says torture has cost the US its moral authority in Iraq by detaining innocent people and treating them badly.

"I could blame [President George] Bush and [former defence secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, but I would always have to also blame myself," he wrote.

The campaign group Human Rights Watch and two of Mr Lagouranis's fellow interrogators confirmed details of his account.

London Student’s Jungle War Escape Led To ‘Rendition’ Trap

Taken from The Times, UK, June 10, 2007
By Stephen Grey

A BRITISH student who was caught up in fighting in Somalia has described how he fled for his life only to be arrested as a suspected Al-Qaeda member and then rescued by a British consul from a secret operation to transfer terrorist suspects to Ethiopia for interrogation.

Reza Afsharzadagen, 25, from north London, was among hundreds of refugees forced to flee battles last December between Islamic radicals who had seized power in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and Ethiopian soldiers trying to install a rival United Nations-backed government.

After dodging bombs from American warplanes deployed in support of the Ethiopians and trekking through jungle for 13 days, Afsharzadagen reached safety in Kenya. But there he was detained as a suspected terrorist and questioned for nearly a month without being charged.

He and three other British Muslims who were arrested - Shahajan Janjua, Hamza Chent-ouf, and Mohammed Ezzoueck, all from London - were eventually returned home and cleared of any suspicion of terrorist activity after the intervention of the Foreign Office.

But more than 85 other captives who had fled Somalia were flown back to the war zone and later interrogated for weeks at a prison in Ethiopia. Among those transferred were women, and children as young as seven months old, who were alleged to be from the families of militants.

The mass transfers in East Africa were the first case to come to light of an “extraordinary rendition” - the covert transfer of terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation - involving children.

Afsharzadagen’s account, in an interview for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme tomorrow, emerged as arguments about the rendition programme intensified. The Council of Europe reported last Friday that the CIA had run secret prisons in Poland and Romania. The CIA said such claims were biased and distorted, and insisted it had operated lawfully.

Yesterday the Association of Chief Police Officers was accused by the human rights group Liberty of “spin” after it concluded in a separate inquiry that there was no evidence that British airports had been “used to transport people by the CIA for torture in other countries”.

Afsharzadagen says he travelled to Mogadishu last September after the radical Islamic Courts Union drove out war-lords who had ruled for 15 years. The US and other governments warned that the regime was establishing an extreme form of Islamic rule, sheltering Al-Qaeda members and creating jihadist training camps.

Some preachers in British mosques were urging young Muslims to travel to Somalia to help the Islamists. Afsharzadagen, who completed a computing degree at London Metropolitan University, claimed he had gone partly in search of “adventure” and partly to do voluntary work, teaching young Somalis computer skills.

When he arrived, he said, he found people revelling in their freedom to walk around the city for the first time in years without fear. “It wasn’t like the Taliban in Afghanistan,” he said. “There were women working and walking on the streets.”

Within three months, troops from Ethiopia entered Somalia with the aim of replacing the Islamic Courts Union with a government of national unity. As the bombs began to fall near Mogadishu, Afsharzadagen and many other foreigners fled.

Travelling south with convoys of refugees, he met the other Britons for the first time and they took a boat towards the Kenyan border. “It was like a big canoe - when we arrived we had to swim ashore - that’s when I lost all my money,” he said.

For several days they hid in the jungle as they watched US helicopters and warplanes seeking out Al-Qaeda fugitives and listened to the bombing. “We felt we were being hunted down.”
One morning Afsharzadagen woke to the sound of gunfire and explosions nearby. He was separated from his friends as they fled towards the Kenyan border. “I just got up and ran. I left my passport. I left my food rations. Everything.”

By the time the gunfire had died away he was lost in the jungle with 30 people, mostly strangers. As they trudged through the bush in search of help, they drank from puddles. By the 13th day many were close to collapse. Then someone heard a cock crow, indicating a settlement nearby.

The villagers gave them honey but Kenyan soldiers who turned up lashed out with kicks. “Some were telling us, ‘You’re Al-Qaeda, we’ve finally caught you’.” From the nearby town of Kiunga, where officers from Kenya’s counter-terrorism unit were waiting, they were flown to Nairobi, where they were held in crowded communal cells.

Afsharzadagen said he was asked if he had handled weapons or trained in a terrorist camp. “I said I hadn’t. But they would tell me, ‘You’re lying’.”

Requests to see a British diplomat were refused, but eventually Afsharzadagen and the others were taken to a hotel to meet some officers from MI5. The first one called himself Richard.
“He told me he was here to help me. But it wasn’t true. I knew they were there to trap us,” he said.

After returning to their cells, the Britons’ hopes of going home rose briefly when they were moved to the airport. Then they noticed cars and lorries carrying other prisoners.

Handcuffed and blindfolded, they were flown instead to an unknown city in Somalia and handed over to Ethiopian soldiers who locked them in a dark cell teeming with cockroaches.

But after two days, an official told them they were leaving. At the top of a flight of stairs, Afsharzadagen was introduced to a British consul who had flown to Somalia to bring them out.

An RAF plane took them from Kenya to Britain. No evidence was found of any terrorist connection to them.

For the other prisoners, including an American, a Frenchman and three Swedes, the ordeal was far from over. They were moved to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, for interrogation. Among the 85 transferred, according to flight manifests, were at least 11 women accompanied by 11 children.

One of them was a 25-year-old Tanzanian, Fatma Chande. After her release she alleged the police in Kenya had threatened to strangle her. “They tried to make me admit my husband was a member of Al-Qaeda,” she claimed.

“When we arrived at the airport, we were handcuffed and our headscarves were pulled down over our eyes. The men were hooded. The children were crying all the time saying, ‘We want to go home’.”

The prisoners transferred to Ethiopia were questioned by Americans. “They’ve concealed their role, but you can assume the Americans were behind all these renditions,” said a senior western diplomat in Nairobi. “By sending prisoners to Ethiopia, they had a convenient place to interrogate people.”

Judges At Guantanamo Throw Out 2 Cases

Taken from Yahoo News, Tue Jun 5
By ANDREW O. SELSKY, Associated Press

With one word — "unlawful" — the only two war-crimes trials against Guantanamo detainees fell apart in a single day, marking a stunning setback to Washington's attempts to try dozens of detainees in military court.

Two military judges dismissed charges Monday against a Guantanamo detainee accused of chauffeuring Osama bin Laden and another who allegedly killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen and Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was 15 when he was arrested on an Afghan battlefield, were the only two of the roughly 380 prisoners at Guantanamo charged with crimes under a reconstituted military trial system.

Monday's rulings stand to complicate efforts by the United States to try other suspected al-Qaida and Taliban figures in military courts.

Defense attorneys and legal experts blamed the rush by Congress and President Bush last year to restore the war-crimes trials after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the previous system, declaring it unconstitutional. In a remarkable coincidence, it was Hamdan's lawsuit that wound up in the Supreme Court.

In both of Monday's cases, the judges ruled that the new legislation says only "unlawful enemy combatants" can be tried by the military trials, known as commissions. But Khadr and Hamdan previously had been identified by military panels here only as enemy combatants, lacking the critical "unlawful" designation.

"The fundamental problem is that the law was not carefully written," said Madeline Morris, a Duke University law professor. "It was rushed through in a flurry of political pressure from the White House ... and it is quite riddled with internal contradictions and anomalies."

Prosecuting attorneys in both cases indicated they would appeal the dismissals. But the court designated to hear the appeals — known as the court of military commissions review — doesn't even exist yet, said Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay.

Army Maj. Beth Kubala, spokeswoman for the Office of Military Commissions that organizes the trials, said "the public should make no assumption about the future of military commissions."

She said they will continue to operate openly and fairly and added that dismissals of the charges "reflect that the military judges operate independently."

She declined to comment on how the Office of Military Commissions planned to respond to the setbacks, saying she didn't want to speculate.

Military prosecutors declined to appear before reporters after their cases collapsed.

The distinction between classifications of enemy combatants is important because if they were "lawful," they would be entitled to prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions.

A Pentagon spokesman said the issue was little more than semantics.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon said the entire Guantanamo system deals with people who act as "unlawful enemy combatants," operating outside any internationally recognized military, without uniforms or other things that make them party to the Geneva Conventions.

"It is our belief that the concept was implicit that all the Guantanamo detainees who were designated as 'enemy combatants' ... were in fact unlawful," Gordon said.

But Morris said the Military Commissions Act defines a lawful enemy combatant, in addition to a uniformed fighter belonging to a regular force — as "a member of a militia, volunteer corps or organized resistance movement belonging to a state party engaged in such hostilities and who meets four additional criteria."

The dismissals of the cases do not spell freedom for Khadr or Hamdan.

"It is very difficult when practical conditions for him don't change," said Joseph McMillan, one of Hamdan's attorneys.

Still, Hamdan's military attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, said his client "is relieved" by Allred's ruling.

"He hopes he gets a fair trial and, like the rest of us, is patiently waiting for it," Swift told reporters.

Sullivan, the chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay, said the dismissal of Khadr's case could spell the end of the war-crimes trial system. He said none of the detainees held at this isolated military base in southeast Cuba has been found to be an "unlawful" enemy combatant.

"It is not just a technicality; it's the latest demonstration that this newest system just does not work," Sullivan told journalists. "It is a system of justice that does not comport with American values."

Sullivan said reclassifying detainees as "unlawful" would require a time-consuming overhaul of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals that first classified them as enemy combatants. But Gregory McNeal, a law professor at Pennsylvania State University, said nothing prevents the Defense Department from reconvening the hearings for detainees headed to trial and declaring them to be "unlawful" combatants.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said a retrial is possible because Brownback dismissed Khadr's case without prejudice. Hamdan's case also was dismissed without prejudice.

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said he plans to hold hearings on the Military Commissions Act, which he said is "riddled with problems and created a process that operates outside the rule of law — it has crippled our ability to deal with the real criminals still being held at Guantanamo."

The only other detainee charged under the new system, Australian David Hicks, pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida and is serving a nine-month sentence in Australia. Sullivan said the dismissal of the Khadr case raised questions about the legitimacy of Hicks' conviction.

But Hicks' lawyer, David McLeod, said Tuesday that his client was unlikely to challenge his conviction now that he had the certainty of a release date.

"I don't think it's helpful to go down that path at the moment for David," McLeod told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "He has chose a route and he proposes to continue down that route."

Hicks' father Terry Hicks agreed with the lawyer, adding that his son could he ordered to serve the suspended six years and three months balance of his sentence if he appealed and lost.

In Italy, Trial Of CIA Agents Begins

In the first prosecution of a disputed counter-terrorism tactic, 26 Americans are tried in absentia in the abduction of a cleric.

Taken from The LA Times, June 9, 2007
By Tracy Wilkinson

MILAN, ITALY — As President Bush headed for Italy on Friday, a Milan court opened the trial of a group of CIA agents accused of kidnapping a radical Egyptian cleric — the first legal prosecution of one of the administration's most controversial counter-terrorism tactics.

Twenty-six American defendants, including two CIA station chiefs and an Air Force colonel, are being tried in absentia in the 2003 abduction from a Milan sidewalk of the cleric known as Abu Omar.

The tactic under scrutiny in the case is called extraordinary rendition. It involves the capture of a terrorism suspect in one country and his transfer not to the U.S. but to a third for interrogation, without court orders or judicial oversight. In many cases, including this one, the suspects have said they were tortured. Human rights officials accuse the Bush administration of using scores of extraordinary renditions to "outsource" torture, an allegation Washington denies.

The 26 Americans left Italy before the first arrest warrants were issued two years ago, and none is expected to cooperate with the Milan proceedings.

This gave a sort of virtualreality feel to Friday's court session.

Judge Oscar Magi opened the trial, reading the indictment and ticking off the Americans' names, repeating 26 times:

"Fugitive."

"Fugitive."

"Fugitive."

Court-appointed defense attorneys for each of the American defendants filled the courtroom, but the metal cages along the walls that usually contain suspects were empty. Most of the defense attorneys have never met or communicated with their clients, and in many cases don't even know their real names. (The agents allegedly used aliases in the Abu Omar operation.)
Seven Italians are also charged, including the country's former top spymaster and his No. 2, who are accused of sanctioning or aiding in the kidnap.

The Milan prosecution, along with similar cases in Germany and Switzerland, exposed the policy of renditions, which Bush was eventually forced to acknowledge. Only in Italy, however, has such a case gone to trial, a public forum that threatens to further illuminate the actions of CIA operatives and the long-denied complicity of their European counterparts.

"We want to punish terrorists — but in the courtroom," Milan's lead prosecutor, Armando Spataro, said in commenting on the significance of the landmark trial. The war on terrorism, he said, should be waged "within the full respect of the laws of our Western democracies."

In an uncomfortable coincidence for American officials that highlighted the ongoing strain in U.S.-Italian relations, the trial started just hours before Bush arrived in Italy for a day-and-a-half visit following the Group of 8 summit in Germany.

Also Friday, a new European watchdog report documented the existence of secret CIA prisons in Poland and Romania where terrorism suspects were allegedly subjected to harsh treatment.

It was the latest in a series of revelations exposing widely criticized aspects of Washington's counter-terrorism campaign.

Inside a cavernous marble building that serves as Milan's main courthouse, the trial was adjourned until June 18 while Judge Magi decides whether to suspend the proceedings pending a constitutional challenge to the case.

The Italian government has asked the constitutional court, the highest in the land, to void the indictments because of concern that prosecutors will use state secrets to make their case. A challenge initiated by the center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi, a loyal Bush ally, has been continued by the center-left government of his successor, Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

The two governments apparently shared a fear that courtroom exposure would embarrass Italy's intelligence agencies and lay bare their practices, including secret wiretaps against the defendants.

"It is in our interest to have a fast trial," defense attorney Titta Madia said, "but it is also important to understand what evidence can be used and what cannot be used."

Madia represents Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italy's military intelligence and the highest-ranking Italian defendant. Pollari, who was not in court Friday, has argued that national security shields his actions; he says he knew about, but did not condone, the abduction of Abu Omar.

The trial dealt mostly with procedural matters, including a defense motion to disallow papers filed on Abu Omar's behalf because of questions over their authenticity. The motion was denied.

Judge Magi also allowed Abu Omar and his wife, Nabila Ghali, to be listed as injured parties in the case, which allows their lawyers to question witnesses with the prosecution.

Abu Omar, whose full name is Hassan Osama Nasr, remains in Egypt, where he spent more than three years in prison after CIA operatives allegedly abducted him and flew him to Cairo on a private plane that took off from the U.S.-run part of Aviano Air Base in northern Italy.

He has said that while imprisoned he was beaten, threatened with rape, shocked with electricity, tied to a wet mattress and left in a tiny cell crawling with rats. He continues to suffer from permanent injuries, including a back injury and loss of hearing in both ears, according to his lawyer, Montasser Zayat.

Zayat traveled to Italy this week and appeared at Friday's hearing. Through an interpreter — an imam at a Milan Islamic center — Zayat said Abu Omar would like to attend the trial but was reluctant because he faced arrest. And Egyptian authorities have barred him and his wife from leaving the country, Zayat said.

"He wants to come and testify even though he could face legal action," Zayat said. "His presence is important to confirm what he has alleged happened to him."

At the time Abu Omar was picked up by the Americans, Italian law enforcement officials were building a case against him, alleging that he recruited Islamic fighters for Afghanistan and Iraq.

Italian investigators have said they were about to arrest and indict him when the rendition blew their efforts out of the water.

Abu Omar, in a telephone interview with Al Jazeera television Friday night, said he hoped the trial would "show the world the truth" about the "No. 1 terrorist," Bush, and his government's actions.

The only defendant who showed up for Friday's hearing was Luciano di Gregori, a veteran agent with the military intelligence service headed by Pollari. He is accused of helping to organize the abduction.

"I have nothing to hide," Di Gregori told reporters. "I've done this job for the last 33 years with my head held high and in the full light of day."

U.S. officials have made it clear that the accused American men and women will not be made available to Italian authorities, even if extradition orders are issued.

The U.S. strategy has evidently been one of ignoring the trial and refusing the court's jurisdiction.

One of the defendants, Robert Seldon Lady, who was the CIA station chief in Milan, initially hired an attorney and filed a number of motions. But he abruptly dropped the lawyer early this year and, like the other American defendants, began eschewing any contact with the court.

Lady, who has retired from the CIA, said in the March edition of GQ magazine that he was following instructions. "The agency has told me to keep quiet and let this blow over," he said.

It is extremely rare for a government friendly to the U.S. to attempt to prosecute its secret agents.

Spataro and other Italian law enforcement officials said they were able to build the case after the operatives involved in the Abu Omar operation spoke carelessly on easily traceable cellular telephones, left behind photocopies of their passports and driver's licenses, and ran up bills of tens of thousands of dollars at some of Milan's best hotels.

Because of its groundbreaking potential, the trial is being watched closely by human rights experts around the world.

"It is really the only time, so far, where we are actually getting to the merits of the rendition program and trying to hold someone accountable," said Meg Satterthwaite, law professor with New York University's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

A trial, she said, "requires a testing of evidence, in a court, that represents a whole different level of credibility and proof beyond what we have had until now."

Police Reject UK Rendition Claims YET Picture Proves 'Torture Flights' Are STILL Landing In The UK

On the day Tony Blair lectured Vladimir Putin about human rights, democracy and the Litvinenko murder, his own government was accused of colluding in breathtaking lawbreaking. The report said the CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania for two years. Britain provided logistical support by letting the agency’s aircraft use UK civilian and military airports dozens of times....

Taken from The Mail, UK, 10th June 2007
By GLEN OWEN

The row over CIA 'torture flights' using British airports has deepened following fresh evidence that a plane repeatedly linked to the controversial programme landed in the UK just days ago.

The plane was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk last weekend, and watching aviation experts said the aircraft, piloted by crew clad in desert fatigues, was immediately surrounded on the runway by armed American security forces.


This flight was spotted landing at a UK airport - proof that 'rendition ' flights are still taking place

Its registration number, clearly visible on the fuselage, identifies it as a plane which the European Parliament says has been involved in 'ghost flights' to smuggle terrorist suspects to shadowy interrogation centres abroad.

Records show the plane is owned by Blackwater USA, a CIA contractor described as "the most secretive and powerful mercenary army on the planet". An eyewitness, who previously worked as an RAF electronic warfare expert, said that as the plane - a CASA-212 Aviocar - taxied to a stop on the runway it was met by a US military Humvee.

The vehicle contained four US security policemen armed with M16 assault rifles, who accompanied the camouflaged crew to the airport terminal.

The man, who did not want to be identified, added: "I thought it was curious that they would give a civilian plane an armed guard."

Another spotter, who took the picture of it landing, recorded it touching down at 4.36pm on Saturday.

The disclosure follows damning findings by the Council of Europe human rights organisation, which accused Tony Blair on Friday of colluding in a CIA operation to run secret prisons in Poland and Romania by allowing the agency to use UK airports.

The study was contradicted on the same day by a report from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), which concluded that there was no evidence to support the claims.

But the director of the human rights group Liberty revealed that ACPO had admitted it restricted its inquiry to a review of media reports on the issue.

She accused them of rushing out their ‘cursory’ findings as part of a politically-motivated 'spin' operation.

The US plane's arrival was also logged by Touchdown News, a group of enthusiasts who record the movements of military aircraft at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath.

The group said the plane used its civilian call sign when talking to air traffic control and took off again early on the morning of Sunday June 3, flying east.


The path that the 'torture flight' took

A report last November by a European Parliament committee placed the plane - registration number N964BW - on a list of "companies and aircraft used by the CIA for extraordinary rendition flights". The plane was previously registered with the Bolivian army, and has been pictured on the ground in the Afghan capital Kabul within the past year.

The American Federal Aviation Authority lists the plane as being operated by two companies, Aviation World Wide Services and a sister company, Presidential Airways.

The European Parliament report describes these as shell companies operating as subsidiaries of Blackwater USA, "an important contractor for the CIA and the US military" which bases the planes in Malta.

Research by a further group, The American Centre for Media and Democracy, claims that flight-tracking internet technology shows the plane landed at least twice in the first six months of 2006 at Camp Peary, the U.S. naval reservation in Virginia known as The Farm and widely alleged to be a CIA training facility.

Tracking technology shows that the plane was en route from Canada to Greenland two days before it was sighted at Mildenhall: the internet software does not extend beyond American airspace, but the expert explained that its route would be consistent with a refuelling stop in the Arctic - it only has a range of about 2,000 miles - followed by a further refuel in East Anglia, before heading to Malta.

From there it could 'leapfrog' from US bases in the the former Soviet states bordering Afghanistan on to Kabul.

A recent book on Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill, an American author, described the company as the world's "most secretive and powerful mercenary firm", carrying out quasi-military operations on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq, Afghanistan and within the U.S.

It was founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, a former elite Navy Seal and fundamentalist Christian millionaire who bankrolls far-Right causes.

This newspaper first cast doubt on the Government's claim to have no knowledge of the CIA’s activities 18 months ago when we published pictures of three planes at Scottish airports which had been linked by human rights activists to rendition.

Flight records showed the planes had been given landing rights by the MoD, despite there being no record of passenger lists or details of the purpose of the flights.

The Council of Europe dossier, compiled by Swiss senator Dick Marty, said the U.S. had used Britain's help to establish a "global spider's web" of jails and airports to pursue a war on terror without rules.

It claimed the secret centres had been set up so it could use interrogation techniques amounting to torture which are illegal in the US.

These include "waterboarding" – the dunking of blindfolded suspects so they believe they are drowning – solitary confinement, shackling in confined cells and exposure of naked captives to extremes of heat, cold and noise.

Separately, the Washington Post newspaper has reported that mercenaries working for Blackwater were at the centre of an infamous firefight in Iraq in April 2004 when guarding the U.S. headquarters in Najaf - despite never having applied to operate as a private security company in the country, The report said that in the battle, footage of which circulated on the internet, the troops had opened fire on Shia Iraqi civilians protesting outside, unleashing rounds so rapidly they had to pause every 15 minutes to allow their gun barrels to cool down.

In his book, Scahill claims that the Blackwater employees in the country are using "experimental ammunition' made of 'blended metal, which shatter on impact to create untreatable wounds".

Shami Chakrabati, the director of Liberty, alleges that 210 CIA flights carrying terrorist suspects for possible torture have entered Britain since 2001.

She called for a full investigation, claiming the ACPO probe was unsatisfactory.

"ACPO have admitted to me in a private letter that their investigation amounted to little more than a cursory review of reports on the issue – which they issued, 18 months after I requested it, to coincide with the Council of Europe’s report," she said.

"Maybe now The Mail on Sunday has produced this photographic evidence they will conduct a proper inquiry."

An ACPO spokeswoman said: "These planes could be empty - there is no evidence that prisoners were on board."

She denied Liberty’s claim that their inquiry had been limited and driven by spin.

"There has been a full examination to see if there was any evidence to suggest criminal activity, and there wasn't," she said.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "We have been through the records, and there is no evidence of detainees being rendered through the UK since 1997."
No one at RAF Mildenhall was available for comment.