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US Secretly Torturing Prisoners Of War
American People Not Being Told Of Lawless CIA's Torture Connection
3/14/02 10:44:40 AM
Sydney Morning Herald
Sydney, Australia -- http://www.smh.com.au/news/0203/13/world/world6.html
US in secret deal with 'torture' states
By Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
The United States has been secretly sending prisoners with suspected
al-Qaeda
connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal,
according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources.
Prisoners are being moved to places in Egypt and Jordan where they can be
subjected to torture and threats to their families to extract information
sought by the US.
The normal extradition procedures have been bypassed in the transportation
of
dozens of prisoners suspected of terrorist connections, according to a
report
in the Washington Post, with suspects moved to countries where the CIA has
close ties with the local intelligence services.
The report says US intelligence agents have been involved in a number of
interrogations. A CIA spokesman refused to comment on the allegations on
Monday.
A State Department spokesman said the US had been "working very closely
with
other countries ... It's a global fight against terrorism".
"After September 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the
time," a diplomat told the Washington Post. "It allows us to get
information
from terrorists in a way we can't do on US soil."
Suspects are being sent to a third country rather than to the US so as to
avoid highly publicised cases that could lead to a further backlash from
Islamist extremists, diplomats say.
One of the prisoners, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, is allegedly linked to
Richard Reid, the Briton accused of the attempted "shoe bomb" attack on an
American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December. He was flown
from
Indonesia to Egypt without a court hearing, after his name appeared on al-
Qaeda documents. He remains in custody in Egypt and has been subjected to
interrogation byintelligence agents.
An Indonesian Government official said disclosing the Americans' role
would
have exposed President Megawati Sukarnoputri to criticism from Muslim
political parties.
"We can't be seen to be co-operating too closely with the United States,"
the
official said.
A Yemeni microbiology student has also been flown from Pakistan to Jordan,
and
US forces seized five Algerians and a Yemeni in Bosnia on January 19 and
flew
them to Guantanamo Bay after the men were released by the Bosnian supreme
court for lack of evidence, and despite an injunction from the Bosnian
human
rights chamber that four of them be allowed to remain there pending
further
proceedings.
Civil rights lawyers based in Los Angeles have tried unsuccessfully to
have
Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in US courts or treated as prisoners of
war.
The US administration has resisted this, arguing that those detainedwere
not
entitled to be regarded as prisoners of war because they were terrorists
rather than soldiers and were not part of a recognised army.
Libertarian Socialist News
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