"Cruel, inhuman and degrading"

[amari_z]

Long rant. Quotes are from articles posted below.

I recently posted an article on a poll of Americans' views toward torture--here's the results of another:

According to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, 44 percent of the public thinks torture is often or sometimes justified as a way to obtain important information, while 51 percent say it is rarely or never justified. A clear majority—58 percent—would support torture to thwart a terrorist attack, but asked if they would still support torture if that made it more likely enemies would use it against Americans, 57 percent said no. Some 73 percent agree that America's image abroad has been hurt by the torture allegations.

I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot recently and wondering how we've arrived at the point where we're seriously debating whether the U.S. should be torturing people.

On only a very few things in life am I an absolutist. Government sanctioned torture is one of those things. There are no circumstances in which a government should authorize itself to torture any human being. Period.

I've heard the argument many times now--"but what if it's to save lives?" (and always the question seems to end with "from a terrorist plot" as though it is somehow worse to die from a terrorist attack than at the hands of some regular murderer). But even so it's never going to be that simple. There is almost never going to be a way to actually know that the person you have before you really has information that will save lives (unless it's a tv show). And moreover, there are certain rules we follow in a civilized society that open the door for the potential loss of life. We follow these rules because we value the principles behind them highly enough to view them as something we will not sacrifice simply because it seems easier or better at the moment. For example, we do not authorize our domestic police to torture non-terrorists criminals to get information, even if it could be life saving. A person whom the police think has evidence about the whereabouts of a kidnapped child cannot have his fingernails pulled out by the police, even if the police think the child's life is imminent danger. (Not to say that police brutality doesn’t occur with appalling frequency in this country—but those acts are illegal and recourse exists under the law for the victim.)

In our legal system the ends are not supposed to justify the means--just look at the Fourth Amendment, which up until the Patriot Act was supposed to keep the police out of your business. Where evidence has been unlawfully seized by the police, our legal system demands (or used to) that even if the result is that a clearly guilty person (guilty of murder, rape, child molestation, it doesn't matter, nor does it matter if everyone thinks that the person will immediately go out and kill/rape/molest more people) goes free because that illegally obtained evidence may not be used to try them. No one is happy when a guilty criminal goes free (except the criminal), but our laws recognize that the principle behind the Fourth Amendment cannot be upheld if we allow it to be violated simply where the end result of that one particular situation seems better for us.

There's a lot more I could say here, but I'll just add two more points before moving on. First, even if the mere idea of a (potentially innocent—don’t tell me that our law enforcement authorities don’t make errors) person being tortured doesn't turn one's stomach for its own sake, I would point out that we’ve set our own law enforcement people down a dark path. Where are the limits? What kind of burden (and possible temptation) are you placing on people when:

Ordinary military policemen were told by intelligence officials to do things like "loosen this guy up for us" and "make sure this guy has a bad night" and "give him the treatment," according to Sgt. Javal Davis, one of the defendants in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

What are we doing to them, and by extension to our own society? There’s a reason that the UN convention on torture includes “inhumane” in its title—it’s not the victim that’s being referred to. And what does it say about our society that we allow such practices in the name of safeguarding our own “freedom.” We talk with disdainful superiority about the Romans torture practices (torture was permissible against slaves, but not to be committed against Roman citizens) and of those of the Church during the Inquisition, we condemn Alexander the Great for having one of his childhood friends tortured to uncover a supposed plot to murder him--but how are we better than this?

Second, most security experts and academic experts on the psychology of torture seem to agree that torture is not a particularly effective means of gaining information. When in pain a person will admit to anything in order to get the pain to STOP. An article published by the New Yorker early this year described how a Canadian man returning to Canada by way of the U.S. was taken into custody [in case it makes a difference (which it really shouldn't), the man was an engineer who had attended McGill University and whose family emigrated to Canada when he was a teenager]. After being questioned by U.S. officials, he was turned over to men in plainclothes and flown around the world in a jet:

Ten hours after landing in Jordan, [Maher] Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, “just began beating on me.” They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. “Not even animals could withstand it,” he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. “You just give up,” he said. “You become like an animal.”

The administration, most recently Condoleezza Rice, has insisted that they have obtained valuable information through their practices (Rice even going so far as to “chide” (characterization of the NY Times) Europeans for their ungrateful attitude). But there’s never been any real evidence to support that:

A career CIA official involved with interrogation policy cautioned NEWSWEEK not to put too much credence in such claims. "Whatever briefing they got was probably not truthful," said the official, who did not wish to be identified discussing sensitive matters. "And there's no way of knowing whether what good information they got could not have been obtained by more traditional means."

And now there’s the current fiasco over foreign detention centers. And what does it say about us as a country that we have to hold prisoners overseas because our own domestic laws would not allows us to either detain them or treat them in the fashion we do abroad? Of course, now the administration's story has changed on this as well:

Administration officials, including Ms. Rice on Monday, have repeatedly maintained since the reports about the secret prisons began that the government is abiding by American law and international agreements. "We are respecting U.S. law and U.S. treaty obligations," she said several times on Monday. "And we are respecting other nations' sovereignty."

That is a change in the position of the Bush administration, which has repeatedly maintained in recent years that American law does not apply to prisoners held abroad. That is one reason some terror suspects were taken to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and to other foreign locations.

Personally, I don't see how any one who informs themselves even a little would buy the administration's current line. (But my life seems to one of constant amazement.) I've included an article below about a German citizen who was detained in Macedonia and Afghanistan for five months where he was beaten and injected with drugs and who has now brought a lawsuit in the U.S. The subject of Khaled el-Masri came up in Rice's recent meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has said that Rice admitted that Mr. Masri's five-month-long detention had been "mistake." His lawyer responded to Rice's recent claims that the U.S. does not transport people abroad for the purpose of interrogation using torture:

Mr. Romero took issue with a statement Ms. Rice made on Monday before leaving for Germany denying accusations of human rights violations and declaring that "the United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture."

"Unfortunately, as our lawsuit shows today, those statements are patently false," Mr. Romero said.

I would also point out that “At one point, the Bush administration formally told the CIA it couldn't be prosecuted for any technique short of inflicting the kind of pain that accompanies ‘organ failure’ or ‘death’.”

Also, our lovely government's practice of handing over people to third parties, including private companies as well as foreign governments that do not have prohibitions against torture (the so-called “renditions”—a strange usage and a sinister sounding term--isn't the term "rendering" used in connection with slaughter houses the processing of animal by-products?), are not necessarily covered by Rice’s assertions (and who knows who, if anyone, is monitoring these “renders”).


The Debate Over Torture

By Evan Thomas and Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

Nov. 21, 2005 issue - Interrogators have pondered the uses of torture for centuries. During the Spanish Inquisition 500 years ago, priests obtained the desired results by placing infidels on the rack but had less success with sleep deprivation, which, after three or four days, seemed only to induce hallucinations. Torture still works to extract the truth in the movies and on TV shows like the popular '24,' but not in real life, say the experts. A prisoner who has his fingernails pulled out or his genitals shocked will say (and make up) anything to make the pain stop.

Real-world choices are less black and white. Less violent but still coercive techniques can sometimes be effective. These "enhanced" interrogation techniques, like placing a smelly hood over a prisoner and making him stand or squat naked for hours in a cold and dark room, are called "torture lite." In modern times, these tactics have been used by British intelligence to unravel the command structure of the IRA and by the Israelis to stop Palestinian suicide bombers.

Since 9/11, torture lite has been used by the Americans in the war on terror. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, fearful that another attack was imminent, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "we have to work... the dark side, if you will." Declared the CIA's then Counterterror chief Cofer Black: "After 9/11, the gloves came off." At one point, the Bush administration formally told the CIA it couldn't be prosecuted for any technique short of inflicting the kind of pain that accompanies "organ failure" or "death."

Torture lite has been a sparingly used but essential tool, says a senior Bush aide who spoke anonymously because of the classified nature of the subject. "We're talking about the most successful intelligence gained in the war on terror coming from these programs," he says. Details are hard to come by, but Sen. Kit Bond, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, told NEWSWEEK that "enhanced interrogation techniques" worked with at least one high-level Qaeda operative, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to thwart a plot. Bond would not say which one, but among foiled plots vaguely described by the White House and linked to "KSM" was a scheme to attack targets on the West Coast of the United States with hijacked airlines. The planning for such a "second wave" attack may have been in the early stages. A career CIA official involved with interrogation policy cautioned NEWSWEEK not to put too much credence in such claims. "Whatever briefing they got was probably not truthful," said the official, who did not wish to be identified discussing sensitive matters. "And there's no way of knowing whether what good information they got could not have been obtained by more traditional means." The White House suggests the intelligence obtained has less to do with people and plots and more to do with the structure of Al Qaeda. Because of "the program," as they somewhat spookily describe the CIA's "aggressive interrogation techniques," White House aides say that the United States has a much better idea how Al Qaeda operates around the world.

But at what cost? While many Americans probably don't wish to know too much about the "dark side" of intelligence gathering, the horrific images of tortured detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a terrible toll on America's standing in the world. "It's killing us. It's killing us," says Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose NEWSWEEK essay on the subject follows this article. As a POW in Vietnam who had his arm broken and worse, McCain knows something about torture. His bill to ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading" interrogation techniques passed the Senate last month 90 to 9. But Cheney, with CIA Director Porter Goss in tow, has been lobbying against McCain. As written, the administration argues, the McCain legislation would tie the CIA's hands in the war on terror and potentially expose CIA operatives to prosecution at home and abroad.

Compromises are possible. "There's a common desire to work this out," says the senior Bush aide. Torture lite—and its bastard child, detainee abuse—are coming out of the shadows into the political arena. Cheney sometimes seems like a quieter version of Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men" ("You can't handle the truth!"), and last week President George W. Bush in effect attacked the administration's critics as unpatriotic. Yet there is a growing willingness in the courts and body politic to deal with the sometimes unpleasant questions of how to incarcerate and question suspected terrorists, and not just because John McCain is gearing up to run for president. In Britain last week, Parliament rebuffed Prime Minister Tony Blair's bill to hold terror suspects without charging them for 90 days, and the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled that it will rule on the constitutionality of so-called military commissions set up to try terrorists after 9/11.


The American public seems split. According to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, 44 percent of the public thinks torture is often or sometimes justified as a way to obtain important information, while 51 percent say it is rarely or never justified. A clear majority—58 percent—would support torture to thwart a terrorist attack, but asked if they would still support torture if that made it more likely enemies would use it against Americans, 57 percent said no. Some 73 percent agree that America's image abroad has been hurt by the torture allegations.

Clearly, some sort of rules—some real limits beyond the risk of "organ failure"—are necessary. Otherwise, as McCain warns, America will sink to the level of its worst enemies. A reconstruction of the road to Abu Ghraib shows why: at each step, the Bush administration made understandable decisions to permit the use of harsh interrogation techniques against a few individuals. But the decisions were made in such an atmosphere of secrecy and confusion that the whole process spun out of control and produced atrocities that America may never live down.

The story of the first "High Value Target" captured by U.S. intelligence illustrates some of the dilemmas and pitfalls of interrogating terrorists. When Ibn Al-Shaykhal-Libi, who helped run Qaeda training camps, was picked up in Afghanistan in November 2001, the questioning of detainees was still the province of the FBI. For some years before 9/11, the bureau's "Bin Laden team" had typically handled suspects with a carrots-and-no-sticks approach: grant favors to suspects and their families (one terrorist's son even got a heart transplant), and they'll talk. But after 9/11, fighting Al Qaeda was deemed to be war, not law enforcement, and the usual rules went out the window. The CIA took al-Libi, strapped some duct tape over his mouth and put him on a plane to Egypt, where interrogations are a little rougher than down at FBI headquarters. At the airport, according to Jack Cloonan, a retired FBI officer who handled al-Libi, a CIA case officer went up to the suspected terrorist and said, "You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f—- her."

Sending a suspect off to languish (and possibly be abused) in the prison of a foreign country is called a "rendition." The CIA has done numerous renditions over the years, usually not for the purpose of seeing suspected terrorists subjected to torture, but just to get them off the street while the agency follows up leads from captured documents, laptop computers and the like. In the case of al-Libi, however, the Bush administration was only too glad to make use of the "take" from al-Libi's interrogation, helpfully provided by Egyptian intelligence. Under questioning by the Egyptian authorities (techniques unknown, but not hard to imagine), al-Libi confessed that Al Qaeda terrorists, beginning in December 2000, had gone to Iraq to learn about chemical and biological weapons. This was just the evidence the Bush administration needed to make the case for invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. In his famous, now discredited speech to the United Nations in February 2003, the then Secretary of State Colin Powell cited the intelligence extracted from al-Libi, referring to him not by name but as a "senior Al Qaeda terrorist" who ran a training camp in Afghanistan.

There was only one problem with al-Libi's story: after the Powell presentation, he recanted it. Overlooking timely doubts raised by some U.S. intelligence officials, particularly at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the ideologues in the Bush administration had used information obtained by torture to mislead the world.

Better, then, for the CIA to interrogate terror suspects on its terms. In April 2002, Abu Zubaydah, a top Qaeda lieutenant, was captured in Pakistan. At first he talked, but then he clammed up. Frustrated, the CIA went to its political masters in the Bush administration to ask: how far could the agency go in interrogating a crucial but reluctant suspect like Zubaydah?

In July 2002, the president's counsel, Alberto Gonzales, convened his colleagues in his cozy, wood-paneled office in the White House. Present were top Justice Department and Defense Department lawyers. Significantly missing were lawyers from the State Department and uniformed military, whose views on interrogation were known to be a good deal more cautious. (The military worries what will happen to captured American POWs in return.) According to a participant at the meeting who declined to be identified discussing private deliberations, Gonzales emphasized that it would be wrong to go over the line, but that America was at war, and it was necessary to "lean forward." (Gonzales has declined to comment.)

One by one, the lawyers went through five or six pressure techniques proposed by the CIA. They approved "waterboarding," dripping water onto a wet cloth over the suspect's face, which feels like drowning. But they nixed mock burials as too harsh.

It has never been clearly established if their methods worked to sweat useful information out of Zubaydah. But a precedent had been established, and interrogators creatively made the most of it. Toward the end of 2002, there was a spike in intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda was preparing another major attack. The CIA had in custody Mohammad al-Qatani, the so-called 20th hijacker who had been refused entry to the United States before 9/11. But al-Qatani, trained in resistance (one method is to memorize and recite the Qur'an over and over), was not responding to the usual interrogation techniques.

So his handlers at Guantanamo Bay obtained permission from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to try new techniques. According to a Southern Command report that came out earlier this year, al-Qatani was forced to perform dog tricks on a leash, was straddled by a female interrogator, told that his mother and sister were whores, forced to wear a woman's bra and thong on his head during interrogation, forced to dance with a male interrogator and subjected to an unmuzzled dog to scare him. At congressional hearings last July, Southern Command's Gen. Bantz Craddock testified that as a result of the use of some of these techniques, the formerly defiant al-Qatani had "provided insights" into Al Qaeda's planning for 9/11.

The harsh techniques used at Gitmo produced a backlash. The FBI and lawyers for the uniformed military services protested. A behind-the-scenes bureaucratic struggle broke out in Washington and raged and spluttered into the summer of 2003 and beyond, producing a welter of conflicting and confusing rules. The Geneva Conventions, international law requiring humane treatment, applied to some, but maybe not all prisoners—or did they? The answer seemed to depend on—what? No one seemed to know for sure. The international Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States in 1994, bans the "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of all prisoners. But Justice Department lawyers had obligingly declared that the president could ignore such constraints.

At the same time, the war in Iraq was starting to go badly. American soldiers were being killed by bombs planted by insurgents, and the Army seemed powerless to stop it. In Washington, a furious Rumsfeld was pounding the table for more and —better intelligence. Where was Saddam? Where was the WMD? Why couldn't U.S. troops catch the insurgents before they could set off crude roadside bombs?

Here, in retrospect, is where the real trouble began. In the summer of 2003, Rumsfeld sent a get-tough commander from Guantanamo—Lt. Gen. Geoffrey Miller—to "Gitmoize" the interrogation techniques in Iraq. So began an era of "strategic interrogation." Ordinary military policemen were told by intelligence officials to do things like "loosen this guy up for us" and "make sure this guy has a bad night" and "give him the treatment," according to Sgt. Javal Davis, one of the defendants in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Techniques used to ratchet up the pressure on High Value Targets by professional interrogators were being bastardized by poorly supervised, untrained Army MPs like the unfortunate Pvt. Lynndie England, the cavorting guard at Abu Ghraib. The Internet slide shows are still playing across the Muslim world.

There were honorable soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who wanted to do the right thing—but couldn't figure out what it was. Even though the administration said the Iraq war was covered by the Geneva Conventions, it never stated clearly how the insurgents should be treated. Capt. Ian Fishback, a West Point graduate deployed with a rifle company in Iraq, has written a heartbreaking chronology of his fruitless efforts to get any kind of clear answer from his superiors or the Pentagon about whether Geneva rules applied to Iraq. The "command climate" cast the insurgency as part of the larger war on terror, suggesting they did not apply, he says. He kept running into men in civilian clothes who, he assumed, were "OGA"—Other Government Agency, the standard military euphemism for the CIA. Hearing "loud noises" coming from the cells where the OGA men were detaining prisoners, Fishback worried about abuse, but assumed such treatment was official policy. "If I had thought that the United States was adhering to the Geneva Conventions I would have immediately investigated," he said, "but I did not." A Pentagon spokesman said Fishback's allegations are being "taken very seriously."

It was Fishback's story that got McCain's attention. On McCain's travels around the world, he heard constant complaints about Abu Ghraib and prisoner abuse. He resolved to do something because "America's position in the world is at an all-time low," he says. McCain's bill outlawing "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of any and all foreign prisoners held overseas would still give interrogators some leeway. The military would be bound by the Army Field Manual, which allows techniques such as "fear up harsh," including "a loud and threatening voice" and "throw[ing] objects across the room to heighten the source's implanted feelings of fear." "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment in prison cases in the United States has been defined by courts as conduct that "shocks the conscience." Such a standard would presumably allow for a sliding scale. For a very small percentage—those High Value Targets like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed—some pretty rough treatment might not "shock the conscience" if the payoff was averting a terrorist strike on an American city. But the sort of abuse that went on at Abu Ghraib—humiliating innocent detainees—would be way out of bounds.

McCain is inspired by the examples of other countries that have wrestled with the torture issue. The Israeli High Court formally outlawed torture in 1999 after at least 10 Palestinians died in custody. Still, in "ticking time bomb" cases when time is of the essence, Israeli interrogators can seek special permission to use force with a suspect—though they would be subject to prosecution if the suspect was not concealing urgent information.

Even McCain recognizes there could be rare instances when a president disobeys the law and orders a suspect tortured—say, if Al Qaeda had hidden a nuclear bomb in New York and a suspect involved in the plot had been captured. "You do what you have to do," McCain told NEWSWEEK. "But you take responsibility for it. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the Civil War, and FDR violated the Neutrality Acts before World War II."

Taking responsibility would be a new concept for the Bush administration. No high-ranking officer has been prosecuted in connection with the abuses, and no Pentagon official has even been publicly reprimanded. There are a number of senior officials openly pushing for some clear legal standard on detainee interrogations. Lately, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been warning Bush that America's low image in the world requires positive steps to take a stand against prisoner abuse. She is backed by national-security adviser Stephen Hadley and Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England. But Rumsfeld's position is unclear (often the case with the blunt but slippery Defense secretary), and Cheney remains adamantly opposed to any check on executive power. His new chief of staff (replacing the recently indicted I. Lewis Libby), the hawkish David Addington, has strongly attacked a draft directive from DoD's England that would require detainees to be treated in accordance with language drawn from Article Three of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit torture and cruel—"humiliating and degrading"—treatment. "Addington is not happy about the draft," says a Pentagon official who requested anonymity because the discussions are still confidential. He added sarcastically that Addington "would like us to be able to pull fingernails with pliers." Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president's office, said she had no comment on the debate except "the administration does not authorize or condone torture or cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment."

Bush has floated above the fray, blithely declaring that the "United States doesn't do torture," without getting entangled in debates over torture lite. A White House official who did not wish to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter claims that Bush has personally reached out to McCain to seek a compromise. McCain told NEWSWEEK that he had briefly spoken with the president by phone.

And what of the interrogators themselves? Top agency officials under Goss are supporting their director, but farther down the chain of command, there is uneasiness, if not downright resistance. As The Washington Post, NEWSWEEK and others have reported, the CIA has at least a score of detainees tucked away in secret places it doesn't know how to dispose of without legal procedures. "Where's the off button?" says one retired CIA official who prefers to stay undercover. In the hands of President Bush—if he is willing to openly face some tough choices.

With Richard Wolffe, Mark Hosenball, Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, John Barry, Stuart Taylor Jr. and Steve Tuttle in Washington and Dan Ephron in Jerusalem
***

From the New York Times

December 1, 2005
Reports of Secret U.S. Prisons in Europe Draw Ire and Otherwise Red Faces
By IAN FISHER
ROME, Nov. 30 - It is not only anger that is rising in Europe over possible secret American prisons on the Continent, kidnappings of terror suspects and transfers of prisoners on C.I.A. airplanes.

There is also looming embarrassment, with suspicion that Americans, in many cases, operated with the knowledge or consent of local governments.

"Someone knew," said Daria Pesce, the lawyer for a former C.I.A. station chief in Milan, one of 22 Americans formally charged in the kidnapping of an Islamic militant from there to Egypt in 2003. "I don't think that it is possible that an American comes into Italy and kidnaps someone. It seems really unlikely."

In the last few weeks, a confusing - and combustible - array of allegations has been hardening into fact in the European mind, all pointing to a worry that people here, largely skeptical of America's effort to prevent terrorism, may be more involved in that project than thought, and in several ways.

The immediate furor was set off by a report that since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency has created a covert prison system in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe. There have been subsequent reports that C.I.A. planes have made stops in various European countries.

The flights have raised questions of whether they carried suspects bound for secret American prisons, though the flights do not prove that such transfers took place.

The concern is not limited to covert prisons, though. The biggest question is about so-called extraordinary renditions, or transfers, in which terror suspects captured abroad are sent by the United States to their home countries or to third countries, some of which have records of torturing prisoners.

The operations are by nature secret, so it has been hard to separate facts from the speculative murk around them. But the questions are fueled by some concrete evidence: hundreds of recorded flights by C.I.A. planes and at least one kidnapping, the one in Italy, documented in detail by prosecutors.

The questions seem likely to dominate the visit to Europe next week of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. They will focus on just how active America has been in the capture and transfer of terror suspects on European soil.

Adding to the chorus of such requests from other European nations, the British foreign minister, Jack Straw, sent a letter to Ms. Rice on Monday asking for clarification. Mr. Straw, writing on behalf of the European Union, asked specifically about accusations about covert prisons in Eastern Europe and news media reports of C.I.A. airplanes stopping in European bases.

The State Department said Monday that it would cooperate with such requests, adding that it had acted within international law.

The issue is steeped with emotion, given the high level of anger in Europe at reports that American interrogators have tortured prisoners in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other places. The stakes are high for many European governments, facing impassioned questions from opposition politicians and human rights groups about just how much they knew about American actions.

"We need full disclosure by our government," Sir Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in Britain, told BBC radio on Wednesday. "If, in fact, people are being moved from a jurisdiction where torture is illegal to a jurisdiction where torture is permissible, that seems to me to be wholly contrary to international law."

"If we are allowing facilities for aircraft carrying out these actions," he added, "we are at the very least facilitating, and we may even be complicit in it."

A report on Nov. 2 in The Washington Post about a covert prison system did not identify the European countries, but Human Rights Watch has said such facilities were in Poland and Romania.

Poland and Romania have strongly denied the accusations, and American officials have declined comment.

On the issue of extraordinary renditions, more than 100 prisoners are suspected of being transferred in this way since September 2001. The case with the highest profile occurred here in Italy. On Feb. 17, 2003, an Islamic militant, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, disappeared in Milan and appeared later in Egypt, where he said he had been tortured.

In the only case to have gone up the legal system, Italian prosecutors have charged 22 American operatives with the kidnapping. While the Italian government has denied any knowledge of the operation, it has also declined so far to ask the United States to extradite the suspects - raising much suspicion here that the government either knew about the operation or approved it.

"I don't see why they shouldn't have agreed with our secret services on an action like that," said Giuseppe Cucchi, a former three-star general, military representative to NATO and adviser to the center-left opposition here. "The condition often put on an action like that is that, 'If something comes out, we will declare that we didn't know anything.' "

Around Europe there have been varying media reports of C.I.A. planes making European stops.

A recent analysis done for The New York Times of 26 planes known to be operated by C.I.A. companies shows 307 flights in Europe since September 2001. The information was culled from Federal Aviation Administration data, aviation industry sources and, to a lesser extent, a network of plane spotters who often report to human rights groups.

It finds that there were 94 flights in Germany, the most in Europe. (An investigation has opened there on whether Mr. Nasr, the suspect seized in Italy, was flown out of an American air base in Germany.) Second is Britain, 76 flights, followed by Ireland (33), Portugal (16), then Spain and the Czech Republic (15 each).

In Britain, where opposition to the war in Iraq has been high despite Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for it, a human rights group, Liberty, said Wednesday that it was concerned that some of the flights might have carried secret prisoners - an allegation joined by Sir Menzies, but quickly denied by the government.

"We are not aware of the use of U.K. territory or airspace for the purpose of extraordinary renditions, nor have we received any requests, nor granted any permission for the use of U.K. territory or airspace for such purposes," said a Foreign Office spokeswoman, speaking anonymously because of the office's policy of not allowing the use of such officials' names.

There are more than half a dozen investigations into flights in various countries, as well as an inquiry by the Council of Europe that also covers the question of secret prisons in Eastern Europe. A council official said Wednesday that they were looking into flights of nearly 40 planes believed to be operated by the C.I.A., but he said he believed that the number of prisoners aboard them was probably small.

"There are not these huge numbers flying around, as if the C.I.A. does nothing but disappear people and transfer them back and forth," said the official, speaking anonymously because the council has imposed a temporary halt to speaking publicly about its inquiry.

But he said it was important for American officials to cooperate with the inquiry, to clear the cloud of suspicion about the flights "that are illicit and the ones that are not."

The issue has careered around Europe. In Munich, prosecutors have opened an investigation into the abduction of a German citizen who says the C.I.A. flew him from Macedonia to Afghanistan early in 2004. There he was interrogated for five months before being released, he said.

A Macedonian official said the German, Khaled Masri, had left Macedonia of his own accord. But others are skeptical.

"What choice do you have when you are the size of Macedonia?" said Saso Ordanoski, a leading political commentator and editor of the weekly political magazine Forum. "Can you say no?"

The issue of flights has been particularly potent in Spain, where Prime Minister José Luis Rodríquez Zapatero abruptly withdrew its troops from Iraq after he was elected last year.

Since March, there has been a police investigation into 10 flights by suspected C.I.A. planes to the island of Majorca between January 2004 and January 2005. The government has also confirmed 46 stopovers in the Canary Islands by two planes apparently connected to the United States government.

Spanish officials have acknowledged that one flight in April 2004 originated in Guantánamo Bay, where the United States operates a large prison for terror suspects. It stopped over in Tenerife before flying on to Romania.

The government denies that the flights violated any Spanish or international law.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Stephen Grey in Johannesburg; Alan Cowell in London; Richard Bernstein in Berlin; Renwick McLean in Barcelona, Spain; Nicholas Wood in Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Brian Wingfield in Rome.
***

From the New York Times

U.S. Interrogations Are Saving European Lives, Rice Says
By JOEL BRINKLEY
BERLIN, Dec. 5 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chastised European leaders on Monday, saying that before they complain about secret jails for terror suspects in European nations, they should realize that interrogations of these suspects have produced information that helped "save European lives."

Her remarks were the Bush administration's official response to the reports of a network of secret detention centers in at least eight European nations, said to house dozens of terror suspects.

At the same time, she denied that the United States has moved suspects to these prisons to allow interrogators to use torture. "The United States," she said, "does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances." At another point, she said, "The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture."

Intelligence gathered from these interrogations, she said, "has stopped terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives in Europe as well as the United States." But she declined to offer examples or provide any specific information to support her assertions. She said any information related to the prisons was classified. Ms. Rice did not explicitly confirm the existence of the detention centers, first described in news reports early last month. But acknowledgment of them was implicit in her remarks. Without the debate over the covert jails, there would have been no reason for her statement.

"We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible," she said, "but there have been many cases where the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option."

"In those cases," she added, "the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in" the transfer of a suspect to a third country, which is known as a rendition.

"Sometimes," she added, "these efforts are misunderstood."

Officials from the White House, State Department and Central Intelligence Agency labored over Ms. Rice's statement for days and said it would serve as the basis of the government's official answer to an inquiry from the European Union - one of a half dozen under way.

Ms. Rice offered her remarks to reporters early Monday, at Andrews Air Force Base, before setting off for a trip to Europe. The timing, she said later, was not coincidental. She wanted to issue the statement "before I go to Europe so if there are questions I can answer them."

Her five-day trip will take her to Germany, Belgium, Ukraine and Romania. Analyses of flight records of United States government aircraft have suggested that Romania may have been the site of one covert detention center, but Romanian officials have said that no such facility existed. Ms. Rice arrived in Berlin too late Monday night to meet with any German officials or to gauge any reaction to her remarks in Washington.

According to a report Monday night on ABC News, which could not be confirmed, current and former C.I.A. officers say that 11 top Qaeda suspects have been moved from secret C.I.A. prisons in Europe to a new C.I.A. facility in the North African desert.

Administration officials, including Ms. Rice on Monday, have repeatedly maintained since the reports about the secret prisons began that the government is abiding by American law and international agreements. "We are respecting U.S. law and U.S. treaty obligations," she said several times on Monday. "And we are respecting other nations' sovereignty."

That is a change in the position of the Bush administration, which has repeatedly maintained in recent years that American law does not apply to prisoners held abroad. That is one reason some terror suspects were taken to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and to other foreign locations.

Asked about that conflict while speaking to reporters on her plane, Ms. Rice did not answer directly and instead repeated her statement about respecting American laws and obligations.

Following the reports of a secret detention policy, the administration has come under criticism from the United Nations, at least two arms of the European Union and several European countries. The Europeans say the secret detention centers would be illegal in their countries. Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, wrote Ms. Rice on behalf of the European Union last week, seeking an explanation.

In Congress, Democrats are calling for an investigation of the prisons and the treatment of suspects held there, while Republicans are pushing for an inquiry to determine who in the government leaked the information to the news media.

News reports over the last month have said the C.I.A. began holding dozens of terror suspects in secret prisons in Europe shortly after Sept. 11. While the administration has not confirmed the reports, it has also not denied them.

The mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as well as the ongoing debate over the imprisonment of terror suspects at Guantánamo, have raised questions among Europeans and human rights organizations about the treatment of suspects held in the C.I.A. facilities, where no one can visit them or check on their treatment.

Ms. Rice insisted she could not confirm the existence of secret prisons because that would involve discussion of classified activities. "One of the difficult issues in this new kind of conflict is what to do with captured individuals who we know or believe to be terrorists," she said. Many are "essentially stateless, owing their allegiance to the extremist cause of transnational terrorism."

On her plane later, Ms. Rice expressed impatience with the spiraling investigations and inquiries.

"Democracies are going to debate these things," she said. "But they need to debate them not just on one side of the issue - that is, how the actual activities are being carried out." They should also consider, "are we doing everything we can to protect innocent lives?"
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From the New York Times

Rice Chides Europeans on Detention Center Complaints
By JOEL BRINKLEY
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chastised Europe leaders today, saying that before they complain about secret jails for terror suspects in European nations, they should realize that interrogations of these suspects have produced information that helped "save European lives."

In her remarks, the Bush Administration's official response to the reports of a network of secret detention centers, Ms. Rice repeatedly emphasized that the United States does not countenance the torture of terrorism suspects, at the hands of either American or foreign captors.

She offered her remarks to reporters early this morning, in a departure lounge at Andrews Air Force Base, just before setting off for a trip to Europe, where she was certain to be asked about the growing controversy over the secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons believed to be located in at least eight European nations. Her statement is also to serve as the basis for the government's response to an official inquiry from the European Union over the secret prisons.

Noting that half-a-dozen international investigations are underway, Ms. Rice did not explicitly confirm the existence of the detentions center. But that was implicit in her remarks.

"We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible," she said. "But there have been many cases where the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option.

"In those cases," she added, "the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in the transfer of a suspect to a third country, which is known as a rendition.

"Sometimes, these efforts are misunderstood," she said.

News reports starting early last month said the Central Intelligence Agency began holding dozens of terror suspects in secret prisons in as many as eight European nations shortly after Sept. 11. The Administration has not confirmed the reports but has repeatedly maintained that it is abiding by American law and international agreements. Officials have also repeatedly said that the United States and the European states share a common concern about terrorism.

"The terror threatens all of us," Stephen Hadley, the National Security Advisor, said on CNN on Sunday. "You had seen terror attacks in Britain, in Spain, in Italy, in Turkey, in Russia, in Egypt, in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia. This is a threat, really, to the civilized world. We need to cooperate together to deal with this terror threat that threatens all of us. We are cooperating with a number of countries."

The administration's secret detention policy has come under attack from the United Nations, the European Union and Democrats in Washington. Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, wrote Ms. Rice the letter from the European Union last Tuesday, demanding an explanation.

In Congress, Democrats are calling for an investigation of the prisons and the treatment of suspects held there, while Republicans are pushing for an investigation to determine who in the government leaked the information to the news media.

The Bush Administration began drafting Ms. Rice's statement last week. Consultations between agencies including the White House, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency continued through the weekend and culminated with a conference call Sunday night.

Ms. Rice insisted that the United States had done nothing wrong.

Many of the imprisoned suspects "are effectively stateless," she maintained, "owing allegiance only to the extremist cause of transnational terrorism. Many are extremely dangerous."

She made an effort to frame the debate as one over the effectiveness of terror enforcement and not over the propriety of holding suspects indefinitely in secret prisons.

"We consider the captured members of Al Qaeda and its allies to be unlawful combatants who may be held, in accordance with the law of war, to keep them from killing innocents," she said. "We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible."

The European nations must decide, she added, whether they "wish to work with us to prevent terrorist attacks against their own country or other countries."

***

From the New York Times

December 6, 2005
German Sues Over Abduction Said to Be at Hands of C.I.A.
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 - A German citizen who says he was abducted, beaten and taken to Afghanistan by American agents in an apparent case of mistaken identity in 2003 filed suit in federal court today against George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, and three companies said to have been involved in secret flight operations.

The suit came three days after Khaled el-Masri, a 42-year-old Lebanese-born former car salesman, was refused entrance to the United States after arriving Saturday in Atlanta on a flight from Germany with the intention of appearing at a news conference today in Washington. He spoke instead by video satellite link, describing somberly how he was beaten, photographed nude and injected with drugs during five months in detention in Macedonia and Afghanistan.

"I want to know why they did this to me," Mr. Masri said, speaking in German. He said that he had been reunited with his wife and children and was seeking work in Germany but that he had not fully recovered from the trauma of his experience.

"I don't think I'm the human being I used to be," he told reporters through an interpreter.

In a separate interview in Germany, Mr. Masri said his weekend encounter with federal immigration officers in Atlanta made him briefly fear that the ordeal might be repeated or that he might be taken to the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"My heart was beating very fast," he said. "I have remembered that time, what has happened to me, when they kidnapped me to Afghanistan. I have remembered and was afraid."

The lawsuit, filed by lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union in Alexandria, Va., came on a day of talks between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who said Ms. Rice had admitted that Mr. Masri's detention had been a mistake.

Since it was first reported in January, the Masri case has become an oft-cited example of tough American counterterrorism policies gone awry.

His lawsuit is the latest development in a legal assault by human rights groups on the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine operations to transport, detain and interrogate suspected terrorists since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Under particular scrutiny are secret detention centers, including some reported to be in Eastern Europe; the use of harsh interrogation methods by American intelligence officers; and the delivery of more than 100 suspects to other countries, including some where torture has been routine, in a practice known as rendition.

The lawsuit appears to be the first to target a web of companies that own and operate a fleet of aircraft used by the C.I.A., including many based at the rural Johnston County Airport in Smithfield, N.C. The companies named in the suit were Aero Contractors Ltd., a Smithfield company that provides crews and maintenance; Premier Executive Transport Services of Dedham, Mass., which previously owned the Boeing business jet used to take Mr. Masri from Macedonia to Afghanistan; and Keeler and Tate Management L.L.C., of Reno, Nev., which owns the jet today.

The lawsuit could force the C.I.A. to acknowledge its secret relationship with the companies, said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U. "That's what's novel here," he said. "What we learn of these three companies will be as interesting as the outcome of the case."

A spokesman for Mr. Tenet, who served as C.I.A. director from 1997 to 2004, said he had no comment, as did a spokesman for the C.I.A. Initial attempts to reach executives of the three air companies named in the lawsuit were unsuccessful.

Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U. said the lawsuit was an attempt to counter the "culture of impunity" in the Bush administration for human rights violations and to force the C.I.A. to abandon practices in conflict with American values. The organization has obtained 77,000 pages of government documents on detention and interrogation under the Freedom of Information Act that have been the basis for thousands of news reports.

Mr. Romero took issue with a statement Ms. Rice made on Monday before leaving for Germany denying accusations of human rights violations and declaring that "the United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture."

"Unfortunately, as our lawsuit shows today, those statements are patently false," Mr. Romero said.

Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Germany for this article.
***


From the New York Times

December 7, 2005
Rice Is Challenged in Europe Over Secret Prisons
By JOEL BRINKLEY
BUCHAREST, Romania, Dec. 6 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was pelted with questions on Tuesday about covert prisons and a mistaken, secret arrest, as she grappled with what has become an incendiary issue in Europe. She declined to answer most of them in two European capitals.

Europe has been roiled by reports that the United States maintained secret jails for terror suspects in Europe, and by residual anger over the American practice of rendition, or secretly transferring terrorism suspects to the custody of third countries, including some outside Europe that routinely use torture.

The anger has made it harder for Ms. Rice to repair already strained relations with many European nations at odds with American policy on Iraq, like Germany, where she met in Berlin with the new chancellor, Angela Merkel, hoping for a fresh start. But the issue confronted her repeatedly.

Mrs. Merkel said at a news conference that Ms. Rice had admitted making a mistake when the United States abducted a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, on suspicions of terrorism and held him in detention for five months. But aides to Ms. Rice scrambled to deny that, saying instead that Ms. Rice had said only that if mistakes were made, they would be corrected.

Mr. Masri filed suit in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday against the former director of central intelligence and three companies he charged were involved in secret flights carrying terrorism suspects. He has said he was tortured during his detention. He also said that on Sunday he was denied entry to the United States, where he hoped to file his lawsuit in person.

State Department officials confirmed that he had been denied entry, but said that he would be allowed into the country if he applied again.

As Europeans continue to investigate whether torture or detention of terrorism suspects took place on European soil, Ms. Rice assured Mrs. Merkel that "the United States does not condone torture."

"It is against U.S. law to be involved in torture or conspiracy to commit torture," Ms. Rice said. "And it is also against U.S. international obligations."

But the American definition of torture is in some cases at variance with international conventions, and the administration has maintained in recent years that American law does not apply to prisoners held abroad.

In defending the practice of rendition, American officials have said that they obtain assurances from the third countries that prisoners will not be tortured, but that the United States is limited in its ability to enforce the promises.

The Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general found last year that the some aspects of the agency's treatment of terrorism detainees might constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as the international Convention Against Torture defines it. The United States is a signer of that convention, though with some reservations.

A legal opinion by the Justice Department, issued in August 2002, said interrogation methods just short of those that might cause pain comparable to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death" could be allowable without being considered torture.

The administration disavowed that classified legal opinion in the summer of 2004, after it was publicly disclosed. But a second legal opinion issued in December 2004, which defined torture more broadly, did not repudiate interrogation techniques that had been previously authorized. It remains unclear how many of those techniques are still in use by the C.I.A.

Congress is debating an amendment, passed in the Senate last month, that would prohibit the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects. But the White House has urged that the C.I.A. be exempted from any such ban.

In Romania, Ms. Rice signed a military cooperation agreement that would allow American forces to train with Romanian troops at the Mihael Kogalniceanu air base, which Human Rights Watch identified as a probable location of one secret prison.

Asked about the charge at a news conference, Traian Basescu, the Romanian president, vociferously denied that any such detention center existed and invited anyone who doubted that to come and see for himself.

During the news conference in Germany, Mrs. Merkel spoke openly about matters the Bush administration deems secret, while Mr. Rice continued to speak elliptically. That produced some awkward moments.

Mrs. Merkel spoke openly of "the issue of the C.I.A.'s overflights" that apparently hold secret detainees going to or from secret jails elsewhere, while Ms. Rice refused to answer most questions and continued insisting that the prison issue and related issues were classified matters.

Mrs. Merkel then said Ms. Rice had admitted that the United States had mistakenly abducted Mr. Masri.

"The American administration has admitted that this man had been erroneously taken and that, as such, the American administration is not denying that it has taken place," Mrs. Merkel said.

Ms. Rice said she could not talk about the case specifically, but added, "Any policy will sometimes result in error, and when it happens we do everything we can to correct it."

Later, an aide to Ms. Rice, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said that "we are not sure what was in her head" when Mrs. Merkel spoke of the American admission of error in the Masri case. Ms. Rice did not discuss the case with her in any direct way, he and other aides insisted, even though the senior aide said, "The American government has talked about this issue with the German government."

Mrs. Merkel said simply, "We've talked about Mr. Masri."

Speaking of Mr. Masri and the issue of the detainees in general, Mrs. Merkel added, "We can't go public about all the details, but at the same time we need to introduce a certain degree of transparency."

After the mistaken arrest was discovered, the United States asked Germany to keep it secret, and Germany complied. Asked about that, Ms. Rice said, "Intelligence matters need to be handled sensitively."

Before leaving Washington on Monday morning, Ms. Rice issued a long, unapologetic statement on the secret-prison issue, which has become the subject of many investigations in Europe, while refusing to acknowledge that the prisons exist.

Aides said she was no more forthcoming in her talks with Mrs. Merkel.

Asked about Ms. Rice's statement in Washington, Mrs. Merkel said it was "a good basis on which we build," but added, "As chancellor, I work under and adhere to German laws." She announced that the intelligence committee of the German Parliament would take up the Masri case.

Even though aides to Ms. Rice said they realized that the secret-prison issue would dominate a good part of her trip, at times she has shown exasperation over the debate.

"We have an obligation to defend our people, and we will use every lawful means to do so," she declared in Berlin, adding that the public debate over the secret prisons ought to include "a healthy respect for the challenges we face" fighting terrorism.

The questions on the secret prisons posed to her and Mr. Basescu here in Bucharest came from the American reporters traveling with her. The Romanians asked about the new defense agreement. It would allow 1,500 American troops to be stationed at the air base on a rotating basis to take part in joint exercises and training. About 100 of those servicemen would be stationed there full time.

Mr. Basescu greeted the new agreement with unbridled enthusiasm, saying it shows that "the Romanian force has reached the potential that it can be a partner of the United States."
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