July 7th People's Independent Inquiry Forum -> CIA Rendition & Torture Flights

CIA Rendition & Torture Flights, & Secret Jails

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numeral

Posted: Jul 31 2009, 08:43 AM

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Joined: 4-December 05

CODE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003r6hz

QUOTE

Assignment: Torture Investigation

How close is the special relationship between British and American security services?

Have the British security services been complicit in the use of torture techniques used by the CIA to question terror suspects? Stephen Grey investigates for Assignment.

The programme includes the first broadcast interview with a Pakistani citizen, Iqbal Madri [Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni], who claims he was arrested in Indonesia in 2002 and flown to the British Dependency of Diego Garcia, before being tortured in Egypt.

Until February last year the British government had accepted US assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced last year that Washington had admitted that two rendition flights had passed through the island in 2002.

Mr Madni's lawyers claim research has identified their client as a passenger on one of the two flights.

They now plan to seek a judicial review of Britain's involvement in his case.

Assignment also asks how much British intelligence officers knew about the rendition and alleged torture of Ethiopian-born British resident Binyam Mohamed, first arrested and interrogated in Pakistan, before being flown by the CIA to Morocco.

Listen:

CODE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p003r6hz

This post has been edited by numeral on Jul 31 2009, 08:55 AM

numeral

Posted: Aug 28 2009, 05:12 AM

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Posts: 3,997
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Joined: 4-December 05

CODE

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/women/2009/08/26/meet-the-scot-who-s-battling-for-justice-for-prisoners-in-secret-prisons-86908-21624779/

QUOTE

Meet the Scot who's battling for justice for prisoners in secret jails

Aug 26 2009 By Annie Brown

IT'S only at parties that Clara Gutteridge wishes she had chosen a different career.

Inevitably, when she says she is an investigator into secret prisons and renditions, she faces her own miniinterrogation.

It's not exactly hairdressing.

Clara said: "I love my job but when I tell people what I do, they want to know everything.

"Sometimes you don't want to think about work and it's not the kind of job where you can switch off easily."

The 31-year-old Scot is the only woman in her field. She has been instrumental in securing the release of falsely detained prisoners across the globe.

Clara focuses mainly on illegal detentions of "ghost prisoners", where the US and the UK may have been complicit.

Between trips to east Africa to find hidden prisons, she is helping former detainees to sue the British Government.

This week, the US appointed a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of CIA torture of "terror suspects".

The Obama administration released CIA memos providing disturbing details about the agency's overseas secret prisons programme. The 2004 report reveals how agents tortured prisoners by conducting mock executions, stuffing rags in their mouths and pouring water over them until they choked.

They dragged prisoners along corridors, and forced some of them to inhale smoke until they vomited.

Inside the CIA secret overseas prisons, some prisoners were kept in isolation for years, blindfolded and their legs shackled.

Clara said she has been hearing tales of prison brutality for years.

Illegal detentions and torture have been booming since 9/11 and it's Clara's job to expose it.

She works as a lawyer for Reprieve, a legal charity for prisoners from death row to Guantanamo Bay.

The role is a natural fit for a woman who had a deep sense of justice even as a little girl growing up in Stirling.

She said: "I remember being told by a primary school teacher, in a slightly accusatory tone, 'You always stick up for the underdog'.

"I always felt strongly about what I thought was right.

"I always found the idea of indefinite detention horrifying. The idea that people can just be locked up without trial forever on the whim of a government minister, is a terrifying thought.

"It's those conditions that make people vulnerable to abuse. I want to do everything I can to stop it happening.

"One of the great things about working at Reprieve is that we do actually win cases, so there is a sense of progress."

Clara was instrumental in securing the release of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who was freed without charge in February after being detained at Guantanamo Bay for seven years.

Papers released for his court cases in the US and the UK accused MI5 of colluding in his torture in Morocco, including slashing his chest and genitals.

Clara said: "Binyam's case cracked open the issue of UK complicity in torture."

Reprieve founder Clive Stafford Smith has spent 25 years working on behalf of people facing the death penalty in the US.

One of Clara's first jobs for the charity was looking at extraordinary renditions, where suspects are transferred from one country to another.

With another Scot, Gavin Simpson, she found that Binyam had been picked up in Pakistan, transferred to Morocco, held for 18 months then taken to a secret prison in Afghanistan before being dumped in Guantanamo Bay.

"You never forget those eureka moments when you get the information that will make all the difference," she said.

The problem of "ghost prisoners" - whose identities are hidden, making them unregistered and anonymous - has reached daunting numbers. In Afghanistan alone, there are believed to be 80,000 ghost prisoners.

Clara has just returned from Nairobi where she has been investigating secret prisons in Africa.

The existence of the jails are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

Clara is often in a lawless environment but says she always feels more apprehension for her vital local contacts than herself.

She said: "Sometimes it is scary but it is never as scary for me as it is for the people I work with. I can always get on a plane home because I am a British citizen. The people I work with really do put themselves in danger.

"I am protected by my passport and the colour of my skin."

Clara refuses to take UN flights and she does not have government escorts.

Instead, she uses rickety old transport.

She added: "It is about talking to people and you can't do that if you have a government escort by your side.

"It's also about building trust.

That's not always easy for a white non-Muslim woman.

"It is always a team effort. Being an investigator is 99 per cent working with other people and the rest is about thinking analytically.

"It is only through making good relationships with other people that I get anywhere."

There have been times when Clara feels that being a woman has made a positive difference in her work.

She said: "Men work differently.

They are really competitive. They want to take the glory.

"I don't like that way of operating. I like working with other people with a sense of enterprise.

"And when you get a result together, there is a thrill in that."

Bridget

Posted: Nov 1 2009, 12:42 AM

Group: J7 Admins
Posts: 10,538
Member No.: 2
Joined: 26-November 05

QUOTE

Documents Detail Conditions Found at Secret C.I.A. Jails

By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: October 31, 2009

F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners �manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,� and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including �How close is each technique to the �rack and screw,� � according to hundreds of pages of partly declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department.

Documents Released by the Justice Department
A.C.L.U. vs. C.I.A. (SDNY) (pdf)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (DDC2) (pdf)
Judicial Watch vs. C.I.A. (DDC) (pdf)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (SDNY) (pdf)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (DDC2) (pdf)
A.C.L.U. vs. D.O.D. (pdf)
Feinman vs. C.I.A. (DDC) (pdf)
Judicial Watch vs. D.O.J. (DDC) (pdf)

The documents include handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials, discussing the possibility of prosecuting some employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered prosecuting a C.I.A. interrogator for a previously reported incident in which a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, but it says department officials declined to prosecute the case.

The documents were released in the latest response to several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a Washington advocacy group. Some are new versions of documents previously released.

Newly disclosed passages from a 2008 report by the Justice Department inspector general describe what agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation saw at the C.I.A. jail where Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was being questioned.

The F.B.I. agents helped C.I.A. officers prepare questions for Mr. Binalshibh but �were denied direct access to him for four or five days,� the report said. Then an F.B.I. agent, identified as �Thomas,� was allowed to see him and found him �naked and chained to the floor.�

The agent told the inspector general that �he obtained valuable actionable intelligence in a short time but that the C.I.A. quickly shut down the interview,� the report said.

The September 2002 visit was the last F.B.I. involvement in the C.I.A.�s secret overseas interrogations, which senior F.B.I. officials questioned on grounds of both legality and effectiveness.

NY Times

Bridget

Posted: Nov 3 2009, 10:47 PM

Group: J7 Admins
Posts: 10,538
Member No.: 2
Joined: 26-November 05

QUOTE

Jet named in torture flight report is met by SAS at British airport

By Miles Goslett
Last updated at 10:03 PM on 31st October 2009

A U.S. plane that featured in a European Parliament report into the 'extraordinary rendition' of terror suspects was met by two SAS helicopters in a secret operation at one of Britain's biggest airports.

The Gulfstream jet landed at Birmingham International Airport on Friday, October 2, having flown in from an undisclosed location, and was seen by a member of staff being met minutes later by the Special Forces regiment aircraft.

Records show that the jet is owned by a subsidiary of L-3 Communications, a multi-billion-dollar defence corporation based in New York, whose clients include several American government departments, among them the Department of Homeland Security.

� OCTOBER 1 AND 3... COMCO BOEING 757, REG N226G
user posted image

Landed: The Boeing 757, passing the terminal building at Birmingham, was the first of the two planes to arrive

The jet was cited in a 2007 European Parliament report into CIA rendition - the process of smuggling terrorist suspects to interrogation centres abroad.

While not claiming that the plane had been used in a rendition, it stated that the plane was involved in an accident at Bucharest airport, having arrived from Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, and that a passenger on board was found carrying a pistol with ammunition.

The Birmingham airport employee who saw it land said helicopters that he recognised as belonging to the SAS's support flight, 8 Flight Army Air Corps, based at Credenhill, near Hereford, arrived shortly afterwards.

The witness, who did not want to be named, added that he saw another� plane, a Boeing 757 operated by� COMCO, land at the airport on October 1, and that this was also met by two SAS helicopters. He said: 'People were seen transferring between all the aircraft.'

The aircraft's presence at Birmingham airport was also confirmed by Ron Kosys, a member of the Birmingham Aviation Enthusiasts Group, who has posted pictures on the group's website.

The planes were parked in an area mostly used by private aircraft and situated away from the main runways.

� OCTOBER 2 AND 3... GULFSTREAM 4, REG N478GS
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On the tarmac: The Gulfstream jet, named in a report into the alleged transport of terror suspects, at Birmingham airport

The disclosure will reignite controversy over the use of British airspace and facilities by US-owned planes linked to rendition flights.

Last year, Foreign Secretary David Miliband was forced to admit that two American extraordinary rendition flights had landed on UK territory in 2002.

Mr Miliband revealed that both flights had refuelled on the British dependent territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

He apologised for the renditions, which contradicted successive statements made by Tony Blair in 2005, 2006 and 2007 saying there was no evidence that rendition flights had stopped on British territory.

The Gulfstream, registration number N478GS, is owned by a company called L-3 Integrated Systems.

The European Parliament report details how, on December 6, 2004, the Gulfstream jet was involved in an accident while flying from Bagram airbase in Afghanistan into Bucharest airport in Romania.

Although seven passengers were believed to have been on board, nobody involved in the Romanian investigation into the crash ever established what happened to them, as they had left the scene before accident investigators arrived.

� OCTOBER 1 AND 2... SAS 8 FLIGHT ARMY AIR CORPS
user posted image

Waiting: Army helicopters from an SAS air corps base near Hereford met both of the planes at Birmingham airport

A Ministry of Defence source confirmed that SAS helicopters did meet the two aircraft at Birmingham airport but said their presence could be explained by an organised meeting to discuss 'routine business between two allies'. He denied it had anything to do with rendition.

One aviation expert told The Mail on Sunday how he had tried to use the online tracking service www.flightaware.co.uk to monitor the flight plans of both planes to find out where they had flown from before landing in Birmingham on October 1, and where they flew to when they left on October 3. He was 'very surprised' to find that he was unable to. He added that this level of secrecy was highly unusual.

Spokesmen for Birmingham airport and National Air Traffic Services said the planes' flight plans were confidential.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'We unreservedly condemn any practice of extraordinary rendition to torture. The UK's clear policy is not to participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment for any purpose. We will not co-operate in any transfer of an individual where we believe there is a real risk of torture to the individual concerned.'

Shami Chakrabarti, director of pressure group Liberty, said: 'The sighting of a plane previously associated with some of the darkest aspects of the war on terror is a matter of grave concern.

'Ministers should be able to confirm whether or not it was transporting suspects on this occasion. In any event, the case for a wider inquiry into extraordinary rendition has become unanswerable.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...l#ixzz0Vq4SpZKi

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