RawStory claim to have knowledge of a British intelligence memo demonstrating that the UK both: had knowledge of CIA illegal detention sites in Poland; and urged that sources in Poland keep information on CIA activities quiet. POLAND - The CIA operated an interrogation and short-term detention facility for suspected terrorists within a Polish intelligence training school with the explicit approval of British and US authorities, according to British and Polish intelligence officials familiar with the arrangements. Intelligence officials identify the site as a component of a Polish intelligence training school outside the northern Polish village of Stare Kiejkuty. While previously suspected, the facility has never been conclusively identified as being part of the CIA's secret rendition...

Thanks to Reprieve for this valuable information on yet another batch of US prisoners being carted around to torture by the CIA. http://www.reprieve.org.uk/documents/070321HOArenditionreportfinal.pdf...

Mohammed Sheikh Khalid has now, voluntarily and of his own free will, admitted he masterminded every significant event from the Norman Invasion through the bubonic plague, fall of Constantinople, and Great Fire of London, to the Battle of Little Big Horn, assassination of JFK and the Oklahoma bombing. Or he might as well have. The extraordinarily comprehensive list of terrorist outrages for which he claims responsibility would be beyond the capacity of any but the most brilliant and inspired mortal; Khalid, I fear, is a more run of the mill thug. But in truth, we have absolutely no idea what, if anything, he has confessed at all. The BBC brazenly reported all of yesterday that while Khalid did allege he had been tortured during his four years of secret detention by the CIA in...

From Time The CIA probably doesn't mind the occasional bitter valentine. But on Feb. 14, the European Union sent a humdinger when its Parliament approved a controversial report castigating Britain, Germany, Italy and 11 other European countries for their alleged complicity in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. With critics calling the U.S. practice of secretly transferring terrorism suspects from one country to another the equivalent of outsourcing torture, the E.U.'s final report alleges that the CIA operated more than 1,245 flights in European airspace between 2001 and 2005 and accuses several countries of "turning a blind eye" to those flights, which "on some occasions" were used for rendition. The 76-page communiqué, which caps a yearlong investigation of flight data from...

From BBC Online Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of one of its citizens. Munich prosecutors confirmed that the warrants were linked to the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent. Mr Masri says he was seized in Macedonia, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan and mistreated there. He says he was released in Albania five months later when the Americans realised they had the wrong man. Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention. Code names Prosecutors in Munich said in a statement that the city's court had issued the warrants...

The Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners issued the following press release yesterday. European Parliament: Committee deplores Member States' passivity in the face of illegal CIA operations Over a thousand CIA-operated flights used European airspace in 2001-05 and temporary secret detention facilities "may have been located at US military bases" in Europe, says Parliament's temporary committee on CIA activities in Europe. Its final report deplores the passivity of some Member States in the face of illegal CIA operations, and a lack of co-operation from the EU Council of Ministers. It calls for a formal investigation under EU Treaty Article 7 on breaches of fundamental rights. The report, adopted on...

Published back in May 2006, this transcript of an International Rule of Law Lecture looks at Extraordinary Rendition: Complicity and its consequences Given by Professor Philippe Sands QC, Director, Centre of International Courts and Tribunals, UCL, it provides a legal perspective on rendition and responsibility. With the European Parliament committee on involvement in rendition meeting on the 23rd January to consider their draft report, this area could shortly become another problem for the Prime Minister and associated ministers of state....

By Nick Hawton from BBC Online I stood at the end of the frozen runway, peering through the mist, trying to make out the terminal building in the distance. It was exactly at this spot, and under the cover of darkness, that the CIA planes did their business. "They always followed the same procedure," says Mariola Przewlocka, the manager at the remote Szymany airport in north-east Poland when the strange flights arrived during 2003. "We were always told to keep away. The planes would stay at the end of the runway, often with their engines running. A couple of military vans from the nearby intelligence base would go up to them, stay a while and then drive off, out of the airport. 'Cash payments' "I saw several of these flights but never saw inside the vans because they had tinted...

European governments are under increasing pressure to reveal the extent of the assistance provided to the US for the operation of their extraordinary rendition programmes and covert detention and interrogation centres. The extent of the concern is revealed in a draft report on extraordinary rendition from the European Parliament that we posted previously. Now the BBC have produced a radio documentary that looks at growing suspicions about locations that may have been used illegally by the Americans in Poland and Morocco. Click here to listen or go here for further details....

From Amnesty International UK For more striking pictures of the protest at the US embassy in London today go here...

From Witness "Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the 'War on Terror'" tells the stories of Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed, two men who have survived extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture by the U.S. government working with various other governments worldwide. "Outlawed" features relevant commentary from Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.S. President George W. Bush, Michael Scheuer, the chief architect of the rendition program and former head of the Osama Bin Laden unit at the CIA, and Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State. "Outlawed" places the post-9/11 phenomenon of renditions and the "war on terror" in a human rights context and calls for action end these human rights abuses. NB Witness was...

By Matt O'Connor in SanLuisObispo.com CHICAGO - A Chicago man who worked for an Iraqi contractor alleged Monday he was imprisoned in a U.S. military compound in Baghdad, held incommunicado for more than three months and subjected to interrogation techniques "tantamount to torture." In a federal lawsuit filed in Chicago, Donald Vance, 29, a Navy veteran, charged that his constitutional rights were trampled by American military interrogators even though they knew he was a U.S. citizen. "I couldn't believe they did this to any human being," said Vance in a telephone interview. Vance was taken into custody without charges in April. While imprisoned at Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport, Vance said, he was held in solitary confinement in a continuously lit, windowless and...

By David Usborne in The Independent Kofi Annan, the outgoing UN secretary general, has delivered a barely disguised broadside against President George Bush in his last major speech before leaving office at the end of the month. He suggested that in the "war on terror", President Bush had ridden roughshod over the international community and compromised America's respect for human rights. Mr Annan made plain his concern that the United States had allowed its status as the world's sole superpower, coupled with its desire to protect itself against terrorists, to undermine its historical commitment to multilateralism. For the full article go here...

By Stephen Grey, author of Ghost Plane For the first time, I’ve now posted on the Internet all available flight logs I have of the CIA’s alleged fleet of aircraft. Compiled from aviation sources it is a searchable database (by country, date, airport etc) that gives a portrait not only of renditions but wider CIA activity since September 11. Have also posted a timeline, including details of new renditions, that helps interpret what the flight logs show. Also posted – - A CIA rendition in documents – the aviation documents and Spanish records that show proof of the pilots and the companies responsible, including a private subsidiary of Boeing, for organising the rendition of Khaled el Masri, the German citizen, from Macedonia to Afghanistan. - My rendition and torture –...

Draft Report on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners (2006/2200(INI)) Download file Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners THE UNITED KINGDOM 57. Deplores the way in which the British Government, as represented by its Minister for Europe, cooperated with the temporary committee; 58. Thanks the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Renditions (APPG), comprising members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, for its work and for providing the temporary committee delegation to London with a number of highly valuable documents; 59. Condemns the extraordinary rendition of Bisher Al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen and...

By Obsolete ...We already knew that those camps that Tony Blair had "never heard of" existed, as George Bush was forced into admitting they did. Don't worry though, everyone in them was treated humanely, and they certainly weren't tortured. ...For a government that always dismisses civil liberties concerns with the old adage that "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear", it's odd that government ministers and advisers have been so thoroughly uncooperative with the EU investigation into rendition. If they didn't know anything, why would they do everything they possible could to obstruct and filibuster the Europe-wide inquiry? The reason, as you've already guessed, is that the government is actually up to its neck in the scandal, as the draft EU report makes......

From Frontline Rumsfeld, while resigning, still insisted that the Iraq war was a winnable one and that very few people understood its real nature. A few days after his resignation, a court in Germany prepared to hear a lawsuit charging him and other senior officials, including former Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, with having played a role in the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere. The plaintiffs are 11 Iraqis and a Saudi, who said that U.S. interrogators tortured them. The lawyers for the plaintiffs said that Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the U.S. military commander of Iraqi prisons at the time, will testify on their behalf. German law provides "universal jurisdiction", which allows for the prosecution of war crimes that have taken place anywhere in...

By Stephen Grey (author of Ghost Plane) in the New Statesman More than 7,000 prisoners have been captured in America's war on terror. Just 700 ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Between extraordinary rendition to foreign jails and disappearance into the CIA's "black sites", what happened to the rest? Sana'a, Yemen. By the gates of the Old City, Muhammad Bashmilah was walking, talking, and laughing in the crowd - behaving like a man without a care in the world. Bargaining with the spice traders and joking with passers-by; at last he was free. A 33-year-old businessman, Bashmilah has an impish sense of humour; his eyes sparkled as he chatted about his country and the khat leaves that all the young men were chewing. But when I began my interview by asking for the story of his past three...

By Maher Arar in FPIF Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who is barred from entering the United States, delivered his acceptance speech for the Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award in a pre-recorded videotape. This is a transcript of his speech, which was viewed at the award ceremony hosted by the Institute for Policy Studies on Oct. 18, 2006 in Washington, DC. This award means a tremendous amount to us. It means that there are still Americans out there who value our struggle for justice. It means that there are Americans out there who are truly concerned about the future of America. We now know that my story is not a unique one. Over the past two years we have heard from many other people who were, who have been kidnapped, unlawfully detained, tortured and eventually...

From Newsnight In a new book, British journalist Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane documents his investigation into the secret CIA practice of transporting terror suspects to third countries - known as "extraordinary rendition". The book claims many of those prisoners subsequently suffered torture at the hands of regimes such as Syria - publicly pilloried by the Bush administration but, it says, privately colluded with in the name of defending the US....

From Newsnight In a new book, British journalist Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane documents his investigation into the secret CIA practice of transporting terror suspects to third countries - known as "extraordinary rendition". The book claims many of those prisoners subsequently suffered torture at the hands of regimes such as Syria - publicly pilloried by the Bush administration but, it says, privately colluded with in the name of defending the US....

By Jonathan S. Landay in McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning. Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview. Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism. The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many...

By Jonathan S. Landay in McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning. Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview. Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism. The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many...

From the American Civil Liberties Union "The president can now - with the approval of Congress - indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act." WASHINGTON - As President Bush signed S. 3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law, the American Civil Liberties Union expressed outrage and called the new law one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history. To highlight concerns with the act, the ACLU...

Juan Cole recently heard Craig speak at the conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society. His assessment can be viewed on his widely read blog, Informed Comment...

By Moazzem Begg in the Herald Tribune Moazzam Begg is a British Muslim who spent three years in U.S. detention, including two years at Guantánamo before being released in 2005. A few months ago, I was approached by U.S. military defense attorneys, something I have grown increasingly accustomed to since my release from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. The request wasn't from lawyers defending Guantánamo detainees. The defendant was a soldier facing several charges, including detainee abuse at a U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan. Some of the events surrounding these allegations coincided with my time there during 2002. I'd spoken to members of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command and internal investigation officers who were trying to build a case against other...

From Amnesty International Ottawa — Justice Dennis O’Connor has confirmed the worst fears of Organizations with Intervenor Status at the Arar Inquiry: that Canadian officials were complicit in the torture of Maher Arar and other Canadian citizens. “Justice O’Connor has documented in astonishing detail how the very officials tasked with protecting the rights of these Canadian citizens failed to live up to that responsibility, and worse yet, were directly involved in passing on questions for interrogations where torture would be used,” said Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. The report details the callous disregard for the very real likelihood that government actions would directly contribute to the torture of these Canadian citizens. In...

From CNN International WASHINGTON (CNN) - The Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday voted 15-9 to recommend a bill - over the objections of the Bush administration - that would authorize tribunals for terror suspects in a way that it says would protect suspects' rights. The bill was backed by Republican Sens. John Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It differs from the administration's proposal in two major ways: It would permit terror suspects to view classified evidence against them and does not include a proposal that critics say reinterprets a Geneva Conventions rule that prohibits cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees. In a decision earlier this summer, the Supreme Court...

From Reuters A Senate committee rebelled against U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday, passing a bill it said would protect the rights of foreign terrorism suspects and repair a U.S. image damaged by harsh treatment of detainees. Here are some other areas in which the Bush administration's war on terrorism has been dealt setbacks: MILITARY TRIBUNALS The Supreme Court in June rejected as illegal the military tribunal system set up by the Bush administration to try Guantanamo prisoners, most of whom were captured in Afghanistan. The court said the tribunals -- an alternative legal system -- lacked congressional authorisation and did not meet U.S. military or international justice standards. DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE After the September 11 attacks, Bush directed the National Security...

From the Jurist JURIST] US President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged [speech transcript] that the US Central Intelligence Agency [official website] has operated secret prisons outside the US where high-value terror suspects [DNI backgrounder, PDF] were detained, and said that 14 of those suspects [DNI profiles, PDF] have now been transferred to the Defense Department's military prison at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] where they will face trial. The suspects transferred to Guantanamo include alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [BBC profile] as well as key al Qaeda members suspected of designing the bombings of the USS Cole and US embassies in Africa. Bush said that it was necessary to keep the "small number" of detainees in secret facilities where they could be...