CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights

[cal04]

Germany offered access to prisoner in Morocco if it quelled opposition

The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of America's key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal.

According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and "avert pressure from EU" over human rights abuses in the north African country. The report describes Morocco as a "valuable partner in the fight against terrorism".

The classified documents prepared for the German parliament last February make clear that Berlin did eventually get to see the detained suspect, who was arrested in Morocco in 2002 as an alleged organiser of the September 11 strikes.


(snip)
The disclosure is among fresh revelations about how the CIA flew terrorist suspects to locations where they were tortured, and Britain's knowledge of the practice known as "secret rendition". They are contained in Ghost Plane, by Stephen Grey, the journalist who first revealed details of secret CIA flights in the Guardian a year ago. More than 200 CIA flights have passed through Britain, records show.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1931692,00.html

[Time for change]

1. One more excellent reason why we need to impeach the bastards

if we get control of Congress.

We need to investigate the hell out of things like this and take the appropriate actions.

[sarahlee]

2. German ministers 'knew about CIA torture cells' in 2001

The German government is alleged to have received first-hand evidence that the CIA began torturing terrorist suspects at secret prisons in Europe shortly after the September 11 attacks, despite claiming it only knew about such sites through the media.

Stern magazine quoted a leaked German intelligence report yesterday which said that only weeks after September 11 2001, two agents and a translator visited a US military prison at the American "Eagle Base" in the Bosnian town of Tuzla, where they saw a torture victim.

The German intelligence report said US interrogators at the base had beaten a 70-year-old terrorist suspect with rifle butts and that "his injuries meant that he had to be given 20 stitches to the head wound he sustained". The report said the American interrogator responsible "appeared to be proud" of his actions.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article1927129.ece

Here is an English language report from Deutsche Welle on what is known so far about the forthcoming stern article:

During a visit to the US military base in Tuzla, in northeastern Bosnia, two officers from Germany's federal police (BKA) and a translator for the German foreign intelligence service (BND) discovered that suspects held there were beaten savagely, the magazine said in an early extract from its edition that is set to come out on Thursday....German investigators recorded what they saw in an intelligence document, which the magazine used as the basis for its report.

It said a 70-year-old terror suspect needed 20 stitches to his scalp after he was repeatedly hit over the head with a rifle butt while being held at "Eagle Base," as the US camp is called.

The soldier who had beaten him was "visibly proud" of his conduct, the magazine quoted the report as saying.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2213792,00.html

[Selatius]

3. Ironic that it took place in Tuzla, site of the Tuzla Massacre.

It seems one kind of atrocity of war was replaced with another kind of atrocity.

[sarahlee]

5. True

Some really bad kharma at that place.

[sarahlee]

4. This recent article from Time

recounts the seizure and torture of Mohammad Haydr Zammar, an alleged al Qaeda operative resident in Germany.

In December of 2001, U.S. agents arranged to have a German citizen flown to a Syrian jail called the Palestine Branch, renowned for its use of torture, and later offered to pass written questions to Syrian interrogators to pose to the prisoner, according to a secret German intelligence report shown to TIME on Wednesday. The report is described in the new book Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program by British investigative journalist Stephen Grey. The complex arrangement was part of the CIA's sprawling practice of extraordinary renditions, the secret transfer of terror suspects to hidden prisons across the world -- which has involved the aid of numerous foreign governments and the knowledge of key Western European allies, according to the book, which was shown to TIME by the author....

The intelligence report gives a rare glimpse into the favors exchanged between governments during the CIA renditions. One day after Germany learned that the Syrians were holding Zammar, the CIA offered the German foreign-intelligence agency BND the chance to put written questions to their prisoner. The intelligence report doesn't make clear whether CIA interrogators had direct physical access to Zammar. In June 2002, Syrian officials offered German interrogators access to Zammar in prison, according to the 263-page report by the BND, marked "Geheim" (Secret). That same day, the BND chief asked Germany's federal prosecutors to drop their charges against Syrian intelligence agents who had been arrested in Germany for allegedly collecting information on Syrian dissidents.

The German intelligence report cites another deal, an "urgent request to avert pressure from the EU side because of human-rights abuses in connection with arrest, because Morocco was a valuable partner in the fight against terrorism." Grey, who had the report translated, says he obtained the classified report from a German investigator, who remains anonymous. The German government has acknowledged that they dropped the charges against the Syrian intelligence officers because of their cooperation in anti-terrorism, but they deny that the decision was specifically linked to the Zammar case.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1546119,00.html

[sarahlee]

9. Posted this story just to show that the

German/US partnership in torture has continued, but it is a different story than the revelation that we were torturing right after 9-11 in 2001.

[Judi Lynn]

6. It's almost agony reading the first link. My god.

More from that article:

Stern said the German intelligence agents had been given access to documents confiscated by the Americans which were "smeared with blood". One German agent was said to have compared the actions of the US interrogators to Serbian war criminals during the break up of Yugoslavia. "The Serbs ended up before the international court in The Hague for this kind of thing," he was quoted as saying.
(snip)

Who could believe the _Bush administration DIDN'T have this all designed right at the first of his pResidency, when he started making country after country agree to not pursue human rights abuses against U.S. military stationed there? The untrained mind, even then, questioned why human rights abuses ever had to come up, for chrissakes, when they never had before..... or, at least to our knowledge.

_Bush has turned this country into a dirty, menancing, ugly place, as well as the countries who indulged him and his NeoCon thug regime.

[Selatius]

8. In a just world, Bush would stand trial for crimes.

But I am not so sure anybody in the US government is willing to go that far. I fear they would more likely pardon them all and say, "It's over. No need to dwell on the past."

[jannyk]

7. 70? They beat a 70 yr old senseless?!

oh 'america the brave' you disgust me.