Two recent news items on “extraordinary rendition”:
1) Maher Arar’s lawyers allege that Canadian CSIS agents (the equivalent of CIA agents, I believe) travelled to Syria in 2002 and got copies of “confessions” that Syria had tortured out of him:
In the submission, Arar’s counsel say James Lockyer and Michael Edelson, who both represented Arar early in the case, were told by Canadian officials that CSIS was in possession of Arar’s initial confession.
Lockyer, who was retained by the government as an observer and who also briefly served as Arar’s solicitor, said in a statement that the first confession “was later transmitted to Canada by CSIS who visited Syria in late 2002,” according to the submission.
Edelson had two meetings in December 2002 with members of the Joint Security Task Force that investigated Arar.
“In these meetings, the members (of the task force) and Department of Justice revealed to Mr. Edelson that CSIS had received Mr. Arar’s statements,” the submission says.
Waldman wants the government to table copies of Arar’s confessions with the inquiry.
I would be very surprised indeed if U.S. intelligence did not also see and use those confessions, along with Ahmad Abou El-Maati’s and Abdullah Almalki’s. Obviously I have no way of knowing if they travelled to Syria.
And remember, it’s not just the CIA involved in this. Arar’s deportation to Syria was authorized by the Deputy Attorney General, who was operating as Acting Attorney General at the time. The U.S. Department of Justice has never admitted that this was a mistake. Ashcroft told the press on November 20 of last year that, “In removing Mr. Arar from the U.S., we acted fully within the law and applicable international treaties and conventions that guide the activities of the United States in settings like that.” The D.O.J. released a statement to 60 Minutes in January that “The facts underlying Arar’s case…[are]classified and cannot be released publicly. We have information indicating that Mr. Arar is a member of al Qaeda and, therefore, remains a threat to U.S. national security.” As far as I know that is still the D.O.J.’s position.
(Note the similarity between Ashcroft’s November statement about the Arar case and what he told the Senate last week: “‘[President Bush] has made no order that would require or direct the violation of any law of the United States … or any treaty to which the United States is party,’ Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee.” Bush’s statements at the press conference last week were also quite similar: “…anything we did would conform to U.S. law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations…” “Jonathan, what I’ve authorized is that we stay within U.S. law” “The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We’re a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might provide comfort for you.”)
2) The Guardian Observer has written a story on America’s “ghost prison network” that contains some new details about “rendition activities. Excerpts:
However, Washington is relying heavily on allies. In Morocco, scores of detainees once held by the Americans are believed to be held at the al-Tamara interrogation centre sited in a forest five miles outside the capital, Rabat. Many of the detainees were originally captured by the Pakistani authorities, who passed them on to the Americans.
One is Abdallah Tabarak, a militant who is alleged to have been Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard and was seized in late 2001 by the Pakistanis. Tabarak was handed over to US agents, sent to Bagram and then to Guantanamo, before being flown to Morocco. Last November, Amnesty International criticised the ‘sharp rise’ in torture during 2003 in Moroccan prisons.
In Syria, detainees sent by Washington are held at ‘the Palestine wing’ of the main intelligence headquarters and a series of jails in Damascus and other cities. Egypt has also received a steady flow of militants from American installations. Many other militants have been sent to Egypt by other countries through transfers assisted by the Americans, often using planes run by the CIA.
In Cairo, prisoners are kept in the interrogation centre in the general intelligence directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison, according to Montasser al-Zayat, an Islamist lawyer in Cairo and former spokesman for outlawed militant groups.
Terrorists have also been sent to facilities in Baku, Azerbaijan, and to unidentified locations in Thailand. Scores more are thought to be at a US airbase in the Gulf state of Qatar, and a large number are believed to have been sent to Saudi Arabia, where CIA agents are allowed to sit in on some of the interrogations. Elsewhere, security officials merely provide the Americans with summaries….
In March 2003, FBI agents kidnapped a Yemeni al-Qaeda suspect from a hospital in Mogadishu, where he was being treated for gunshot wounds. Two months earlier, a sophisticated operation involving a fake charity lured a 54-year-old Yemeni to Germany, where he was detained and later extradited to the US. To seize Mohammed Iqbal Madni, a suspected al-Qaeda operative, in Indonesia, US investigators worked three states’ legal systems to provide an excuse to pick up the 24-year-old Pakistani. They then flew him to Cairo on a private US-run jet.
The exact number of prisoners held by the Americans or their allies is unknown, but US officials claim that more than 3,000 al-Qaeda militants have been arrested since 11 September. Only around 350 are held in Guantanamo Bay. Very few have been released….
American officials are unrepentant. ‘You have to break eggs to make omelettes,’ said one last week. ‘The world is a bad place.’
I wish the article were more clearly sourced and that it more clearly distinguished between the prisoners sent to Guantanamo and those “rendered” to Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Jordan, or God knows where. Still, it’s very much worth reading.