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Archive for the 'Extraordinary Rendition' Category

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06
Aug

Pakistani Scientist Charged with Trying to Kill US Authorities in Afghanistan

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Abuse, Afghanistan, Children, Death in Custody, Detainee Abuse, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, Extraordinary Rendition, Female Detainee, Ghost, Grey Lady of Bagram, Prisoner 650 and Sexual Abuse

..The USA are the new Nazis, as you can clearly see from this photograph of her after her concentration camp experience.  Surely the death of her two youngest children and her sexual abuse is enough!  Does she look like she is healthy enough to have picked up a rifle, much less shot it???

By Scott Stearns
Washington

aafia3

Aafia Siddiqui in the custody

of Counter Terrrorism

Department of Ghazni

province in Ghazni City,

Afghanistan, 17 Jul 2008

A Pakistani scientist is charged with trying to kill U.S. military and civilian authorities in Afghanistan. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, human rights groups say the U.S. government secretly detained Aafia Siddiqui for five years before bringing the charges.

The 36-year-old neuroscientist was arraigned before a federal judge in New York City, Tuesday, on charges of attempted murder and assault. She faces up to 20 years in prison on each charge if convicted.

Siddiqui did not enter a plea at her arraingment. A bail hearing is set for Monday.

Siddiqui was shot and wounded in Afghanistan last month during a confrontation with U.S. intelligence officials who wanted to question her about alleged ties to the terrorist group al-Qaida.

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05
Aug

Pakistani Suspected of Qaeda Ties Is Held

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Children, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, Extraordinary Rendition, F.B.I., Female Detainee and USA

..This is such an obvious lie!  How do they expect us to believe these things?  Be sure to read her background under ‘profiles’!

WASHINGTON — An American-trained Pakistani neuroscientist with ties to operatives of Al Qaeda has been charged with trying to kill American soldiers and F.B.I. agents in a police station in Afghanistan last month, the Justice Department said Monday night.

aafia2

The scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, who studied at Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was transferred to New York on Monday, and is to be arraigned Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the department said in a statement.

Ms. Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003, leading human rights groups and her family to believe she had been secretly detained. But in interviews Monday and in a criminal complaint made public later Monday, American officials said they had no knowledge of Ms. Siddiqui’s location for the past five years until July 17, when Ms. Siddiqui and a teenage boy were detained in Ghazni, Afghanistan, after local authorities became suspicious of their loitering outside the provincial governor’s compound.

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04
Aug

FBI concedes Aafia Siddiqui in US custody: lawyer

By Dazeylin 1 Comment
Categories: Afghanistan, Bagram, CIA Black Sites, Children, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Disappeared, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, Extraordinary Rendition, Kabul Prison, Pakistan, Torture, Torture flights, USA, human rights and war crimes

aafia1

By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan.

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda.

Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information.

“I don’t believe that they just found Aafia,” she said. “I believe that she was there all along.”

The fate of her three young, American-born children is still unknown.

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01
Aug

Source: British Territory Used for US Terror Interrogation

By Dazeylin Closed
Categories: Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition, Ghost, Torture, Torture Ships, Torture flights, UK and war crimes

diego_garcia_0729

The U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia in the

Indian Ocean.

By ADAM ZAGORIN

Almost two years have passed since President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of a CIA program in which agency-leased aircraft fly terror suspects between secret prisons and interrogation sites around the world. “This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they have a chance to kill,” the President said on Sept. 6, 2006. Since that admission, the White House has declined to elaborate or comment further on the program’s specifics, although multiple reports have surfaced regarding the existence of secret facilities in Poland and Romania.

According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.

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28
Jul

Devoid of the Rule of Law: Pakistan’s War on Terror PDF

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Disappeared, Extraordinary Rendition, Musharraf and Pakistan

INTRODUCTION

Since shortly after 9/11 – when many Al Qaeda members fled Afghanistan and crossed the border into Pakistan – we have played multiple games of cat and mouse with them. The biggest of them all, Osama bin Laden, is still at large at the time of this writing, but we have caught many, many others. Some are known to the world, some are not.

We have captured 672 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars. [President Pervaiz Musharraf]

A question hangs over the international community at the moment. Who is the grey lady of Bagram?

In 2003, prisoner 650 was heard screaming in the detention facility at Bagram Airbase. Her abuse at the hands of the US soldiers led to mass protests amongst the male inmates being detained there. To this day, no one knows the identity of that tortured woman; what we do know, is that she was sent from Pakistan.

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28
Jul

Guantanamo Brit: ‘I Was Tortured’

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Binyam Mohammed, Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition, Reprieve and Torture

A British citizen facing a military trial in America’s Guantanamo Bay prison camp is launching a legal battle over claims he was tortured into confessing to terror offences.

Binyam Mohamed

Binyam Mohamed was detained in Pakistan.  He says the British government is refusing to release evidence

that backs up his allegations that he was the victim of extraordinary rendition by the US.

Mr Mohamed, who worked as a janitor in London, says he was taken to Afghanistan and later Morocco, where he was interrogated and his genitals slashed with razor blades.

His legal team, led by Clive Stafford Smith, said the case against him before a US Military Commission would be based on statements made during interrogation.

Evidence obtained by torture is inadmissible before the Commission.

The US government denies there was rendition or torture.

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28
Jul

Lawyer asks Taoiseach for information on CIA flights

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: C.I.A., CIA Black Sites, Extraordinary Rendition and Reprieve

CAROL COULTER, Legal Affairs Editor

THE LAWYER representing a British resident detained in Guantánamo Bay has written to Taoiseach Brian Cowen seeking information on CIA flights involved in his client’s “extraordinary rendition” which landed in Shannon in 2002 and 2004.

Clive Stafford Smith wrote to Mr Cowen on Friday on behalf of Binyam Mohamed, whom he is representing in the US military commissions process and US habeas corpus litigation.

Mr Mohamed, a janitor from Kensington in London, was 30 on Thursday last, and has been detained for the past six years, four in Guantánamo and before that for two years in Morocco and Afghanistan.

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22
Jun

Release ‘Detainees’: Charge and Imprison Bush for Capital Crimes

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Extended Solitary Confinement, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Torture and human rights

Len Hart

The Bush administration is trying once again to rewrite history and the law, specifically ‘the official evidence against Guantanamo Bay detainees’. Typically the legal eagles in the Bush regime have it backward. Bushco should not be given a second chance to fabricate a case when it had none to begin with. Detainees have already been in detention for years in violation of US Codes and our international treaties. Bush has had years to make a case and has failed to do so. To make ‘detainees’ –illegally detained to begin with –wait still longer for justice is, in itself, another crime to be charged to George W. Bush.

A capital crimes case against Bush is better than the ‘case’ Bush has against the ‘detainees’. This is a regime that commits war crimes and tries to make them legal after the fact –a recipe for dictatorship and tyranny.

A Federal judge will review the so-called evidence against detainees in the wake of the recent high court decision. Typically, Bushies want more time to fabricate another ‘case’. What was wrong with the case they had was this: they didn’t have one!

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11
Jun

New report details torture of Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Andy Worthington, Binyam Mohammed, CIA Black Sites, Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo and war crimes
Andy Worthington, author of “The Guantánamo Files,” introduces a new report, by legal action charity Reprieve, detailing the rendition and torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed, who faces a trial by Military Commission in Guantánamo.


Yesterday, Reprieve ( http://www.reprieve.org.uk/), the legal action charity that represents over 30 prisoners in Guantánamo, issued a detailed and devastating report, Human Cargo: Binyam Mohamed and the Rendition Frequent Flier Programme, which presents compelling evidence of the rendition and torture of one of its clients, the British resident Binyam Mohamed. The report is available as a PDF here: http://www.reprieve.org.uk/documents/2008_06_10Mohamed-HumanCargoFinalMedia.pdf.

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06
Jun

U.S. Secret Prison Ships Hold Untold Number of Detainees

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Bush Lies, C.I.A., Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition, Torture, USA and human rights

From: Invictus

The UK Guardian is reporting the United States is holding hundreds of detainees from its international wars on at least 17 “floating prisons” in different harbors around the world. The detainees are interrogated, and then many of them sent via extraordinary rendition to other countries for further interrogation and torture.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

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05
Jun

Ghost ships

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition, Torture Ships and USA

America’s ‘floating prisons’ are not only illegal, but evidence of the limitless scale of US detention policy

By Shayana Kadidal

This week the Guardian broke the news that an upcoming report from Reprieve – our counterparts across the pond in the Guantánamo litigation – documents the use of as many as 17 American warships as floating prisons to hold detainees in the “war on terror”. The report apparently documents not only descriptions of detentions at sea from released Guantánamo detainees, most of whom presumably were held in the early days of the “war on terror”, but also more recent detentions on US warships, particularly in the Horn of Africa, a current hot spot for disappearances carried out by the US military and intelligence agencies. The report also claims that in the last two years there have been several hundred renditions – another practice thought to have ceased after President Bush declared an end to it in 2006.

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05
Jun

Congress To Hear From IG’s On Gitmo, Rendition

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition and F.B.I.

(The Politico) The Inspector General for the Department of Justice will appear before Congress on Wednesday to discuss his office’s recent report, “A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq.”

The hearing will be led by Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight.

On Thursday, the same panel will hear from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General regarding the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained by U.S. authorities while laid over at JFK airport. He was renditioned to Syria where he says he was tortured and locked in a tiny cell for months. At the conclusion of the hearing, DHS will release its report on Arar, who has since been cleared of any connection to terrorism.

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03
Jun

Lawyers urge 9/11 charges dismissal

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Black Site, Children, Death Penalty, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Extended Solitary Confinement, Extraordinary Rendition, Family, Ghost, Guantanamo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Military Commission, Torture, human rights and waterboarding
Lawyers defending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and four other Guantanamo detainees have asked for the presiding military judge to dismiss their cases, saying the timing is politically motivated.
khalid_shaikh_mohammed_1
The men are to stand trial over the attacks on September 15, according to the court filing quoted by AP.
However the men’s lawyers say the date for the trials, coming only a few weeks before the US presidential election, is politically motivated.
The news comes as three other detainees were charged on Thursday with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.
‘Strategic value’
Mohammed and the four other detainees are to be arraigned in a US military court on June 5 on charges including murder and conspiracy.

“It is safe to say that there are senior officials in the military commission process who believe that there would be strategic political value to having these five men sitting in a death chamber on November 4, 2008″

Navy Lieutenant-Commander Brian Mizer

However, Navy Lieutenant-Commander Brian Mizer, one of the men’s lawyers, said in Thursday’s court filing that their trial date could prejudice the outcome of the case.

“It is safe to say that there are senior officials in the military commission process who believe that there would be strategic political value to having these five men sitting in a death chamber on November 4, 2008,” Mizer is quoted by AP as saying.
The other men facing charges include Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi and a nephew of Mohammed, al-Baluchi’s assistant Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, from Saudi Arabia, and Waleed bin Attash, reportedly from Yemen.
A sixth man, Mohammed al-Qahtani, whom the Pentagon had alleged was the “20th hijacker” in the September 11 attacks, had charges against him dropped.
Controversy over the upcoming trial of Mohammed arose after the US authorities admitted earlier this year that he had been “waterboarded” - an interrogation method designed to simulate the sensation of drowning - by CIA investigators before he reportedly confessed.
Further charges
Also on Thursday, three more Guantanamo Bay detainees were charged with identical counts of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.
The men are Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, from Saudi Arabia, who is alleged to have visited al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and met Osama bin Laden, Jabran Said bin al-Qahtani, also from Saudi Arabia, and Algerian detainee Sufyian Barhoumi.
Al-Qahtani is also accused of attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and learning how to make explosives, while Barhoumi is accused of being an explosives trainer for the group.
The proposed charges will be reviewed by Susan Crawford, the US defence department official in charge of the military commissions, who must approve them before the men can face trial.
http://tinyurl.com/4frqm6
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25
May

FBI agents watch Gitmo abuse - report

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, C.I.A., Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Released, Torture, Torture flights, USA, religious abuse and war crimes

AN FBI agent watched Australian detainee Mamdouh Habib repeatedly vomit during a marathon interrogation session at Guantanamo Bay in 2004, according to a long-awaited US Justice Department report released today.

The agent said Mr Habib, a former Sydney taxi driver held at the US military prison at Guantanamo for more than two years, endured two 15-hour interrogation sessions with only a short break in between.

The report said “(Mr)Habib’s condition did not bother” the agent at the time of the interrogation, “but in retrospect she questioned whether the treatment of (Mr) Habib was appropriate”.

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25
May

transcript of interview with ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib (2005)

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abuse, Australia, Black Site, C.I.A., Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo and Hunger Strike
February 13, 2005 - good interview!

Australian 60 Minutes program - Channel Nine - transcript of interview with ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib.

Transcript: Under suspicion

Reporter: Tara Brown
Producer: Stephen Taylor

Mamdouh Habib.

INTRO
TARA BROWN: Everyone has an opinion. Either Mamdouh Habib is a dangerous terrorist who should have been left to rot in jail or he is an innocent man persecuted because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s one or the other, simple as that, if you believe the propaganda. But so far, you’ve not seen this mysterious Mr Habib, never heard a single word from him. Now, after more than three years in prison, his story of terrorism and torture, and I have to say, some of his allegations are shocking and quite explosive. For the first time, your chance to judge Mamdouh Habib for yourself.

Click here to read the rest of transcript of interview with ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib (2005)

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12
May

Renditions ruin the EU case on human rights

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: C.I.A., Disappeared, Extraordinary Rendition and human rights
IPS
Credit: Istockphoto
Collusion between European Union governments and a secret U.S. torture and kidnapping programme has damaged the EU?s efforts to promote human rights throughout the world, an internal paper drawn up by Brussels officials has admitted.

David Cronin/IPS, Brussels - In 2001, the EU approved guidelines on how diplomats representing it should raise concern over the ill-treatment of detainees with the authorities in foreign countries. These guidelines stemmed from a stated commitment to “carry out systematic and sustained action in the fight against torture.”

A new EU assessment of how the guidelines are being applied acknowledges that some governments have accused the Union of double standards because some of its member states have been implicated in the so-called extraordinary rendition scheme operated by the Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S.

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09
May

Victims, rights groups press US over tactics in ‘war on terror’

By Dazeylin 0 Comments
Categories: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Abu Ghraib, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Extraordinary Rendition, Ghost, Torture and Torture flights

William Fisher
Inter Press Service

‘Rendition,’ torture allegations are not going away
front_gate_to_abu_ghraib_prison_campsized
NEW YORK: With human rights groups demanding the release of a report on a long-running investigation of the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the unlawful interrogations of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, new torture claims have been leveled at two US military contractors by a former Abu Ghraib “ghost” detainee who was wrongly imprisoned and later released without charge.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act request this week with the Departments of Justice and Defense demanding release of a report by the Justice Department’s (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which the group says has been completed for months but blocked by the Defense Department. The OIG investigation was initiated in 2005 after the ACLU obtained documents in which FBI agents described interrogations that they had witnessed at Guantanamo Bay.

While the documents were most notable for their description of illegal interrogation methods used by military interrogators, they also raised serious questions about the FBI’s participation in abusive interrogations, the actions of FBI personnel who witnessed abusive interrogations, and the response of FBI officials to reports of abuse.
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