Archival Rescue 15 ~ Outsourcing Detention

Fresh evidence of CIA torture network
By Michael Gawenda, Herald Correspondent, in WashingtonMarch 8, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

More details have emerged of a Central Intelligence Agency fleet of secret jets said to transport terrorism suspects around the world for interrogation in countries that the State Department has consistently accused of regularly torturing prisoners.

According to the CBS television program 60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday, suspects had been flown to Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Guantanamo Bay and even some former Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan, which, the State Department says, regularly uses torture in its prisons and detention centres.CBS showed one of the aircraft it said was used by the CIA for carrying prisoners, a Boeing 737, parked on a runway in Glasgow, which it said had made at least 600 flights to 40 countries, all after September 11, 2001, including 30 trips to Jordan, 19 to Afghanistan and 17 to Morocco.

According to the report, the 737 made trips to Uzbekistan despite reports that torture in Uzbek jails is as bad as anywhere in the world. A former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, told 60 Minutes he had complained to his superiors that information was being obtained by torture and sent his deputy to the CIA station chief to inquire about torture.

According to Mr Murray, who resigned from the Foreign Service when he was recalled from Uzbekistan, the CIA chief confirmed that torture was taking place. The CIA on Sunday denied that any meeting had taken place between the CIA chief in Tashkent and Mr Murray's deputy.The suspects are often picked up by local security services or police at the behest of the CIA, and are then drugged, stripped and dressed in prison clothes by masked CIA operatives before being put on the jets, 60 Minutes alleged. The CIA offered no comment on the other allegations made on 60 Minutes concerning the jets.

Sending terrorist suspects overseas for interrogation began during the Clinton presidency, but required White House approval before anyone could be subject to so-called rendition.
That rule changed after September 11, according to a New York
Times report at the weekend, when President George Bush signed a classified directive that gave the CIA power to operate without case-by-case approval. Neither the Administration nor the CIA have publicly acknowledged that hundreds of terrorist suspects have been subjected to rendition, but it is widely accepted that the practice, which gathered speed after September 11, continues to this day.

On 60 Minutes, Michael Sheuer, a former CIA analyst who said he helped devise the rendition program during the Clinton presidency, said US authorities did ask officials in the countries to which suspects were taken not to torture them."But they don't have the same legal system we have; we know that going into it," Mr Sheuer said. "We ask them not to torture these people, but we aren't there to check on them."Asked whether the CIA knew people were being tortured and whether this was acceptable, he said: "It's OK with me. Our role was to gather information. My job was to protect American lives."It is unknown whether the Australian and former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mamdouh Habib was flown to Egypt on the aircraft shown on 60 Minutes or another smaller jet.