February 5, 2013 by Jonathan Horowitz & Stacy Cammarano Open Society Justice Initiative 25 comments
20 Extraordinary Facts about CIA Extraordinary Rendition and Secret Detention
The program was intended to protect America. But, as described in the Open Society Justice Initiative’s new report, it stripped people of their most basic rights, facilitated gruesome forms of torture, at times captured the wrong people, and debased the United States’ human rights reputation world-wide.
To date, the United States and the vast majority of the other governments involved—more than 50 in all—have refused to acknowledge their participation, compensate the victims, or hold accountable those most responsible for the program and its abuses. Here are 20 additional facts from the new report that expose just how brutal and mistaken the program was:
- At least 136 individuals were reportedly extraordinarily rendered or secretly detained by the CIA and at least 54 governments reportedly participated in the CIA’s secret detention and extraordinary rendition program; classified government documents may reveal many more.
- A series of Department of Justice memoranda authorized torture methods that the CIA applied on detainees. The Bush Administration referred to these methods as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” “Enhanced interrogation techniques” included “walling” (quickly pulling the detainee forward and then thrusting him against a flexible false wall), “water dousing,” “waterboarding,” “stress positions” (forcing the detainee to remain in body positions designed to induce physical discomfort), “wall standing” (forcing the detainee to remain standing with his arms outstretched in front of him so that his fingers touch a wall five four to five feet away and support his entire body weight), “cramped confinement” in a box, “insult slaps,” (slapping the detainee on the face with fingers spread), “facial hold” (holding a detainee’s head temporarily immobile during interrogation with palms on either side of the face), “attention grasp” (grasping the detainee with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, and quickly drawing him toward the interrogator), forced nudity, sleep deprivation while being vertically shackled, and dietary manipulation.
- President Bush has stated that about a hundred detainees were held under the CIA secret detention program, about a third of whom were questioned using “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
- The CIA’s Office of Inspector General has reportedly investigated a number of “erroneous renditions” in which the CIA had abducted and detained the wrong people. A CIA officer told the Washington Post: “They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many, many cases there was only some vague association” with terrorism.
- German national Khaled El-Masri was seized in Macedonia because he had been mistaken for an Al Qaeda suspect with a similar name. He was held incommunicado and abused in Macedonia and in secret CIA detention in Afghanistan. On December 13, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights held that Macedonia had violated El-Masri’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, and found that his ill-treatment by the CIA at Skopje airport in Macedonia amounted to torture.
- Wesam Abdulrahman Ahmed al-Deemawi was seized in Iran and held for 77 days in the CIA’s “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan. He was later held in Bagram for 40 days and subjected to sleep deprivation, hung from the ceiling by his arms in the “strappado” position, threatened by dogs, made to watch torture videos, and subjected to sounds of electric sawing accompanied by cries of pain.
- Several former interrogators and counterterrorism experts have confirmed that “coercive interrogation” is ineffective. Col. Steven Kleinman, Jack Cloonan, and Matthew Alexander stated in a letter to Congress that that U.S. interrogation policy “came with heavy costs” and that “[k]ey allies, in some instances, refused to share needed intelligence, terrorists attacks increased world wide, and Al Qaeda and like-minded groups recruited a new generation of Jihadists.”
- After being extraordinarily rendered by the United States to Egypt in 2002, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under threat of torture at the hands of Egyptian officials, fabricated information relating to Iraq’s provision of chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda. In 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell relied on this fabricated information in his speech to the United Nations that made the case for war against Iraq.
- Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times by the CIA. FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified before Congress that he elicited “actionable intelligence” from Zubaydah using rapport-building techniques but that Zubaydah “shut down” after he was waterboarded.
- Torture is prohibited in all circumstances under international law and allegations of torture must be investigated and criminally punished. The United States prosecuted Japanese interrogators for “waterboarding” U.S. prisoners during World War II.
- On November 20, 2002, Gul Rahman froze to death in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan called the “Salt Pit,” after a CIA case officer ordered guards to strip him naked, chain him to the concrete floor, and leave him there overnight without blankets.
- Fatima Bouchar was abused by the CIA, and by persons believed to be Thai authorities, for several days in the Bangkok airport. Bouchar reported she was chained to a wall and not fed for five days, at a time when she was four-and-a-half months pregnant. After that she was extraordinarily rendered to Libya.
- Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered suspects,” as were Egypt and Jordan. One Syrian prison facility contained individual cells that were roughly the size of coffins. Detainees report incidents of torture involving a chair frame used to stretch the spine (the “German chair”) and beatings.
- Muhammed al-Zery and Ahmed Agiza, while seeking asylum in Sweden, were extraordinarily rendered to Egypt where they were tortured with shocks to their genitals. Al-Zery was also forced to lie on an electrified bed frame.
- Abu Omar, an Italian resident, was abducted from the streets of Milan, extraordinarily rendered to Egypt, and secretly detained for fourteen months while Egyptian agents interrogated and tortured him by subjecting him to electric shocks. An Italian court convicted in absentia 22 CIA agents and one Air Force pilot for their roles in the extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar.
- Known black sites—secret prisons run by the CIA on foreign soil—existed in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, and Thailand.
- Abd al Rahim al Nashiri was secretly detained in various black sites. While secretly detained in Poland, U.S. interrogators subjected al Nashiri to a mock execution with a power drill as he stood naked and hooded; racked a semi-automatic handgun close to his head as he sat shackled before them; held him in “standing stress positions;” and threatened to bring in his mother and sexually abuse her in front of him.
- President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order repudiating torture does not repudiate the CIA extraordinary rendition program. It was specifically crafted to preserve the CIA’s authority to detain terrorist suspects on a short-term, transitory basis prior to rendering them to another country for interrogation or trial.
- President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order also established an interagency task force to review interrogation and transfer policies and issue recommendations on “the practices of transferring individuals to other nations.” The interagency task force report was issued in 2009, but continues to be withheld from the public. It appears that the U.S. intends to continue to rely on anti-torture diplomatic assurances from recipient countries and post-transfer monitoring of detainee treatment, but those methods were not effective safeguards against torture for Maher Arar, who was tortured in Syria, or Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed al-Zery, who were tortured in Egypt.
- The Senate Select Intelligence Committee has completed a 6,000 page report that further details the CIA detention and interrogation operations with access to classified sources. However, the report itself remains classified.
Investigations into CIA Renditions
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This fact sheet summarizes the principal inquiries into the program that have been launched by prosecutors, parliamentarians and others in Europe and Canada:
Dick Marty and the Council of Europe: In 2005, parliamentarians at the Council of Europe set up a human rights investigation, following reports in the US media that the CIA had been operating secret detention centers for terror suspects in Europe. Headed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, the investigation’s first report in 2006 named more than 20 countries that had cooperated with a program of secret CIA flights moving suspects to and from the so-called “black sites.” Its second report in 2007 asserted that Poland and Romania had hosted secret CIA prisons from 2003 to 2005.
Fava Inquiry and the European Parliament: In January 2006, the European Parliament set up a separate inquiry led by Claudio Fava, an Italian MEP. His report concluded that the CIA operated nearly 1,245 flights through European airspace between 2001 and 2005. A subsequent parliamentary resolution criticized the lack of effective controls over member states’ rules of cooperation with foreign secret services.
Germany: The abduction of Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen wrongly seized in Macedonia and interrogated for four months by the CIA in Afghanistan, led to a three-year inquiry by German parliamentarians, who concluded that El-Masri’s claims of abuse were credible. The Munich state prosecutor’s office announced in January 2007 that it had issued arrest warrants for 13 people suspected of involvement in El-Masri’s rendition. Following pressure from the U.S. administration, the German government declined to seek the extradition of the suspects from the US.
Spain: A separate investigation into the El-Masri case was launched by prosecutors in Spain, on the grounds the CIA rendition plane that transported El-Masri had stopped in Mallorca in 2004, with CIA operatives using hidden identities without official permission. In 2010, Spanish prosecutors also requested arrest warrants for the 13 operatives. There are two other investigations related to the US torture program pending before Spain’s National Court: an open investigation into “an authorized and systematic plan of torture and ill-treatment on persons deprived of their freedom without any charge and without the basic rights of any detainee, set out and required by applicable international conventions,” in US detention facilities; and a case filed against Bush administration lawyers for torture and war crimes, which has been stayed, and referred to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Italy: In November 2009, a judge in Milan found 23 US officials as well as two Italian intelligence operatives guilty of the abduction of Usama Mostafa Hassan Nasr (known as Abu Omar), an Egyptian national, who was seized in Milan and secretly handed over to Egypt in 2003, where he spent 4 years in prison and was tortured. The Italian justice ministry declined to seek the extradition of the Americans, who included the former CIA station chief in Milan. In September 2012, the Court of Cassation upheld the judgments, and also ruled that five senior Italian secret service agents—including the former head of the country’s military intelligence agency—should be tried for their role in the kidnapping.
Canada: The Canadian government established a Commission of Inquiry in 2004 to look into the wrongful seizure and subsequent detention and torture of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained at New York’s JFK airport in September 2002 while in transit. Arar was interrogated for 2 weeks and then deported to his native Syria, where he was held for a year and tortured before being released. The inquiry exonerated Arar in 2006 and found that he had been tortured. He received C$10.5 million and Stephen Harper, the prime minister, formally apologized to Arar. In 2010, the US courts rejected a bid by Arar to sue members of the Bush administration, on national security grounds.
Poland: In 2008 the Polish state prosecutor’s office began an investigation into the country’s role in providing the CIA with a secret base for interrogation and detention of al-Qaeda suspects at Stare Kiejkuty military base in northeastern Poland. In March, local media reported that charges had been broughtagainst Zbigniew Siemiątkowski, former head of Polish intelligence. The Polish government has subsequently moved the investigation from the prosecutor’s office in Warsaw to the city of Krakow, without giving reasons. The Open Society Justice Initiative has brought a complaint against Poland over the use of this “black site” on behalf of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was imprisoned and interrogated there. Al-Nashiri is currently facing trial before a U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay.
United Kingdom: In the UK, the government settled a civil suit brought by Binyam Mohamed and others who had been seized by the US in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at Guantanamo Bay. The suit, alleging involvement of British intelligence in torture and mistreatment, was dropped by the UK to avoid bringing intelligence material provided by the US into open court. The UK government subsequently set up a public inquiry into the security services’ collusion with torture. This was closed down in January this year after UK police said they were pursuing criminal investigations in the cases of two Libyans, who assert they were tortured after being seized in 2004 with UK support and shipped to Libya.
Sweden: In 2001, two Egyptian nationals, Mohammed Alzery and Ahmed Agiza, were deported from Sweden and transferred by the CIA to Egypt were they faced subsequent torture and abuse. In October 2006 the UN Human Rights Committee found that Sweden had violated Alzery’s rights by standing by as he was brutally prepared for the CIA rendition flight. The UN Committee against Torture ruled in 2005 that in Agiza’s case, Sweden had exposed him to the risk of torture in Egypt. The decision to expel the two men was also examined by Sweden’s Ombudsman, and in 2008, the Swedish government awarded Agiza and Alzery around $500,000 each as compensation.
A staggering map of the 54 countries that reportedly participated in the CIA’s rendition program
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BY MAX FISHER
Click to enlarge. (Max Fisher — The Washington Post)
After Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA launched a program of “extraordinary rendition” to handle terrorism suspects. The agency’s problem, as it saw it, was that it wanted to detain and interrogate foreign suspects without bringing them to the United States or charging them with any crimes. Their solution was to secretly move a suspect to another country. Sometimes that meant a secret CIA prison in places such as Thailand or Romania, where the CIA would interrogate him. Sometimes it meant handing him over to a sympathetic government, some of them quite nasty, to conduct its own “interrogation.”
The CIA’s extraordinary rendition program is over, but its scope is still shrouded in some mystery. A just-out report, released by the Open Society Foundation, sheds new light on its shocking scale. According to the report, 54 foreign governments somehow collaborated in the program. Some of those governments are brutal dictatorships, and a few are outright U.S. adversaries.
Their participation took several forms. Some, such as Poland and Lithuania, allowed the CIA to run secret prisons in their countries. Many Middle Eastern, Central Asian and European countries handed over detainees to the CIA, some of whom those countries captured on the agency’s behalf. Other states, particularly in the Middle East, interrogated detainees on the CIA’s behalf, such as Jordan, which accepted several Pakistanis. Several, such as Greece and Spain, allowed flights associated with the CIA program to use their airports.
Here’s what the Open Society report has to say about the staggeringly global participation in the CIA program, including a full list of the countries it names:
The report also shows that as many as 54 foreign governments reportedly participated in these operations in various ways, including by hosting CIA prisons on their territories; detaining, interrogating, torturing, and abusing individuals; assisting in the capture and transport of detainees; permitting the use of domestic airspace and airports for secret flights transporting detainees; providing intelligence leading to the secret detention and extraordinary rendition of individuals; and interrogating individuals who were secretly being held in the custody of other governments. Foreign governments also failed to protect detainees from secret detention and extraordinary rendition on their territories and to conduct effective investigations into agencies and officials who participated in these operations.
The 54 governments identified in this report span the continents of Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, and include: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
I was most curious about the involvement of two governments that are very much adversaries of the United States: those of Iran and Syria. It’s clear that, in both cases, it was an enemy-of-my-enemy calculus. Iran and Syria are both enemies of al-Qaeda and have struggled against Sunni Islamist extremism (Syria’s government is secular, Iran’s is Shia). Here’s the report’s section on Iran:
Iran was involved in the capture and transfer of individuals subjected to CIA secret detention. In March 2002, the Iranian government transferred fifteen individuals to the government of Afghanistan, which in turn transferred ten of these individuals to the U.S. government. At least six of those transferred to U.S. custody were held in secret CIA detention in Afghanistan. These six individuals included Hussein Almerfedi, Tawfik al-Bihani, Wesam Abdulrahman Ahmed al-Deemawi (Wassam al-Ourdoni), Rafiq al-Hami, Walid Shahir al-Qadasi, and Aminullah Baryalai Tukhi.
Iran’s transfer occurred as part of a detainee exchange. Because the hand-over happened soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Iran was aware that the United States would have effective control over any detainees handed over to Afghan authorities. Amin al-Yafia, another individual believed to have been captured in Iran, in 2002, may have been subsequently held in CIA custody. Yafia’s whereabouts are unknown. See the detainee list in Section IV.
There are no known judicial cases or investigations in Iran relating to its participation in CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations.
The section on Syria is disturbing. That government’s record of horrific abuses has spilled out into the open since the uprising of 2011 became a civil war, with more Syrians subjected to – and speaking out about – a torture regime that sounds as if it were from another century. According to a 2005 article by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, quoted in the report, Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered suspects.” Government forces, according to the report, held some U.S.-provided detainees in a prison known as “The Grave” for its coffin-sized cells and subjected them to “torture involving a chair frame used to stretch the spine (the ‘German chair’) and beatings.”