From http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33237 :

RIGHTS:
U.S. Fights Redress for CIA Kidnapping "Mistake"
William Fisher

NEW YORK, May 15 (IPS) - The U.S. government has again invoked the "state secrets" privilege, arguing that a public trial of a lawsuit against a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for abducting and imprisoning a German citizen would lead to disclosure of information harmful to U.S. national security.

Once rarely used, the "state secrets" privilege has over the past five years become a routine defence used by the George W. Bush administration to keep cases from being tried.

The current case involves a suit brought by Khalid El-Masri. El-Masri was on vacation in Macedonia when he was kidnapped and transported to a CIA-run "black site" in Afghanistan. After several months of confinement in squalid conditions, he was abandoned on a hill in Albania with no explanation. He was never charged with a crime.

El-Masri, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is seeking an apology and money damages from the CIA. The first -- and perhaps the last -- hearing on the case took place last week before a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

The lawsuit charges former CIA director George Tenet, other CIA officials and four U.S.-based aviation corporations with violations of U.S. and universal human rights laws. It claims El-Masri was "victimised by the CIA's policy of 'extraordinary rendition'."

The Lebanese-born Al-Masri says he took a bus from Germany to Macedonia, where Macedonian agents confiscated his passport and detained him for 23 days, without access to anyone, including his wife.

He says he was then put in a diaper, a belt with chains to his wrists and ankles, earmuffs, eye pads, a blindfold and a hood. He was put into a plane, his legs and arms spread-eagled and secured to the floor. He was drugged and flown to Afghanistan, where he was held in solitary confinement for five months before being dropped off in a remote rural section of Albania. He claims it was a CIA-leased aircraft that flew him to Afghanistan, and CIA agents who were responsible for his rendition to Afghanistan.

The aviation companies accused of transporting him during his detention are also protected by the "state secrets" privilege. A federal judge must decide whether to grant the government's motion to dismiss the case, but an ACLU spokesperson told IPS this could take weeks or months.

A parliamentary inquiry into El-Masri's kidnapping is also currently ongoing in Germany.

Speaking from Germany during a telephone news conference called last Friday by the ACLU, El-Masri said in response to a question from IPS that his objective is an explanation and an apology from the CIA.

According to Dr. Beau Grosscup, professor of international relations at California State University and an expert on terrorism, "Diplomatic assurances are trumped by the military, police and intelligence 'counterinsurgency' programmes that the two Cold War superpowers instituted and still run in many of these countries that train police and military personnel in torture."

"The real attitude driving the 'rendition' efforts is: 'Having paid to train them in torture, why not get our money's worth'," he told IPS.

During her first meeting with the newly-elected German chancellor Angela Merkel several months ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted El-Masri's kidnapping and detention was the result of a "mistake" by the CIA. The incident threatened to again sour U.S. relations with Germany, which Rice traveled to Europe to repair following Germany's opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Rice has defended the practice of rendition, saying it was a vital tool in the war on terror. However, she has said the U.S. does not "send anyone to a country to be tortured".

"The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured," she said. "Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured."

But most human rights and foreign affairs experts believe that such "diplomatic assurances" are worthless. They say there is ample evidence that detainees who are "rendered" to other countries are frequently subjected to torture. The U.S. has rendered prisoners to a number of countries that have notoriously poor human rights records, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan and Algeria, as well as to suspected CIA secret prisons in Eastern Europe.

The existence of the Eastern European prisons was revealed by the Washington Post. The Post reported that prisoners were routinely tortured, using such techniques as "waterboarding" -- submerging a prisoner in restraints in water to convince him he was drowning -- mock execution, prolonged shackling, being threatened with dogs, and "cold cell", in which prisoners are held naked in low temperatures and doused with cold water.

Last week, a special committee of the European Parliament issued an interim report concluding that the CIA has on several occasions illegally kidnapped and detained individuals in European countries. The report also found that the CIA detained and then secretly used airlines to transfer persons to countries like Egypt and Afghanistan, which routinely use torture during interrogations.

Rendition is known to have been a CIA practice for some years. But its frequency increased exponentially after 9/11, with reportedly dozens of prisoners being kidnapped from Italy, Sweden and other European countries. Italy is currently suing the U.S. for kidnapping an Italian citizen on Italian soil.

The U.S. Senate has passed an amendment mandating that the defence secretary inform Congress about U.S.-run secret prison facilities in foreign countries.

Last week, the U.S. again refused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to terrorism suspects held in secret detention centres.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the ICRC, deplored the fact that the U.S. authorities had not moved closer to granting the ICRC access to persons held in undisclosed locations, the Geneva-based agency said.

Kellenberger said: "No matter how legitimate the grounds for detention, there exists no right to conceal a person's whereabouts or to deny that he or she is being detained."

The former senior Swiss diplomat said that the ICRC would continue to seek access to such people as a matter of priority.

Investigators for the European Parliament reported last month that they had evidence that the CIA had flown 1,000 undeclared flights over Europe since 2001, in some cases transporting terrorist suspects abducted within the European Union to countries known to use torture.

But in an appearance before the U.N. Committee on Torture, the body that monitors compliance with the Geneva Conventions, the lead State Department attorney labeled as "absurd" charges that prisoners being rendered were on all these flights.

He added that terrorist suspects could pose a threat to security if allowed to meet with ICRC representatives.

Addressing reporters after the hearing concluded, Bellinger said that provisions in the torture convention that prohibit transferring detainees to countries where they could be tortured do not apply to detainee "transfers that take place outside of the United States". He added, however, that the U.S. has "as a policy matter, applied exactly the same standards" to such transfers.

The "state secrets" privilege being used by the government in the El-Masri case is a series of U.S. legal precedents allowing the federal government to dismiss legal cases that it claims would threaten foreign policy, military intelligence, or national security.

A relic of the Cold War with the then-Soviet Union, it has been invoked several times since the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Judges have denied the privilege on only five occasions. (END/2006)

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from http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle...§ion=theuae

‘CIA planes used emirates airports’ in covert global ‘rendition’ programme
By KT Scrutiny Investigations Team

16 May 2006



DUBAI — As the US Central Intelligence Agency comes under increasing criticism for its controversial renditions programme and alleged network of secret 'black site' prisons, a Khaleej Times review of evidence presented against the CIA reveals emirates airports were used at least 13 times by the spy agency's fleet of aircraft.


Three aircraft publicly linked to the CIA — a Boeing 737, and two Gulfstream executive jets — made multiple take offs and landings from Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports, the evidence shows. All three planes are thought to have been used in the controversial practice of renditions - snatching suspects from one country and transporting them to detention facilities elsewhere.

A security official at Abu Dhabi airport last night denied the report, while an official at Dubai airport declined to comment.

The practice has attracted widespread criticism from human rights group after allegations prisoners were being 'disappeared' by holding them in secret CIA prisons in Europe, or were being taken to countries such as Egypt and Syria, where torture is allegedly used to extract confessions and information.

Last week, a group of European politicians investigating the scandal accused the US of trying to cover up the programme by refusing to cooperate with investigations. And intelligence agencies in Italy and Germany have now been dragged into the controversy after evidence emerged they had assisted the CIA's rendition operations.

According to records of approximately 3,000 flights obtained by Amnesty International and the research group TransArms, planes owned or chartered by the CIA and linked to the renditions programme, made stop offs in the UAE. The first plane, a Boeing 737, made a total of 5 stops in the UAE: four in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi. The plane was first registered by a company called Stevens Express Leasing (SEL), then by Premier Executive Transport Services (PETS) and finally in 2004 by Keeler & Tate Management (KTM).

Amnesty says all three firms are front companies set up by the CIA.

SEL has a mailing address in Tennessee, but no physical office. PETS lists corporate officers who have no addresses other than PO Box numbers near Washington D.C and who apparently have no credit or publicly identifiable personal histories. KTM owns no other planes, no premises and has no website. Nevertheless, both SEL and PETS had, until 2005, licences to land at US military bases worldwide.

The Boeing 737 was used to take Khaled el-Masri from Macedonia to Afghanistan in January 200, where he was held for five months before being dumped in Albania when the U.S. realized it had grabbed the wrong man.

El-Masri, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, is now suing the U.S. government claiming he was not only kidnapped, but tortured as well while in captivity.

A second plane, a Gulfstream V executive jet, was also run by PETS before being transferred to a company called Bayard Foreign Marketing which, according to Amnesty, is a 'phantom company' whose 'named corporate officer, Leonard Bayard, cannot be found in any public record.'

The Gulfstream made at least 590 landings and takeoffs between February 2001 and September 2005, including four in Dubai and one in Abu Dhabi. The plane was put up for sale in late 2005, as per the evidence.

And "three flights were recorded in Dubai for a Gulfstream IV plane whose owners have admitted was leased to the CIA". The plane, which also held a licence to land at U.S. military bases, was allegedly used in the abduction of terror suspect Abu Omar. That rendition has resulted in Italy issuing 22

arrest warrants for CIA operatives implicated in Omar's abduction.

Omar was eventually taken by the CIA to Egypt. Vincent Cannistraro told Newsday newspaper in 2003 that an al-Qaeda detainee flown from Guantanamo Bay to Egypt was tortured. "They promptly tore his fingernails out and he started telling things," Cannistraro is quoted as saying.

Last week, members of a European Parliament committee investigating CIA activity in Europe travelled to the US to try and uncover more details.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice refused to meet them, as did former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

One of the MEPs, Italian Claudio Fava, said: "we came here with a mandate to find the truth and we got 'no comment' as a response." Two other MEPs, Jean Lambert and Cem Ozdemir issued a joint statement saying: "One thing to clearly emerge from this visit is the concerted effort on the part of the U.S. administration to keep a lid on the issue of CIA abuses.

Officials have been pressured not to cooperate with the investigation." The committee plans to hold a formal press conference about its findings tomorrow (Tuesday May 16).

John Bellinger, a legal advisor to Condolezza Rise, has dismissed the allegations over CIA renditions activity as 'absurd'.

Bellinger said the flights were not necessarily carrying detainees, but could have been simply transporting intelligence officials or evidence.

"There have been very few cases of renditions .. the suggestion that there has been a large number of flights is simply an absurd allegation." He claimed the last U.S. rendition flight occurred 'something like three years ago.'

A security official at Abu Dhabi International Airport denied the airport had received CIA rendition flights. He said flights to and from the airport were supervised by international as well as local teams, who prepare reports supported with pictures to show details of the flight including its destination. He added airport authorities did not involve themselves in political affairs. "This is a civilian airport and has nothing to do with politics," he said.

A source at Dubai declined to comment, saying he had 'no information available' on such flights at the airport.

An Interior Ministry official said the UAE's leadership rejected any kind of activity that might 'stain' the country's reputation. "The UAE has repeatedly rejected such operations and our country's position is known to everyone," he noted.