Obsidian Wings

Big Media Me

No, there are not two Boston law students named Katherine obsessed with the topic of extraordinary rendition. I wrote this article.

That was probably obvious, huh? I guess my secret identity is out, but I don't want this site to be google-able during my job search, so I'll stick with my clever alias. (the R is for my middle initial.)

I think I've done about all I can about this House bill, so I'm indefinitely postponing the other posts on the subject I'd planned to return to my neglected studies.

Trusting In the Word of Madmen

EDITED rather dramatically to delete an intro that obscured more than it illuminated.

Resolved: Even if extraordinary rendition weren't immoral, it would be stupid.

I don't expect to convince people who don't already agree with me that torture isn't effective--I'm no expert, and I clearly want very badly to believe that it's not effective. But here are three pieces of evidence:

1. Terry Karney's September 29, 4:30 pm comments to this post:

Allow me, as an interrogator, not so long returned from Iraq, with friends who were/are still there and in/were in Afghanistan (among them the author of, "The Interrogators, which book I now commend to you, in light of the questions you are asking) to answer the quesetion:

"IF you knew that a few hours of excruciating nail-pulling..." [that is a quote from another poster]

Not only no, but hell no. First, it doesn't work (and I've gone on, at length on the subject at Washington Monthly, Electrolite, in my blog Pecunium and anywhere else I encounter the pernicious doctrine that torture is a useful tool.

Even, in the rare case, a victim gives up truthful information, the validity is suspect, and as much time as it would have taken to get it from him otherwise is need to verify it. If torture is used as a standard tool then we get a cycle of positive feedback where the torturer leads the victim to the answers he's trying to confirm.

2. Praktile's post, "The Law of Unintended Consequences," about "one instance in which torture achieved its intended purpose, but set in motion a chain of events eventually leading to the fall of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11th, 2001."

3. A Reuters article entitled "Spies 'lap up' info from torture", which is what prompted this post.

It had occurred to me that even if one accepted that torture was good policy, it did not make much sense to rely on countries like Syria and Egypt to interrogate suspects under torture for us and faithfully describe their confessions. At a minimum, they were likely to exploit it to harm domestic opponents as well as dangerous terrorists.

Great Britain's ambassador to Uzbekistan agrees with me. The Reuters article describes a memo he wrote in July, condemning his country's reliance on evidence gained under torture in Uzbekistan, given to the CIA, and shared with Britain:

"We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek Security Services, via the U.S. We should stop," Murray wrote. "This is morally, legally and practically wrong.

The practice "fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture; they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results."....

Murray said the material was disinformation designed to trick the United States and Britain into giving aid.

"TORTURED DUPES"

"Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the U.S. and the UK to believe: that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

"I repeat that this material is useless -- we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful," he wrote.

"The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform."

Murray said Britain's own spy agency lacked the knowledge to evaluate the material, which it received from the American CIA.

"MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment," he wrote.

He described meeting an old man who was forced to watch his sons being tortured until he signed a confession admitting links to Osama bin Laden. "Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with bin Laden as I do."

House Votes to Only Sort of Legalize Torture Outsourcing

The House passed the 9/11 Commission bill yesterday on 282-134 vote, but not before they amended the torture outsourcing provision.

To read the NY Times, you'd think we'd won:

House leaders did agree to amend wording that would have allowed the government to deport foreign terror suspects to countries where they could face torture. The amendment, proposed by Representative John Hostettler, Republican of Indiana, would allow the Department of Homeland Security to detain the suspects but would bar deportation until after the State Department had sought assurances that they would not be harmed. "It will protect the American people from dangerous aliens while continuing our nation's proud history of providing refuge for the innocent," Mr. Hostettler said.

One problem: the State Department already seeks those assurances. In practice, they provide no protection at all against torture.

We got assurances from Syria that Maher Arar would not be tortured. But he alleges that:

The next day I was taken upstairs again. The beating started that day and was very intense for a week, and then less intense for another week. That second and the third days were the worst. I could hear other prisoners being tortured, and screaming and screaming.

Interrogations are carried out in different rooms. One tactic they use is to question prisoners for two hours, and then put them in a waiting room, so they can hear the others screaming, and then bring them back to continue the interrogation.

The cable is a black electrical cable, about two inches thick. They hit me with it everywhere on my body. They mostly aimed for my palms, but sometimes missed and hit my wrists. They were sore and red for three weeks. They also struck me on my hips, and lower back. Interrogators constantly threatened me with the metal chair, tire and electric shocks.

The tire is used to restrain prisoners while they torture them with beating on the sole of their feet. I guess I was lucky, because they put me in the tire, but only as a threat. I was not beaten while in tire. They used the cable on the second and third day, and after that mostly beat me with their hands, hitting me in the stomach and on the back of my neck, and slapping me on the face. Where they hit me with the cables, my skin turned blue for two or three weeks, but there was no bleeding. At the end of the day they told me tomorrow would be worse. So I could not sleep.

Then on the third day, the interrogation lasted about 18 hours. They beat me from time to time and make me wait in the waiting room for one to two hours before resuming the interrogation. While in the waiting room I heard a lot of people screaming. They wanted me to say I went to Afghanistan. This was a surprise to me. They had not asked about this in the United States.

They kept beating me so I had to falsely confess and told them I did go to Afghanistan. I was ready to confess to anything if it would stop the torture. They wanted me to say I went to a training camp. I was so scared I urinated on myself twice. The beating was less severe each of the following days.

Human rights groups reported on Arar's torture before he was released. His descriptions are entirely consistent with other prisoners' and human rights' groups description of what goes on in Syrian prisons. Off the record U.S. officials admit that Arar was tortured. On November 15, 2003, the New York Times reported that "American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity...say [Arar] confessed under torture in Syria that he had gone to Afghanistan for terrorist training, named his instructors and gave other intimate details."

But on less than a week later, Ashcroft was still saying it trusted that Syria had not tortured Arar: "I note the statement by the Syrian embassy ... regarding the treatment of Mr. Arar," Ashcroft said, "as that statement is fully consistent with the assurances that the United States government received prior to the removal of Mr. Arar," he told the Toronto Star. (The article was published on November 21, 2003, p. A13).

Again, it is not only Arar. Sweden received "diplomatic assurances" from Egypt that Ahmed Agiza and Muhamad al-Zery were tortured, and then proceeded to ignore their and cover up their allegations of torture.

According to the Washington Post,

In a report made public shortly afterward, Sven Linder, the Swedish ambassador to Egypt, wrote that Agiza and Zery told him they had been treated "excellently" in prison and that to him "they seemed well-nourished and showed no external signs of physical abuse or such things."

Another section of the ambassador's report that remained classified until recently, however, offered a different appraisal. It noted that Agiza had complained that he was subjected to "excessive brutality" by the Swedish security police when he was seized and that he was repeatedly beaten in Egyptian prisons.

According to the Swedish TV show Kalla Fakta:

Kalla Fakta has taken part of original documents which support the testimonies, and which prove that the two men have been systematically tortured, with electricity, blows and kicks.
On at least four occasions, Swedish authorities have received information through different channels from the men about what they have been subjected to.

A full Human Rights Watch report on the worthlessness of diplomatic assurances not to torture is available here.

Ahmed Agiza & Muhammad al-Zery

Summary
Thanks to excellent reporting by a Swedish TV program and the Washington Post, this case is the best window we have into how "extraordinary rendition" works in practice.

On December 18, 2001, the United States transported Swedish asylum seekers Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad Al-Zery from Sweden's Bromma airport to Cairo. And for once we have a named witness. Paul Forell, a policeman stationed at the airport that night, described it to the TV show "Kalla Fakta":

Forell waited with the Swedish security police and two Americans in civilian clothing for the prisoners to arrive. 20 minutes later, the suspects arrived. They were handcuffed, footcuffed and blindfolded. They were each escorted by 3-4 American agents, who were also wearing hoods or balaclavas. Forell said one of the masked American agents was giving orders, and all were "very professional in their way of acting, and if you´d compare with anything it would be the National action force (Swedish elite police unit for special actions). They acted very deftly, swiftly and silently," and had "absolutely" done this before.

Forell escorted them into a small room, and waited outside. Another, anonymous source told Kalla Fakta that in the changing room, Agiza and al Zery's clothes were cut off. They were given rectal suppositories, which one witness believed contained sedatives, and dressed in dark overalls.

"When they left the changing-room, they had their clothes changed into overalls, and were still with handcuffs and footcuffs. They were taken out to the cars, and then away," Forell said.

According to the Washington Post, declassified Swedish government documents "noted that 'the American side" had offered to help in the deportation "by lending a plane for the transport" and that ""the transport from Sweden to Egypt was carried out with the help of American authorities."

Airport records obtained by Kalla Fakta show that a Gulfstream V jet registered with an American company identified by the registration/tail number N379P, the same plane that transported Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed from Karachi to Cairo, flew from the Swedish airport to Cairo that night.

Agiza and Al Zery were held in the Masra Tora prison, which is just south of Cairo. Agiza's mother, Hamida Shalaby, says they were tortured there. She told Kalla Fakta,

The mattress had electricity. The mattress. He would lay on it - like this - and his arms in chains on both sides and his legs in chains too. When they connected to the electricity, his body would rise up and then fall down and this up and down would go on until they unplugged electricity.

Shalaby said this happened four times from December 19 to February 20, and "every day" her son was tortured with electrodes while stapped to a chair. She told the Washington Post that

told her during separate visits that he was given electric shocks and that prison doctors tried to cover up scars on his body by applying a special cream. "He couldn't even pick up his arms to hug me," she said in an interview. "He was very slow and very tired and very weak."

Al Zery denied that he'd been tortured in an interview with Kalla Fakta, but it was conducted under the supervision of Egyptian security officers. (Zery has been released from prison, but cannot leave Egypt or indeed his village there & is under tight surveillance.) Zery's lawyer, Kjell Jonsson, said

It´s evident that he is speaking under coercion...This information, that they have been tortured is now confirmed. It is about very painful torture. They fasten electrodes to the most sensitive parts of the body. That is, genitals, breast nipples, tongue, ear lobes, underarms. There are physicians present to judge how much torture, how much electricity, the prisoners can take. Afterwards the exposed parts are anointed, so that there won´t be marks and scars, and cold water is poured to stop blood clots.

Swedish government documents corroborate these allegations. From the Post:

In a report made public shortly afterward, Sven Linder, the Swedish ambassador to Egypt, wrote that Agiza and Zery told him they had been treated "excellently" in prison and that to him "they seemed well-nourished and showed no external signs of physical abuse or such things."

Another section of the ambassador's report that remained classified until recently, however, offered a different appraisal. It noted that Agiza had complained that he was subjected to "excessive brutality" by the Swedish security police when he was seized and that he was repeatedly beaten in Egyptian prisons.

From the Swedish TV show:

Kalla Fakta has taken part of original documents which support the testimonies, and which prove that the two men have been systematically tortured, with electricity, blows and kicks. On at least four occasions, Swedish authorities have received information through different channels from the men about what they have been subjected to."

Guantanamo's Evil Stepson

(12th post in a series on the House GOP's attempt to legalize "Extraordinary Rendition". Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.)

Please read this very, very important Newsweek story. As I feared, Gonzales' letter is not worth much.

Hastert's spokesman John Feehery said that Homeland Security had requested the extraordinary rendition provision, but "for whatever reason the White House has decided they don’t want to take this on because they’re afraid of the political implications.”

It's actually worse than I thought. It's not just a legal justification to keep doing what they've been doing. It's not justa way to get rid of the Maher Arar case. It still might have been a political ploy, but not only a political ploy. Torture outsourcing was going to be--still may be--the substitute for Guantanamo Bay after the Supreme Court decision:

He said the provision, mainly laid out in Section 3032 and 3033 , was designed as a way of addressing the problem created by last summer’s Supreme Court decision. The justices ruled that the administration couldn’t detain people indefinitely without trial or charges. As a result, the government has ordered the release of suspects such as Yaser Hamdi, a dual citizen of the United States and Saudi Arabia who was captured in Afghanistan and held for three years as an enemy combatant.

Now, Feehery said, “we’ve got a situation where we’ve got these people in the country who ought not to be in the country. We have to release them because of the Supreme Court case. So Homeland Security wanted this provision.”

The DOJ spokesman confirmed this:

Justice spokesman Mark Corallo also said it was Homeland Security’s call. “It’s their issue,” Corallo said. “They’re the immigration people now. Not us.”

The House is still pushing for the provision, and I'm sure the White House has no objection. They just need to keep a safe distance. They can't be allowed to. The press must ask Bush about this directly.

White House Counsel's Letter on Torture Outsourcing

(11th post in a series on the House GOP's attempt to legalize "Extraordinary Rendition". Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.)

This letter to the editor appears in today's Washington Post:

The President's Stance on Torture
Tuesday, October 5, 2004; Page A24

A Sept. 30 front-page article inaccurately reported that the Bush administration supports a provision in the House intelligence reform bill that would permit the deportation of certain foreign nationals to countries where they are likely to be tortured.

The president did not propose and does not support this provision. He has made clear that the United States stands against and will not tolerate torture and that the United States remains committed to complying with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Consistent with that treaty, the United States does not expel, return or extradite individuals to countries where the United States believes it is likely that they will be tortured.

ALBERTO R. GONZALES
Counsel to the President
Washington

I don't know how seriously to take this. As I think my posts here have demonstrated in mind numbing detail, we DO expel, return, or extradite individuals to countries where are tortured.

We do get a wink-wink-nudge-nudge "assurance" from Syria or Egpyt that they will not torture suspects. But given 1) those countries' human rights records, 2) the numerous and well supported allegations of torture from suspects we have sent there, 3) the numerous statements from intelligence officials that we deport people to these countries knowing full well how they treat suspects--in fact, we do it because of how they treat suspects, and 4) that we get full reports from, and in some cases participate in, their interrogations, these "assurances" are as flimsy as a wet tissue.

And since Gonzales is not honest about what the administration is doing, I can't really take his word for it that the administration opposes what Hastert is doing.

Still, this letter is good news. It does at least indicate that the President does not feel he can publicly support the legalization of "extraordinary rendition." That is something. And perhaps it will free House Republicans to vote their conscience on Markey's amendment. That is also something.

But there is no way the President & the Senate won't get their way on this in conference if they mean it. If the conference version of the bill contains the language legalizing extraordinary rendition, Gonzales' letter will be worth about as much to me as Syria's promise not to torture should be worth to him.

Five Suspects Deported From Malawi to Zimbabwe

(10th post in a series on the House GOP's attempt to legalize "Extraordinary Rendition". Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.)
Summary
I just learned about this one a half hour ago. It's been reported on even less than the other cases in the U.S. press (yoo hoo, U.S. press! Look alive!)--just one news brief and one editorial in Seattle newspapers over a year ago, and no one's picked up on the Amnesty International report--so I'm posting it out of chronological sequence.

According to Amnesty International, Ibrahim Habaci and Arif Ulusam of Turkey, Faha al Balhi of Saudi Arabi, MUhmud Sardar Issa of the Sudan, and Khalifa Abdi Hassan of Kenya were arrested in Blantyre, Malawi, on June 22, 2003. The arrests were carried out by Malawian police and CIA agents. They were held in secret. Their families lawyers intervened with the High Court of Malawi, which ordered them to be brought before the court in 48 hours.

By then they'd been flown out of the country. On June 26, 2003, a Malawian government official wrote to Amnesty that:

the arrests were not done by the Malawi Police but by the National Intelligence Bureau and the USA Secret Agents who controlled the whole operation. From the time the arrests were made, the welfare of the detainees, their abode and itinerary for departure were no longer in the hands of the Malawian authorities. Thus as a country we did not have the means to stop or delay the operation...In Malawi we do not know where these people are but they are in hands of the Americans who them out of the country using a chartered aircraft. They should now being going through investigations at a location only known by the USA."

The U.S. ambassador to Malawi denied that the U.S. was responsible for the deportations.

There was some question over where they were taken. According to the Seattle Times, the men were suspected of funneling money to Al Qaeda through Islamic charities, and had been flown to Botswana for interrogation. A Guardian article from August 2003 describes "reports that the Air Malawi plane chartered by the US stopped off in Zimbabwe on the way to a third country, possibly Djibouti or Uganda, where the men were questioned for a month." Several other sources said that they were interrogated in Zimbabwe for a month.

It seems as if the last story is accurate, based on what one of the prisoner's told his wife. Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe has one of the worst human rights records on the planet, and severe and sometimes fatal torture is widespread there. But fortunately, for once, these men seem not to have been harmed. Ella Ulusam, Arif Usulam's wife, told Xinhua New Service that her husband had called her from Istanbul,

informing her that they were kept for 29 days in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwean(sic), where US and Malawian intelligence officials cleared them of any al-Qaeda links.

"He told me apart from the trauma of being arrested at night with no reason, they were treated well and are all in good health, " she said.

The Guardian confirms that the CIA and the Malawian government decided they were innocent:

Nothing more was heard until July 24 when lawyers heard that Fahad Ral Bahli had surfaced in Riyadh and the other four in Sudan, all free men. Hub-Eddin Abbakar, a colleague of the Sudanese suspect, said they had been handed over to their respective embassies in Khartoum after the CIA decided they were innocent.

The President of Malawi met with Ella Ulusam and another of the prisoner's wives and apologized to them for their treatment. From Xinhua Net:

"The president was very apologetic," said Ella during the Tuesday interview. "He just said he was sorry, it was not the Malawi government, it was all the Americans. That's all he said."

Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed

(9th post in a series on the House GOP's attempt to legalize "Extraordinary Rendition". Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.)

Summary
At 1 am in the morning of October 23 or 24, 2001, in a dark, empty corner of the Karachi airport, Pakistan handed, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, over to U.S. officials. Mohammed was shackled and blindfolded. A Pakistani newspaper reported that he had been "missing since the start of October" from Karachi University, where he was studying microbiology.

Mohammed is Yemeni, and was a suspect in the U.S.S. Cole bombing.

The U.S. flew him to Amman, Jordan on a private Gulfstream jet (which you may hear more about in a subsequent post) with the registration number N379P.

He hasn't been seen since. Amnesty International has asked the U.S. where he is and what his legal status is, but gotten no reply. According to the 2001 State Department human rights report for Jordan, prisoners there made allegations of “methods of torture include sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted positions, and extended solitary confinement.”

Torture Legalization: A Winning Strategy for YOUR Congressional Campaign!

(8th post in a series on the House GOP's attempt to legalize "Extraordinary Rendition". Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.)
I noted in my last post that if Congressman Markey's amendment fails, and the language legalizing extraordinary rendition make into the final version of the 9/11 Commission bill, Congressional Democrats will face a similar dilemma to the one they faced over the Homeland Security Department bill in 2002. It occurred to me that this might be a deliberate strategy on DeLay's and Hastert's part.

In this AP story, such raving conspiracy theorists as Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, and Republicans Susan Collins and Christopher Shays, suggest that's exactly what's happening:

"There is anxiety -- you will not be surprised to hear -- among some of my Democratic colleagues in Congress, based on the 2002 experience with the Department of Homeland Security, that this will happen again," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn....

"There is no confusion about the timing of this bill," said House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Republican leaders expect "Democrats to either vote for it or to be attacked about being against protecting the American people if they vote against it."

Even some Republicans are worried that some of the political maneuvering could doom bills addressing the Sept. 11 commission's report. "I have concerns that some on my side of the aisle want there to be some poison pills," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.

"If we can't put partisan politics and presidential campaigning aside when we're trying to strengthen our nation's ability to deter and respond to a terrorism attack, we might as well go home," added Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "This is just too important to allow partisan politics to interfere with the progress of this bill." ....

Democrats say the GOP is hoping the same thing will happen with the Sept. 11 recommendations if they put in provisions that Democrats don't like. "One House member even referred to having Democrats over a barrel in a description of this strategy," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Tom DeLay innocently bats his eyelashes and said it would never occur to him to do such a thing. Dennis Hastert's spokesman is less cautious:

"The Democrats got spanked hard on homeland security," said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "I don't think they want to get spanked again."

I'll leave the commentary to others. I couldn't possibly convey what I think about this.

Legislative Update: Torture Outsourcing Bill One Step Closer

(7th post in a series on the House GOP's attempt to legalize "Extraordinary Rendition". Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.)

Via Congressman Markey's Office: The Republican leadership has released the version of the 9/11 Commission bill that will go before the full House this week. Here is a PDF version. The torture outsourcing provisions are still there. (Sections 3032 and 3033, pages 254-258.)

I didn't have much hope otherwise. I'm still pretty depressed right now.

The Senate version doesn't include the language legalizing extraordinary rendition. But given that the D.O.J. apparently requested these provisions and given the routine exclusion of Democrats and moderates from conference committees on major bills, I would be very very surprised if they were not included in the bill that comes out of conference.

Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans will probably not vote against, let alone filibuster, the bill based on this issue. Not the 9/11 Bill, not in an election year. They remember the Homeland Security Bill and the 2002 midterms. They remember how a triple amputee was successfully painted as soft on defense and this led to the loss of the Senate. I don't think it's farfetched to say that Hastert and DeLay remember too, and that it's part of the reason for the anti-immigration provisions in the bill. Heads they win, tails Democrats lose. Maybe they can even have it both ways: pass the bill AND get a few conscience-ridden Democrats to oppose it and give them negative ad fodder.

So if I had to guess, I would tell you that Markey's amendment is our last, best hope of stopping this.