Rendition program egypt

So if representatives of the Obama administration including SOS Hillary Clinton begin touting Suleiman as a good replacement for Mubarak, we should be very very suspicious. I hope and pray this man does not become the next dictator of Egypt. It looks like a complete martial law cabinet to me right now.

Remember the Iranians protested for quite a long time, and the same guys are still in charge there. As bad as it is over there, I have to admit to being somewhat fascinated in watching people revolt against their leaders when they have shown to have had enough of this repression. Finally got a chance to read this post BB, and that is some very good points you bring up.

It looks like ElBaradei is getting into position for leadership. Hard to tell from here. Wikileaks: US backed overthrow of Mubarak using social media in The cable, dated December 30, and recently released on the Wikileaks website, also describes a plot to oust Mr.

He listed several groups as being part of the scheduled uprising, including the liberal Waft Party, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Revolutionary Socialists and Kefaya, a broad-based reform movement, and said this loose coalition of groups hoped for support from the army and police to form a provisional government ahead of elections.

And interesting. When you consider election cycles, in December , America was between administrations. This is a really great post, thanks for connecting all the dots. The rebellion is not amused. He was right about Iraq of course, which probably pisses them off even more. Excellent post, BB! The result: Egypt, like many Arab societies, has a wealthy and well-armed elite at the top and a fanatical and well-organized Islamic fundamentalist movement at the bottom. In between lies a large and unorganized body of people who have never participated in politics, whose business activities have been limited by corruption and nepotism, and whose access to the outside world has been hampered by stupid laws and suspicious bureaucrats.

For all the guff being spoken about Twitter and social media, the revolution in Cairo appears to be a very old-fashioned, almost 19th-century revolution: People see other people going out on the streets, and they join them. BBoomer, I am pleased that you have done your usual fine job, in this case on the matter of US rendition for purposes of torture.

Nooooo, we just let the Egyptians do it……or the Syrians as in the case of Maher Arar. News, World News. Bookmark the permalink.

RSS - Posts. RSS - Comments. Email Address:. We're on facebook! Leave a message on our wall The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.

You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio. Vote for Sky Dancing on Wikio:. Sky Dancing a place to discuss real issues. In the midst of Egypt's protests, Omar Suleiman went on television Monday to say that President Mubarak had ordered him to launch reforms and begin talking to opposition parties. But for the U. Suskind said Suleiman "was our point man in Egypt for many years.

Everything went through Omar. We never had to talk to anyone else. When we wanted someone to be tortured, we'd send him to Egypt to have them tortured.

We wanted to get intelligence and we didn't need it to be stuff that could be doublechecked. As revealed in U. The Mubarak regime views Hamas, which has its roots in Egypt's own Islamist opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, as a threat.

State Department memo, using an alternate spelling of his name, "is now probably the most successful element of the [U. Other U. Marty qualified the sequestration of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr aka "Abu Omar" in Milan in February as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition. The Guardian reported on 5 December , that the British government is "guilty of breaking international law if it knowingly allowed secret CIA "rendition" flights of terror suspects to land at UK airports, according to a report by American legal scholars.

The United States has also been accused of operating " floating prisons " to house and transport those arrested in its War on Terror , according to human rights lawyers. They have claimed that the US has tried to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. Although no credible information to support these assertions has ever come to light, the alleged justification for prison ships is primarily to remove the ability for jihadists to target a fixed location to facilitate the escape of high value targets, commanders, operations chiefs etc.

While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly held in a black site , interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other inhuman and degrading treatment , which at times escalated to torture, though none of those claims can be verified.

His case has been characterized by the Swiss senator Dick Marty as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition". In June , the Italian judge Guido Salvini issued a warrant for the arrest of 13 persons said to be agents or operatives of the CIA in association with Nasr's kidnapping. Joseph L. Romano , III, etc. The CIA has not commented on the case, while Berlusconi 's government has denied any knowledge of a kidnapping plot.

On 6 December , The Washington Post reported Italian court documents which showed that the CIA tried to mislead Italian anti-terrorism police who were looking for the cleric at the time. Robert S. Lady, the CIA's substation chief in Milan, has been implicated in the abduction.

In a written opinion upholding the arrest warrant, judge Enrico Manzi wrote that the evidence taken from Lady's home "removes any doubt about his participation in the preparatory phase of the abduction.

Marco Mancini , the SISMI director of anti-terrorism and counterespionage, and Gustavo Pignero, the department's director in , have been arrested on charges of complicity in a kidnapping, with the aggravating circumstances of abuse of power. Italian judges have issued 26 EU arrest warrants for U. On 12 February , Nasr's lawyer said Egypt had released him and he was back with his family. These were the first legal convictions in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.

A story in the Los Angeles Times on 8 December seems to corroborate the claims of "torture by proxy. According to the petition's description of a redacted classified Defense Department memo from 17 March , its contents say "officials suggested sending Ahmad to an unspecified foreign country that employed torture in order to increase chances of extracting information from him. Mr Falkoff, representing Ahmad, continued: "There is only one meaning that can be gleaned from this short passage," the petition says.

Ahmad has information that it wants but that it cannot extract without torturing him. Ahmad should be sent to another country where he can be interrogated under torture. Muhammad Bashmila, a former secret prisoner, now free in Yemen, gave an interview to the BBC Newsnight programme, where he spoke of being transferred from Afghanistan to a detention center where it was cold, where the food appeared European and where evening prayers were held.

Somewhere in Eastern Europe is suspected. This claim cannot be confirmed. He was heading home to Canada after a family holiday in Tunisia. After almost two weeks, enduring hours of interrogation chained, he was sent, shackled and bound, in a private jet to Jordan and then Syria, instead of being deported to Canada. There, he was interrogated and tortured by Syrian intelligence. Maher Arar was eventually released a year later. He told the BBC that he was repeatedly tortured during 10 months' detention in Syria—often whipped on the palms of his hands with metal cables.

Syrian intelligence officers forced him to sign a confession linking him to Al Qaeda. He was finally released following intervention by the Canadian government. The Canadian government lodged an official complaint with the US government protesting Arar's deportation. On 18 September , a Canadian public enquiry presented its findings, entirely clearing Arar of any terrorist activities.

On 18 October , Maher Arar received a public apology from the U. House of Representatives. Representative Dana Rohrabacher , who apologized, stated that he would fight any efforts to end the practice. This is a non-exhaustive list of some alleged examples of extraordinary rendition. Most cannot be confirmed. On 25 November , the lead investigator for the Council of Europe , Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty announced that he had obtained latitude and longitude coordinates for suspected black sites, and he was planning to use satellite imagery over the last several years as part of his investigation.

The report from the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe directed by Dick Marty, and made public on 7 June , was titled: "Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states.

Following the publication of this report, the Council of Europe published its draft Recommendation and Resolution document which found grounds for concern with the conduct of both the US and member states of the EU and expresses concern for the disregard of international law and the Geneva Convention. Following a point resolution the document makes five recommendations.

Several months before the publication of the Council of Europe report directed by Dick Marty, Gijs de Vries , the EU's antiterrorism coordinator, asserted in April that no evidence existed that extraordinary rendition had been taking place in Europe. It was also said that the European Union's probe, and a similar one by the continent's leading human rights group had not found any human rights violations nor other crimes that could be proven to the satisfaction of the courts.

On the other hand, Dick Marty explained the difference of approach concerning terrorism between the EU and the US as following:. While the states of the Old World have dealt with these threats primarily by means of existing institutions and legal systems, the United States appears to have made a fundamentally different choice: considering that neither conventional judicial instruments nor those established under the framework of the laws of war could effectively counter the new forms of international terrorism, it decided to develop new legal concepts.

This legal approach is utterly alien to the European tradition and sensibility, and is clearly contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, despite Marty's claims, the European Parliament investigations uncovered cooperation between European secret services and governments and the extraordinary renditions programs, making such a clear-cut distinction over-simplistic see below. Dick Marty himself has not accepted such a dualistic approach, as he showed that for the British government also, the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism was alleged to be so grave that the balance of liberties had to be reconsidered.

The compilation of so-called "black lists" of individuals and companies suspected of maintaining connections with organisations considered terrorist and the application of the associated sanctions clearly breach every principle of the fundamental right to a fair trial: no specific charges, no right to be heard, no right of appeal, no established procedure for removing one's name from the list.

The second report was released on 8 June []. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe PACE accused the United States of operating a "clandestine spiderweb of disappearances, secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers" and called for EU regulations governing foreign intelligence services operating in Europe, and demanded "human rights clauses" in military base agreements with the USA.

In a resolution and recommendation approved by a large majority, the Assembly also called for:. The European Parliament launched its own investigation into the reports. In April , MEPs leading the investigations expressed concerns that the CIA had conducted more than 1, secret flights over European territory since , some to transfer terror suspects to countries that used torture.

Investigators said that the same US agents and planes were involved over and over again. Denounces the lack of co-operation of many member states and of the Council of the European Union with the investigation;. Regrets that European countries have been relinquishing control over their airspace and airports by turning a blind eye or admitting flights operated by the CIA which, on some occasions, were being used for illegal transportation of detainees;.

Calls for the closure of [the US military detention mission in] Guantanamo and for European countries immediately to seek the return of their citizens and residents who are being held illegally by the US authorities;. Considers that all European countries should initiate independent investigations into all stopovers by civilian aircraft [hired by] the CIA;.

Urges that a ban or system of inspections be introduced for all CIA-operated aircraft known to have been involved in extraordinary rendition. According to the report, the CIA had operated 1, flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture. The Parliament also called for the creation of an independent investigation commission and the closure of the Guantanamo camp.

According to Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava , who drafted the document, there was a "strong possibility" that the intelligence obtained under the illegal extraordinary rendition program had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained.