The disapeared

[Skyrad 0]

So the US is 'disapearing' thousands of people some of whom are kidnapped all apparently tortured some to death all without trial. Where are the rest? Has the US been operating quasi death camps?

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/11/missing_presume.html

...On 6 September, President George W Bush finally confirmed the existence of secret CIA jails such as the one that held Bashmilah. He added something chilling - a declaration that there were now "no terrorists in the CIA programme", that the many prisoners held with Bashmilah were all gone. It was a statement that hinted at something very dark - that the United States has "disappeared" hundreds of prisoners to an uncertain fate.

Let's examine the arithmetic of this systematic disappearance. In the first years after the attacks of 11 September, thousands of Taliban or suspected terrorist suspects were captured. Just in Afghanistan, the US admitted processing more than 6,000 prisoners. Pakistan has said it handed over around 500 captives to the US; Iran said it sent 1,000 across the border to Afghanistan. Of all these, some were released and just over 700 ended up in Guantanamo, Cuba. But the simple act of subtraction shows that thousands are missing. More than five years after 9/11, where are they all? We know that many were rendered to foreign jails, both by the CIA and directly by the US military. But how many precisely? The answer is still classified. No audit of the fate of all these souls has ever been published.
...But why is it so sensitive to confirm what happened to these prisoners, to detail how many were transferred where and when? Why should a country receiving prisoners be so embarrassed? And why - when countries such as Egypt have come clean and said "yes, we received 70 to 80 prisoners rendered by the United States" - will the United States itself not confirm what it did? Despite admitting, in general, that the CIA carries out renditions, the US has yet to own up to a single specific case of transferring a prisoner to foreign custody.

The explanation for the secrecy is one that most of the CIA officers involved in rendition will quite freely admit - a transfer to places such as Egypt or Uzbekistan (a country known for boiling prisoners alive) will inevitably involve torture. And knowingly sending a prisoner to face torture is, under both US and international law, an illegal act. Revealing the fate of the missing prisoners may be just too politically embarrassing.


http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/05/torture_flights_2.html

At a meeting in London in April 2002 chaired by John Scarlett — now head of MI6 — at the offices of the Joint Intelligence Committee and attended by CTIC officers, it was decided Bagram was not able to operate efficiently under such conditions. Even when detainees were transferred on the so-called Guantanamo Express to Cuba, the freight car cells at Bagram quickly filled up with new prisoners.

Could another site — possibly several — be found? Scarlett had served in Moscow as an MI6 officer and recalled the existence of interrogation centres throughout the Soviet Union: he said the harshest had been those run by the KGB in Uzbekistan, Moldova and Poland. They could well serve CTIC’s purpose. Scarlett knew two senior officers of Polish military intelligence. They were invited to London to meet senior members of MI6 who had worked in Eastern Europe. CIA chief, George Tenet, now in the dying months of his tenure, sent several senior officials to attend. The Poles confirmed the KGB interrogation centres remained intact and were used by local security services to question criminals.

CTIC already had its own aircraft and its senior officer at the meeting said there would be no problem in arranging overflying and refuelling rights in countries like Britain, Germany and Spain.

The Polish officers identified airfields within the old Warsaw Pact that could be used as stopovers; the air base at Tazar in south-central Hungary, the Szczytno-Szymany base in Poland and the Markuleshti airfield in Moldova. During the Cold War they had all been used for secret operations by Warsaw Pact Special Forces. Interrogations had also been conducted there by the KGB.

The operational plans sufficiently advanced, it was time for them to be politically rubber-stamped. Scarlett informed prime minister Tony Blair and Tenet briefed President Bush. Both quickly endorsed them.

Recognising that Poland would have an important role to play as the refuelling point for all flights going to Uzbekistan — selected by CTIC to be the prime interrogation centre for the terrorists — it was essential to get the support of Leszek Miller, the country’s soon to be ousted prime minister who had staunchly supported the war on Iraq. He immediately agreed to allow the Szczytno-Szymany base to be used as CTIC’s prime refuelling point in Eastern Europe.

The first flight began in May 2002. A Gulfstream V executive jet, registration N379P, landed at Northolt airport near London. It had a long history of being a staging post for CIA and MI6 officers en route to secret missions in Europe during the Cold War. Under what the Ministry of Defence later called "standing regulations", the only details listed of the Gulfstream flight were the names of the pilot and the aircraft owner. No record was made of any passengers on board.

On a sunny Spring day the Gulfstream V and its unrecorded passengers flew from Northolt to the Szczytno-Szymany base in northern Poland still blanketed by winter snow. After refuelling, the aircraft flew on to Uzbekistan. Soon the executive jet was on a regular run, picking up detainees in Jakarta in Indonesia, Pakistan and Bagram. One was the Yemeni microbiologist Jamil Qasim Seed Mohammed, wanted by CTIC "in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole while the warship was at anchor off Aden". He was flown to Uzbekistan and his fate remains unknown. Another passenger was Muhammed Saad Madni, an Egyptian suspect who had worked with the British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. He was "rendered" from Jakarta to Egypt. His fate also remains unknown.

By December 2005, CTIC employed over 1,000 people: field officers, analysts, translators and liaison officers with foreign intelligence services. Their closest relationship remained with Mossad: its own agents in Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Afghanistan provided updates of the movements of terrorist suspects on the CTIC list. The decision as to who would be rendered was made by CTIC in conjunction with CIA director, Porter Goss. He was still doing so the day before he suddenly resigned in May 2006 — a victim of political manoeuvring in Washington.

By then "rendition" had been fine-tuned. In May, 2006, CTIC officers were stationed in twenty-two countries around the globe to handle the arrests and transportation of suspects. They were usually picked up by the local security service and held in solitary confinement until they could be flown out to a designated "black site" — the CTIC in-house description of the interrogation centres. The decision as to which site a suspect should be sent was made by the senior CTIC officer on the spot.

"If a strong psychological interrogation with some physical force is required, a detainee is flown to Jordan. If a suspect is to be interrogated in between periods of strong physical force, he is sent to Egypt. For the most severe of torture for information, he is sent to Uzbekistan where he is killed after he can reveal no more", a senior Mossad officer said.

Craig Murray, when British ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote in a memo to Jack Straw, Britain’s Foreign Secretary in November 2004: "The CIA chief in this country acknowledged to me that torture of those rendered includes the boiling in vats of prisoners". Murray was relieved of his post, labelled as "mentally unstable" and finally dismissed from the diplomatic service. By December 2005, he had become one of the first to publicly reveal some of the details of the rendition process. As a result he said he was threatened by Britain’s security services.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[kallend 2,219]

1. I would like to see independent confirmation before believing it.

2. Despite (1) above, I do NOT see it as being out of character for this administration.

3. Declaring dissidents "mentally unstable" is an old Soviet trick.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[freeflir29 0]

Yeah...........we should just give them cookies and ask them to be nicer in the future.

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By December 2005, he had become one of the first to publicly reveal some of the details of the rendition process.

And next needs to have a nice long stay in Levenworth.

[narcimund 0]

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Yeah...........we should just give them cookies and ask them to be nicer in the future.

Let me see if I can think like freeflir29:

OPTION A) Boil suspects to death.
OPTION B) Give them cookies
OPTION C) There are no other options

Hmmmm... I'm going to try to hold this mindset for a while. I'll get back to you all and let you know how it works.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[Zipp0 1]

So you're OK with torturing prisoners, and the resulting torture captured US soldiers will likely face?

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Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups, he pushes the Earth down.

[narcimund 0]

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So you're OK with torturing prisoners, and the resulting torture captured US soldiers will likely face?

Of course he's ok with torture! The only other option is to give them cookies.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[Remster 30]

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The only other option is to give them cookies.

Are we talking about Ginger Snaps? Man, that's cruel....

Remster

[jakee 1,646]

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And next needs to have a nice long stay in Levenworth.

He was a British diplomat, why should he be sent to an American militery prison? You do want the US to be in charge of the entire world don't you?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[StreetScooby 5]

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Hmmmm... I'm going to try to hold this mindset for a while. I'll get back to you all and let you know how it works.

Uhm, what kind of firepower do you have?

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

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OPTION A) Boil suspects to death.
OPTION B) Give them cookies
OPTION C) There are no other options

I've always advocated giving anyone and everyone free TVs, and generators to run them. Then, let them watch Baywatch, somehow. I expect it'd be much more cost effective.

We are all engines of karma

[freeflir29 0]

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Then, let them watch Baywatch, somehow.

David Hasselhof is against the Geneva Conventions.

[rehmwa 2]

I don't know why all you guys hate cookies so much.

I think they're neat

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Zenister 0]

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Then, let them watch Baywatch, somehow. I expect it'd be much more cost effective.

Baywatch is/was one of the most viewed Western TV shows in the Arab world...

you are very close to the truth..Cultural Dominance is cheaper and more effective than Military Dominance... takes longer and no one gets reelected or remembered in the history books for simply 'outlasting' them until they slowly emerge into the 20th century....

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[Skyrad 0]

So do you simply not belive that extraordinary rendition exists? Also these are not people that have been found guilty of anything. Some maybe terrorists but there are plenty by the sounds of it that aren't, do you advocate the torture and state sanctioned murder of innocent individuals without a trial or recourse to the law?

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Skyrad 0]

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And next needs to have a nice long stay in Levenworth.

He was a British diplomat, why should he be sent to an American militery prison? You do want the US to be in charge of the entire world don't you?

The establishment did the same to Richard Tomlinson and David Shaler when they went off message. Tomlinson was even charicter assinated by a smear campaign in Italy and Oceana that he was a paedophile even though this was total fabrication.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca