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The War Profiteers - War Crimes, Kidnappings,
Torture and Big Money |
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September 4th,
2008 - Mexico Drug Plane Used for US ‘Rendition’ Flights: Report News article by Agence
France Presse Feature article by CounterPunch |
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Mexico Drug Plane
Used for US ‘Rendition’ Flights: Report By Agence France Presse September 4, 2008 Mexico City - A private jet
that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of
cocaine had previously been used for CIA "rendition" flights, a
newspaper report said here Thursday, citing documents from the United States
and the European Parliament. The plane was carrying
Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin "Chapo"
Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El
Universal reported. The daily said it had
obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which
"show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably
to transfer terrorism suspects." It said the European
Parliament was investigating the private Grumman Gulfstream II, registered by
the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, for suspected use
in CIA "rendition" flights in which prisoners are covertly transferred
to a third country or US-run detention centers. It also said the US Federal
Aviation Administration's (FAA) logbook registered that the plane had
traveled between US territory and the US military base in Guantanamo. It said the FAA registered
its last owner as Clyde O'Connor in Pompano Beach, Florida. Extraordinary rendition has
been harshly criticized since it began in the aftermath of the September 11,
2001 attacks in the United States. Copyright © 2008 AFP. All
rights reserved. External link: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j6QonBKKMo2gw1e3ql-xUcQEZbVg Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni is Released from Guantánamo By Andy Worthington CounterPunch September 4, 2008 News that three more
prisoners have been released from Guantánamo is cause for celebration, as all
three men should never have been held in the first place. In a report to
follow, I’ll look at the stories of the two Afghans released - one a simple
farmer, the other a juvenile at the time he was seized - but for now I’m
going to focus on the extraordinary story of the prisoner released to
Pakistan, Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, whose grotesque mistreatment involves
“extraordinary rendition” and torture spanning several continents. A Pakistani-Egyptian
national and the son of an Islamic scholar, Madni was 24 years old when he
arrested in Jakarta by the Indonesian authorities on January 9, 2002, after a
request from the CIA. He was then rendered to Egypt, apparently at the urging
of the Egyptian authorities, working in cooperation with the CIA. In Egypt,
he was tortured for three months, and was flown back to Afghanistan on April
12, 2002 with Mamdouh Habib, an Australian prisoner, seized in Pakistan, who
was released in January 2005, and who has spoken at length about his torture
in Egypt. Eleven months later, Madni was transferred to Guantánamo. Although Madni did not speak
about his treatment during any of his military reviews at Guantánamo, several
prisoners confirmed that he was tortured by the Egyptians. Rustam Akhmyarov,
a Russian prisoner released in 2004, said that Madni told him of his time “in
an underground cell in Egypt, where he never saw the sun and where he was
tortured until he confessed to working with Osama bin Laden,” and added that
he “recalled how he was interrogated by both Egyptian and US agents in Egypt
and that he was blindfolded, tortured with electric shocks, beaten and hung
from the ceiling.” Akhmyarov also said that
Madni was in a particularly bad mental and physical state in Guantánamo,
where he “was passing blood in his faeces,” and recalled that he overheard US
officials telling him, “we will let you go if you tell the world everything
was fine here.” Mamdouh Habib confirmed Akhmyarov's analysis, recalling how
Madni had “pleaded for human interaction.” He said that he overheard him
saying, ”Talk to me, please talk to me ... I feel depressed ... I want to
talk to somebody ... Nobody trusts me.” On the 191st day of his
incarceration, according to Madni’s own account, he attempted to commit
suicide. The Tipton Three - Rhuhel
Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, British citizens released in 2004 - also
recalled Madni in Guantánamo. They said that “he had had electrodes put on
his knees: and that “something had happened to his bladder and he had
problems going to the toilet,” but explained that he had been told by
interrogators that he would not receive treatment unless he cooperated with
them, in which case he would be “first in line for medical treatment.” Quite what Madni was
supposed to have done to justify this torture and abuse was never adequately
explained at Guantánamo. The US authorities urged the Indonesians to arrest
him after they claimed to have discovered documents that linked him to
Richard Reid, the inept and mentally troubled British “shoe bomber,” who was
arrested, and later received a life sentence, for attempting to blow up an
American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001, but Madni
persistently denied the connections. In his Combatant Status Review Tribunal
- in which he pointed out that he is from a wealthy and influential family,
is fluent in nine languages and is a renowned Islamic scholar - he maintained
that he was betrayed by one of four radical Islamists whom he met by accident
on a trip to Indonesia in November 2001 to sort out family business after his
father's death. This account was backed up
during an investigation by the Washington Post, who concluded that he rented
a house in Jakarta, and did nothing more sinister than visiting the local
mosque, handing out business cards “identifying him as a Koran reader for an
Islamic radio station,” and spending “hours on end watching television at a
friend's house.” Succinctly summing up what happened to him, he told his tribunal,
“After I went to Indonesia, I got introduced to some people who were not
good. They were bad people. Maybe I can say they were terrorists. When
someone gets introduced to someone, it is not written on their foreheads that
they are bad or good.” According to Ray Bonner of
the New York Times, the entire basis for Madni’s capture, rendition and
torture was that Madni, described by an uncle in Lahore as a young man who
“had a childish habit of trying to portray himself as important,” had made
the mistake of telling the men he had met - members of the Islamic Defender
Front, an organization that espoused anti-Americanism, but had not been involved
in an terrorist attacks - that bombs could be hidden in shoes. The comment was picked up by
Indonesian intelligence agents, who were monitoring the men, and was relayed
to the CIA, who decided to pick him up after Richard Reid’s failed shoe bomb
attack a few weeks later. Although a US intelligence official confirmed
Madni’s uncle’s account, calling Madni a “blowhard,” who “wanted us to
believe he was more important than he was,” and another thought that he would
be held for a few days, “then booted out of jail,” more senior officials
clearly had other plans. Madni’s six and a half year ordeal, therefore, was
based on a single ill-advised comment. If Madni’s family are
sufficiently well connected, it may well be that we haven’t heard the last of
this particular story of the gruesome impact of torture arrangements between
the United States and Egypt, based on inadequate intelligence, and the
quiescent role of the Indonesian authorities. On the other hand, Madni, if
released in Pakistan, may just want to rebuild his life in seclusion. This
would be understandable, of course, but his abominable treatment deserves to
be more than a mere footnote in the history of the Bush administration’s vile
and unprincipled policies of “extraordinary rendition” and torture. Andy Worthington is a
British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of
the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published by Pluto Press). External link: http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington09042008.html |