|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
May 24th,
2009 - U.S. Relying on Allies to Nab Terror Suspects |
|
U.S. Relying
on Allies to Nab Terror Suspects By Eric Schmitt & Mark Mazzetti Associated Press May 24, 2009 Washington - The United
States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture,
interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized
outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and
former U.S. government officials. The change represents a
significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked
closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is
now pushing that cooperation to new limits. In the past 10 months, for
example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working
with al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services
in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information
that led to their arrests, a former U.S. counterterrorism official said. Pakistan's intelligence and
security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year
with the help of U.S. intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani
officials said. The two are the highest-ranking al Qaeda operatives captured
since President Obama took office, but they are still being held by Pakistan,
which has shared information from their interrogations with the United
States, the official said. Change in approach The approach, which began in
the last two years of the Bush administration and has gained momentum under
Obama, is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes that have closed
the secret prisons run by the CIA, and all but ended the transfer of prisoners
from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to American military prisons. Human rights advocates say
that relying on foreign governments to hold and question terrorist suspects
could carry significant risks. It could increase the potential for abuse at
the hands of foreign interrogators and could also yield bad intelligence,
they say. The fate of many terrorist
suspects whom the Bush administration sent to foreign countries remains
uncertain. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by the CIA in late 2001
and sent to Libya, was recently reported to have died in Libyan custody. "As a practical matter
you have to rely on partner governments, so the focus should be on pressing
and assisting those governments to handle those cases professionally,"
said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. The United States has not
detained any high-level terrorist suspects outside Iraq and Afghanistan since
Obama took office, and the question of where to detain them on a long-term
basis is being debated within the administration. Even deciding where the two
al Qaeda suspects in Pakistani custody will be kept is "extremely,
extremely sensitive right now," a senior U.S. military official said,
adding, "They're both bad dudes. The issue is: Where do they get parked
so they stay parked?" How the United States is
dealing with terrorism suspects beyond those already in the prison at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a question Obama did not address in his Thursday
speech about his anti-terrorism policies. While he said he might seek to
create a system that would allow preventive detention inside the United
States, the government currently has no obvious long-term detention center
for imprisoning terrorism suspects without court oversight. Obama has said he still
intends to close the Guantanamo prison by January, despite misgivings in
Congress, and the Supreme Court has ruled that inmates there may challenge
their detention before federal judges. Some suspects are being imprisoned
without charges at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan, but a federal court has
ruled that at least some of them may also file habeas corpus lawsuits to
challenge their detentions. U.S. officials say that in
the last years of the Bush administration and now on Obama's watch, the
balance has shifted toward leaving all but the most high-level terrorist suspects
in foreign rather than U.S. custody. The United States has repatriated
hundreds of detainees held at prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, but the
current approach is different because it seeks to keep the prisoners out of
U.S. custody altogether. Contentious issue How the United States deals
with terrorism suspects remains a contentious issue in Congress. Leon Panetta, the director
of the CIA, said in February that the agency might continue its program of
extraordinary rendition, in which captured terrorism suspects are transferred
to other countries without extradition proceedings. He said the CIA would
probably continue to transfer detainees from their place of capture to either
their home countries or nations that intend to bring charges against them. As a safeguard against
torture, Panetta said, the United States would rely on diplomatic assurances
of good treatment. The Bush administration sought the same assurances, which
critics say are ineffective. A half-dozen current and
former U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials and allied officials
were interviewed for this article, but all spoke on the condition of
anonymity because the programs are classified. Officials say the United
States has learned so much about al Qaeda and other militant groups since the
9/11 attacks that it can safely rely on foreign partners to detain and
question more suspects. "It's the preferred method now," one former
counterterrorism official said. Administration policies will
probably become clearer after two task forces the president created in
January report to him in July on detainee policy, interrogation techniques
and extraordinary rendition. U.S. officials said the
United States would still take custody of the most senior al Qaeda operatives
captured in the future. As a model, they cited the case of Abd al-Hadi
al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd who is said to have joined al Qaeda in the late 1990s
and risen to become a top aide to Osama bin Laden, and who was captured by a
foreign security service in 2006. He was handed over to the CIA and
transferred to Guantanamo Bay in April 2007. External link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/23/MNE517Q71S.DTL |