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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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June 26th,
2009 - U.N. Asked to Probe CIA Rendition |
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U.N. Asked to Probe CIA
Rendition By William Fisher Inter Press Service June 26, 2009 New York - Human rights
groups are asking United Nations officials to investigate the case of an
Italian citizen and victim of the "extraordinary rendition"
programme of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency who is currently being held
in a Moroccan prison based on a confession coerced from him through torture. The American Civil Liberties
Union and the Geneva-based Alkarama for Human Rights have requested that two
U.N. Special Rapporteurs investigate the circumstances of Abou Elkassim
Britel's forced disappearance, rendition, detention and torture, and raise
his case with the governments of the United States, Morocco, Pakistan and
Italy. The requests were made to
the U.N. Special Rapporteurs on Torture and the on the Promotion and
Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism. "Victims of the
'extraordinary rendition' programme detained at Guantánamo and other prisons
around the world are being ignored by the U.S. government, whose unlawful
programme landed them there in the first place," Steven Watt, staff
attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Programme, told IPS. He said, "The U.S. has
failed to take responsibility for its most egregious actions, leaving Mr.
Britel and countless other victims of the 'extraordinary rendition' programme
with no choice but to turn to the international community for justice." Britel, who is also a
plaintiff in the ACLU's lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan
for its role in the rendition programme, is one of the few victims of the
programme whose identity is known, and who is still detained outside of
Guantánamo Bay. Britel was initially
apprehended and detained in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities on alleged
immigration violations in February 2002. After a period of detention and
interrogation there, he was handed over to U.S. officials. The ACLU charges that in May
2002, U.S. officials stripped and beat Britel before dressing him in a diaper
and overalls, shackling and blindfolding him and flying him to Morocco for
detention and interrogation. Once in Morocco, they say U.S. officials handed
him over to Moroccan intelligence officials who detained him incommunicado at
the Temara detention centre, where he was interrogated, beaten, deprived of
sleep and food and threatened with sexual torture. Britel was released from
custody by Moroccan authorities in February 2003, but was again arrested and
detained in May 2003 as he attempted to leave Morocco for his home in Italy.
While detained incommunicado in the same detention facility where he had been
tortured months earlier, Britel falsely confessed under torture to his
involvement in terrorism. He was later tried and
convicted by a Moroccan court on terrorism-related charges and is currently
serving a nine-year sentence in a Moroccan prison. In 2006, an Italian
investigating judge dismissed a six-year long investigation into Britel's
alleged involvement in terrorism after the judge found a complete lack of
evidence linking him with any terrorist-related or criminal activity. In a related development,
the U.N.'s top human rights advocate, Navanethem Pillay, this week called on
the Barack Obama administration to release Guantanamo Bay inmates or try them
in a court of law. The U.N. High Commissioner
for Human Rights said that officials who authorised the use of torture must
be held accountable for their crimes. She called for a probe into officials
who participated in torture sessions or provided its legal justification. The South African lawyer was
also critical of President Obama's decision to hold some suspected terrorists
in detention indefinitely without trial. "People who order or
inflict torture cannot be exonerated, and the roles of certain lawyers, as
well as doctors who have attended torture sessions, should also be
scrutinised," she said. While praising the Obama
administration for banning many of the harshest interrogation techniques, she
said it needed to go further, providing victims of U.S. abuses with an
opportunity to rebuild their lives. "I believe we are
finally starting to turn the page on this extremely unfortunate chapter of
recent history, with counter-terrorism measures starting to move back in to
line with international human rights standards," Pillay said. "But there is still
much to do before the Guantanamo chapter is truly brought to a close,"
she added. Pillay’s remarks challenged
Obama's decision to limit investigation into past abuses and to continue to
hold some detainees who have not been charged with a crime. In May, Obama
said some detainees deemed too dangerous to release might have to be held
indefinitely. "There should be no
half-measures, or new creative ways to treat people as criminals when they
have not been found guilty of any crime," Pillay said. "Guantanamo
showed that torture and unlawful forms of detention can all too easily creep
back in to practice during times of stress, and there is still a long way to
go before the moral high ground lost since 9/11 can be fully reclaimed." But Pillay did not address
the Obama administration's decision to use reformed military commissions to
try suspected terrorists. Human rights groups have criticised the
commissions, particularly that terror suspects could be convicted and
executed based on evidence obtained by torture. Pillay said that detainees
who are not prosecuted and potentially face torture if they are sent back to
their own countries "must be given a new home, where they can start to
build a new life, in the United States or elsewhere. I welcome the fact that
in recent weeks a number of countries have agreed to take in a few people in
this position, and urge others to follow suit, including first and foremost
the United States itself." Earlier this month, the
first Guantanamo detainee, Ahmed Ghailani, was flown to the United States to
face death penalty charges for his alleged role in the 1998 bombing of two
U.S. embassies in East Africa. He is in custody in New York City. But huge majorities of both
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have resisted allowing any more of the
remaining 229 detainees at Guantanamo into the United States. Republicans, in
particular, have said they do not want Guantanamo detainees "wandering
around in their neighbourhoods". As a result, the Senate
voted 90 to 6 in May to withhold funding for the closure of Guantanamo until
the Obama administration submits a plan for doing so. Pillay was also highly
critical of the administration of George W. Bush. She charged that the Bush
administration’s counterterrorism policies had undermined international
efforts to end torture. "The terrorist acts
that shook the world on 11 September 2001 had a devastating impact on the
fight to eliminate torture," she wrote. "Some states that had
previously been careful not to practice or condone torture became less
scrupulous." Pillay called for "leadership"
to end "this grotesque practice". She welcomed Obama's decision to
close Guantanamo by next January and to ban waterboarding and other extreme
interrogation techniques. "Equally importantly,
victims of torture must be helped to recover from one of the worst ordeals
that a human being can face. The physical and mental scars of torture are
excruciating, the effect on families devastating, and there are often
long-term socio-economic effects, including a stigma that can be extremely
hard to erase. Victims of torture must be compensated and cared for - for as
long as it takes to enable them once again to lead a relatively normal
life," she said. External link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47381 |