Rice to warn Europe to back off over detainees By Saul Hudson 2 hours, 16 minutes ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to give allies in Europe a response next week to their pressure over Washington's treatment of terrorism suspects: back off. For almost a month, the United States has been on the defensive, refusing to deny or confirm media reports the United States has held prisoners in secret in Eastern Europe and transported detainees incommunicado across the continent. The European Union has demanded that Washington address the allegations to allay fears of illegal U.S. practices. The concerns are rampant in among the European public and parliaments, already critical of U.S. prisoner-abuse scandals in Iraq and Guantanamo, Cuba. But Rice will shift to offense when she visits Europe next week, in a strategy that has emerged in recent days and been tested by her spokesman in public and in her private meetings with European visitors. Rice, who has been largely silent on detainees and had an unusually low-profile in Washington during the scandal, said she would personally address the issue in public before heading to Europe. U.S. officials said that could be early on Monday. On the trip, she will remind allies they themselves have been cooperating in U.S. operations and tell them to do more to win over their publics as a way to deflect criticism directed at the United States, diplomats and U.S. officials said. ------------------- Rice will stress in public that Washington does not violate allies' sovereignty or break international law, and she will remind publics their governments are cooperating in a fight against militants who have bombed commuters in Madrid and London, senior U.S. officials said. "It is the responsibility, also, of governments to explain as clearly as possible to their publics and publics around the world what it is that they are doing in fighting the war on terrorism," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051203/pl_nm/security_europe_rice_dc;_ylt=AihRDpLjsVY6iP4oTj6nSJus0NUE
Rice rejects EU protests over secret terror prisons America does not break international law, Secretary of State insists Antony Barnett and Jamie Doward Sunday December 4, 2005 The Observer US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will inflame the transatlantic row over America's alleged torture of terror suspects in secret jails by telling Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other European officials to 'back off'. Rice, who arrives in Brussels tomorrow for a meeting with Nato foreign ministers, has been under pressure to respond to claims the US has been using covert prisons in Eastern Europe to interrogate Islamic militants. Human rights groups have alleged the CIA is flying terror suspects to secret jails in planes that have used airports throughout Europe, including Britain. Rice's refusal to answer detailed questions on what has become known as 'extraordinary rendition' will anger many in Europe. Last week Straw wrote to Rice asking for clarification about some 80 flights by CIA planes that have passed through the UK. European politicians and human rights groups claim the flights and use of a network of secret jails breach international law. State Department officials have hinted that Rice's response to Straw and other European ministers will remind them of their 'co-operation' in the war on terror. She is expected to make a public statement today stressing that the US does not violate allies' sovereignty or break international law. She will also remind people their governments are co-operating in a fight against militants who have bombed commuters in London and Madrid. She will drive home her message in private meetings with officials in Germany and at the EU headquarters in Brussels. Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said Rice told him in Washington she expected allies to trust that America does not allow rights abuses. An unnamed European diplomat who had contact with US officials over the handling of the scandals told Reuters yesterday: 'It's very clear they want European governments to stop pushing on this... They were stuck on the defensive for weeks, but suddenly the line has toughened up incredibly.' Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who will be chairing a Commons committee of MPs along with Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, has said Rice needs to make a clear statement. She 'does not seem to realise that for a large section of Washington and European opinion, the Bush administration is in a shrinking minority of people that has not grasped that lowering our standards [on human rights] makes us less, not more, secure'. The row is set to escalate in Washington itself, as a US civil rights group says it is taking the CIA to court to stop the transportation of terror suspects to countries outside US legal authority. The American Civil Liberties Union says the intelligence agency has broken both US and international law. It is acting for a man allegedly flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. In Britain, human rights group Liberty is to table an amendment to the Civil Aviation Bill that would oblige the Home Secretary to force any aircraft travelling through UK airspace suspected of extraordinary rendition to land and be searched by police and customs. Straw is also facing calls to allow MPs and human rights groups access to Diego Garcia, the British island in the Indian Ocean being used as a US military base. It has long been suspected that the island has been used to hold or transfer terror suspects to secret US jails. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1657289,00.html?gusrc=rss
US civil rights group to sue CIA A US civil rights groups says it is taking the CIA to court to stop the transportation of terror suspects to countries outside US legal authority. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the intelligence agency has broken both US and international law. It is acting for a man allegedly flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she'll comment on recent reports of alleged CIA prisons abroad before starting a visit to Europe on Monday. Ms Rice has said she will provide an answer to a EU letter expressing concern over reports last month alleging the US intelligence agency was using secret jails - particularly in eastern Europe. 'Extraordinary rendition' "The lawsuit will charge that CIA officials at the highest level violated US and universal human rights laws when they authorised agents to abduct an innocent man, detain him incommunicado, beat him, drug and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan," the ACLU said in a news release. The release identified the jail as the "Salt Pit". The group did not provide the name or nationality of the plaintiff, saying only that he would appear at a news conference next week to reveal details of the lawsuit. The ACLU also wants to name corporations which it accuses of owning and operating the aircraft used to transport detainees secretly from country to country. The highly secretive process is known as "extraordinary rendition" whereby intelligence agencies move and interrogate terrorism suspects outside the US, where they have no American legal protection. It has become extremely controversial, the BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington reports. Some individuals have claimed they were flown by the CIA to countries like Syria and Egypt, where they were tortured. The US government and its intelligence agencies maintain that all their operations are conducted within the law and they will no doubt fight this case vigorously, our correspondent says. He says they will not want to see US intelligence officers forced publicly to defend their actions and they will not want to see one of their most secret procedures laid bare in open court. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4494246.stm
I wonder if that's the person the ACLU is talking about in the lawsuit. This caught my eye too. I also liked this quote by hadley.
EXCLUSIVE: Sources Tell ABC News Top Al Qaeda Figures Held in Secret CIA Prisons 10 Out of 11 High-Value Terror Leaders Subjected to 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO Dec. 5, 2005 — - Two CIA secret prisons were operating in Eastern Europe until last month when they were shut down following Human Rights Watch reports of their existence in Poland and Romania. Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert. CIA officials asked ABC News not to name the specific countries where the prisons were located, citing security concerns. The CIA declines to comment, but current and former intelligence officials tell ABC News that 11 top al Qaeda figures were all held at one point on a former Soviet air base in one Eastern European country. Several of them were later moved to a second Eastern European country. All but one of these 11 high-value al Qaeda prisoners were subjected to the harshest interrogation techniques in the CIA's secret arsenal, the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" authorized for use by about 14 CIA officers and first reported by ABC News on Nov. 18. Rice today avoided directly answering the question of secret prisons in remarks made on her departure for Europe, where the issue of secret prisons and secret flights has caused a furor. Without mentioning any country by name, Rice acknowledged special handling for certain terrorists. "The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice, which were designed for different needs. We have had to adapt," Rice said. The CIA has used a small fleet of private jets to move top al Qaeda suspects from Afghanistan and the Middle East to Eastern Europe, where Human Rights Watch has identified Poland and Romania as the countries that housed secret sites. http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1375123
Mark, aren't these "exclusive" sources leaking classified information to the news media? don't we need an independent cousel to investigate who these people are and why they're exposing secret government operations, endagering national security, and putting people's lives at risk? or do you only advocate that when such an investigation might look bad for the president?
basso here's an idea. How about being truthful with the American people and let them make the decision whether we want to be running secret gulags around the world instead of claiming an outrageous lie that "we don't torture." And then turn around and move the prisons out of Europe to Africa. So we can use 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' on them.
Maybe we should investigate if that is classified information. But here are some things those "leaks" didn't do: 1. mention a specific place location. 2. Blow someone's cover. 3. Force the CIA to close a front with connections in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the middle-east 4. Tamper with intel gathering resources directly involved in dealing with WMD's and terrorism.
1. Telling the news media that there are suspects being held in illegal CIA camps doesn't A) tell who those people are B) say where they are C) tell what they've confessed to. No one was put in danger by this leak which aims to expose human rights abuses, not take simply exact political vengeance. 2. You honestly believe that the ability of the CIA to torture is a vital national security interest? Do you think that publishing the Pentagon Papers was also a natioanl security risk? Allowing the CIA to do whatever it wants without regard for the will of the American people, international law, or basic human decency, that's the real national security risk.
it seems you know not whereof you post. the leakers not only told ABC who they suspects were, but where they are being held. here's the article: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1375123 and the list, which i won't reproduce here: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Business/popup?id=1375287
So Basso are you implying that if someone leaks classified info its OK for top Admin. officials too also?
December 7, 2005 Skepticism Seems to Erode Europeans' Faith in Rice By RICHARD BERNSTEIN BERLIN, Dec. 6 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did what was expected, many people in Europe said Tuesday, after her meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German officials. She gave reassurances that the United States would not tolerate torture and, while not admitting mistakes, promised to correct any that had been made. She accompanied that with an impassioned argument for aggressive intelligence gathering, within the law, as an indispensable means of saving lives endangered by an unusually dangerous and unscrupulous foe. Did anybody believe her on this continent, aroused as rarely before by a raft of reports about secret prisons, C.I.A. flights, allegations of torture and of "renditions," or transfers, of prisoners to third countries so they can be tortured there? "Yes, I did," Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a conservative member of the German Parliament, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "The thing I believe is that the United States does obey international law, and Mrs. Merkel said that she believes it too." Not everybody here is of that view, to say the least. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a more sudden and thorough tarnishing of the Bush administration's credibility than the one taking place here right now. There have been too many reports in the news media about renditions - including one involving an Lebanese-born German citizen, Khaled el- Masri, kidnapped in Macedonia in December 2003 and imprisoned in Afghanistan for several months on the mistaken assumption that he was an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers - for blanket disclaimers of torture to be widely believed. "I think what she means is, 'We don't use it as an official way to do things, but we don't look at what is done in other countries,' " Monika Griefahn, a Social Democratic member of Parliament, said in regard to Ms. Rice's comment on torture. "And that's the problem for us." Ms. Griefahn also expressed skepticism about Ms. Rice's assurance that where mistakes are made - presumably in Mr. Masri's case - the United States will do everything in its power to rectify them. Indeed, Bush administration officials said nothing about rectifying mistakes before reports of Mr. Masri's kidnapping. "I don't believe they wanted to do anything to rectify the al-Masri case," Ms. Griefahn said. In Britain, members of Parliament from both parties reacted with even greater skepticism to Ms. Rice's statement, saying it had neither answered their questions nor allayed their concerns about American policy. "It's clear that the text of the speech was drafted by lawyers with the intention of misleading an audience," Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative member of Parliament, said in an interview. Mr. Tyrie is chairman of a recently formed nonpartisan committee that plans to investigate claims that the British government has tacitly condoned torture by allowing the United States to use its airspace to transport terrorist suspects to countries where they are subsequently tortured. Parsing through the speech, Mr. Tyrie pointed out example after example where, he said, Ms. Rice was using surgically precise language to obfuscate and distract. By asserting, for instance, that the United States does not send suspects to countries where they "will be" tortured, Ms. Rice is protecting herself, Mr. Tyrie said, leaving open the possibility that they "may be" tortured in those countries. Others pointed out that the Bush administration's definition of torture did not include practices like water-boarding - in which prisoners are strapped to a board and made to believe they are about to be drowned - that violate provisions of the international Convention Against Torture. Andrew Mullin, a Labor member of Parliament, said he had found Ms. Rice's assertions "wholly incredible." He agreed with Mr. Tyrie that Ms. Rice's statement had been "carefully lawyered," adding: "It is a matter of record that people have been kidnapped and have been handed over to people who have tortured them. I think their experience has to be matched against the particular form of language the secretary of state is using." To a great extent, the latest trans-Atlantic brouhaha reflects a very real division between Europe and the United States, reminiscent of the arguments that took place over the Iraq war two years ago. In the view of the Bush administration and its supporters, the Europeans' moral fastidiousness reflects a lack of realism about the nature of the terrorist threat and what needs to be done to defeat it. The view of Europeans, by contrast, is that they understand the terrorist threat perfectly well, but that the Bush administration's flouting of democratic standards and international law incites more terrorism, not less. "I resent the fact that my country is foolishly being led into a misguided approach into combating terrorism by this administration," Mr. Tyrie said. "European countries have a far greater experience over many decades dealing with terrorism, and many of us have learned the hard way that dealing in a muscular way can often inflame the very terrorism you're trying to suppress." In Mr. zu Guttenberg's view, the reports filling both the German and American news media these days and fostering a surge of renewed indignation against the Bush administration are based on unproved allegations and rumors that have been transformed into established fact. "What's important is that the balance between democratic principles and secret services needs to be maintained," Mr. zu Guttenberg said. "I take it as a reaching out of the hand when she says mistakes have happened and we have to rectify them." To some Americans at least, the way the charges about secret prisons and C.I.A. flights have gained currency illustrates the readiness of many Europeans always to believe the worst about the United States. More than one commentator over the last few days has referred to the secret prisons as a Gulag Archipelago, even though Romania and Poland, the countries where the prisons are said to be situated, have denied their existence. Moreover, their total prison population would be at most a few dozen - compared with the hundreds of thousands that were confined in Stalin's real Gulag Archipelago. The Bush administration's treatment of imprisoned suspected terrorists, coupled with the problems the United States continues to encounter in Iraq and Vice President Dick Cheney's resistance to Congressional curbs on the handling of prisoners, has not made Ms. Rice's job of persuasion any easier. "The Europeans lack of realism is a big problem, but I'm also frustrated with the inability of the United States to behave like a successful big power," said John Kornblum, a former American ambassador to Germany and now director of the investment bank Lazard Frères in Germany. He added that "the Europeans do have this propensity" to put the worst possible interpretation on American actions, "but unfortunately, we have given credibility to that sort of behavior." To some extent, the comment by Ms. Rice that seems to have had the most effect in Europe was her statement made in Washington on Monday that many governments have cooperated with the United States on intelligence gathering. That remark did not so much reassure European commentators that the United States was abiding by international treaties as it has led them to accuse their own governments of hypocrisy, silently acquiescing in American practices while publicly criticizing them. "If the European services knew," the Italian daily La Repubblica said Tuesday, referring to the reports of secret prisons and C.I.A. flights in Europe, "how is it possible that the governments and the parliaments, which these services must answer to, weren't informed? Sarah Lyall contributed reporting from London for this article. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/i...&en=92c0e880809d38e3&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Poland was main CIA detention base in Europe: HRW Fri Dec 9, 2005 6:13 AM ET WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland was the heart of the CIA's secret detention network in Europe, with bases there until recently holding a quarter of the 100 detainees estimated held in such camps worldwide, a human rights group said. Reports of the CIA operating secret jails in Poland and Romania as part of its war on terror have raised controversy on both sides of the Atlantic and dogged U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's European trip this week. "Poland was the main base for CIA interrogations in Europe, while Romania played more of a role in the transfer of detained prisoners," Marc Garlasco, a leading analyst at Human Rights Watch, was quoted by Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza on Friday as saying. Garlasco said the CIA had set up two detention centers in Poland, which were closed shortly after the Washington Post published an article about secret prisons last month. He said the allegations were based on information from CIA sources and other documents obtained by Human Rights Watch. "We have leads, circumstantial evidence to check but it's too early to reveal them," Garlasco said. Polish authorities have repeatedly denied the existence of secret jails of any form on Polish territory, with Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkieicz saying this week he would fully cooperate in human rights probes into the allegations. Poland is one of Washington's leading allies in Europe, where it irked EU heavyweights Germany and France by backing the U.S. war with Iraq and sending troops there. European countries responded to public pressure by seeking answers from Washington before Rice's trip, but quickly retreated in the face of her defense that the United States respected their sovereignty and acted within the law in its war on terrorism. http://today.reuters.com/news/newsA...01_KRA940138_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-POLAND.xml
