[Ppnews] Lost in the rendition machine

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=80&ItemID=14013

Shadows Whose Fate Can Only Be Guessed At
Lost in the rendition machine
by Stephen Grey; 
<http://MondeDiplo.com/2007/10/06renditions>Le 
Monde diplomatique; October 11, 2007

The frenzied US-led hunt for al-Qaida has led to 
people being put through `rendition' - the secret 
and usually illegal transfer of suspects across 
national borders to face often extreme 
questioning without legal process. Despite the 
furore over the rendition system, it is still in operation





Reza Afsherzadegan looked up at US warplanes on 
the hunt for al-Qaida. He and other refugees were 
waiting on the border for a guide to take them 
from Somalia to Kenya. A few days earlier a 
short-lived Islamist government had been toppled 
in Mogadishu by forces from Ethiopia. The US had 
declared the region the new front in the global 
war on terrorism; it believed the Islamist 
government had sheltered wanted terrorists and 
was training new ones. With allies in 
neighbouring countries, the US sought to prevent terrorists from escaping.



Reza, 25, a computer student from London, told me 
he had come to Mogadishu a few weeks earlier to 
teach youngsters his skills but had to run for 
his life in the African bush. Up in the sky, he 
saw helicopters and spy planes: "We had to stop 
still and hide under bushes." Within days, Reza 
was sucked into the world of secret jails and 
interrogations; he was released within four weeks 
but had been witness to renditions - the capture 
and transfer of suspects across borders without legal process.



In an investigation this year, I found that while 
the US practice of rendering suspects may be 
controversial and under legal threat, such transfers continue.



Reza told me he had woken up at the border one 
morning to the sound of gunfire and explosions 
nearby, as if they were coming under direct 
attack. Everyone split up and ran towards the 
Kenyan border: "I was the last person left. I 
just got up and ran. I left my passport. I left 
my food rations that they gave us. Everything. I 
just ran and ran and, all the time, it sounded 
like the guns were getting close to us."



Reza found himself lost in the jungle with 30 
people, mostly strangers, who stuck together as 
they walked through the bush in search of help, 
steering only by the sun. "We only had two cans 
of tuna, a bag of sugar and a bag of biscuits. 
That's it" (1). They drank from rainwater 
puddles. One day they trapped and caught a small 
deer, eating it almost raw. By the 13th day many 
were close to collapse and likely to be 
abandoned. "I think some people maybe started 
losing belief that they were going to make it." 
As they lay resting in the midday sun, someone 
heard a cock crow, indicating there was a village 
behind trees. At first the villagers were 
welcoming, took them to a mosque and gave them 
honey. But soon they were handed over to Kenyan 
soldiers who kicked and pushed them. "A bunch of 
them were telling us `you're al-Qaida; we finally 
caught you!' " Taken to the nearby town of 
Kiunga, they found officers from Kenya's 
counter-terrorism unit. Everyone was flown to Nairobi.



Held in crowded communal cells, with buckets as 
toilets, Reza was asked constantly if he had been 
to Somalia to train in a terrorist camp. "They 
would ask me if I've handled any weapons or 
received any training. I said I hadn't seen any 
of that. But they would look at me and say 
`you're lying'." Among the prisoners were women 
and children. "I saw a woman with five-year-old 
kids in cells opposite me and it was just 
incredible; you can't believe the way they've treated people."



  Questioned by MI5



Although requests to see the British Embassy were 
constantly refused, eventually the Kenyans took 
Reza and the others to a Nairobi hotel where they 
were questioned by officers from MI5, the British 
security service. This became the pattern for 
other foreign prisoners. They were denied lawyers 
or official access to the consul at their 
embassy, as required by the Vienna Convention, 
and were questioned by their country's security service.



After a month Reza, who was held with three other 
Britons who fled the Somali conflict, had hopes 
of being deported straight back to London. They 
were moved to a police station by the airport. 
But then they noticed cars and trucks bringing 
other prisoners. "When I saw Kenyan prisoners I 
knew definitely we were going somewhere. It was 
not going to be London." Handcuffed and 
blindfolded they were flown back to the city of 
Baidoa in Somalia and handed over to Ethiopian 
soldiers. "I thought to myself, can they do this? 
You know, can they send us to Somalia? The MI5, 
they know about us. They just sent us to Somalia. 
Can they do this?" They found themselves in a 
dark underground cell, crawling with cockroaches. 
"There was barely any light. When sunset came it 
was pitch black. You felt you were suffocating."



Reza was lucky. He and his fellow Britons were 
picked up in Somalia within two days by a British 
consul and taken home. But they had seen the 
transfer from Kenya to Somalia and then on again 
to Ethiopia of more than 80 people that both the 
Kenyan and Ethiopian governments called 
"dangerous international terrorists". These 
included at least 11 women, five of them heavily 
pregnant, and 11 children as young as seven 
months old. Although held in secret for weeks in 
jails in three countries, most were released 
without any charge. Four women gave birth in 
captivity - the first recorded children of the rendition programme.



Out of Africa



When I first heard of the capture of these 
refugees from Somalia, their ultimate fate was 
still a mystery. After their arrest on the Kenyan 
border in January, most disappeared. There was 
talk of US special forces operating close by, and 
of FBI interrogations in Nairobi. But no word of 
renditions. Although held in secret detention, 
this was Africa, so a few prisoners accessed a 
mobile telephone from their guards. One Briton 
managed to get through to researchers from two 
London-based human rights groups, Reprieve and 
CagePrisoners. He told them that men, women and 
children were all being held secretly in police 
cells in Nairobi. From Reprieve's offices, I 
tried to call the prisoner in his cell. But 
contact was broken and the fate of these refugees was unclear.



In Nairobi, a campaign group, the Muslim Human 
Rights Forum, began to lead protests and track 
their fate. Through legal action, they obtained a 
copy of manifests that showed more than 90 
prisoners were deported in three flights from 
Kenya back into the war zone of Somalia 
(2).Alamin Kimathi, the chairman of the Forum, 
said the manifests revealed the number of women, 
children and babies aboard, and it became clear 
that these were not wanted terrorists, but their 
families, including the wife and children of 
Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, one of the alleged 
planners of the 1998 bombings at US embassies in 
Kenya and Tanzania. He was believed to be hiding 
in Somalia and the US was working hard to capture him.



At his headquarters in a Nairobi mosque, Alamin 
pointed on the lists to Fazul's children - 
Luqmaan, 15, Asma, 13, and Sumaiya, 4 - and his 
wife Halima. "It is believed that she might lead 
them to him and the detention of the children 
might smoke him out from wherever he is. It's a 
ridiculous way of doing things. These kids are hostages pure and simple."



Alamin's Forum was in contact with the families 
of those arrested. They included Kenyan citizens 
that the Kenyan government had now sent back to 
Somalia, and it was clear that most if not all 
the prisoners had been sent on from Somalia to 
Ethiopia in a coordinated rendition operation. 
These prisoners were being transferred to Addis 
Ababa for interrogation, led by a team of Americans.



Alamin later told me that one of the women 
transferred to Ethiopia had just been released 
and sent back to her family's home in Tanzania. 
So I travelled with him to the town of Moshi by 
Mount Kilimanjaro, to hear her story. Fatma 
Chande, aged 25, revealed that she had been 
questioned by US agents once they had touched 
down in Ethiopia. Most prisoners were told that 
the Americans had orchestrated the arrest and 
rendition operation. "The Kenyans told me 
originally that it is the Americans who wanted my 
husband, it's the Americans who were interested 
in us. The police tried to force me to admit my 
husband was a member of al-Qaida. I told them he 
was a businessman. He was nothing to do with 
al-Qaida. They kept banging on the table. They 
threatened to strangle me if I didn't tell them the truth."



Fatma said the children suffered worst. "When we 
arrived at the airport, we were handcuffed and 
our headscarves were pulled down over our eyes. 
The men were hooded. The children were crying all 
the time saying `we want to go home, we want to go home'."



In Ethiopia, FBI agents took her fingerprints and 
a DNA sample. Other women were interrogated more 
than she was. "They told me that they were being 
quizzed about their husbands - the Americans 
wanted to know what their husbands did, and their 
connections to al-Qaida". Fatma said that not 
only were children held in jail but that at least 
one woman had gone into labour inside the prison 
and then "she was brought back to the cells with 
the baby". The baby was called Twalha. By now 
Ethiopia was acknowledging it was holding 41 
"suspected international terrorists" in 
detention, leaving about 40 of those transported 
to Somalia unaccounted for, including the 
children. It denied prisoners were being held in 
secret detention but admitted that neither the 
Red Cross nor lawyers were being allowed to see the prisoners.



`Terrorists with their wives and children'



I tried to question officials in Addis Ababa and 
got to see the prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who 
has been sole ruler of the country since 1991. He 
was unabashed and acknowledged and defended the 
jailing of women and children. "You have to 
understand the type of enemy we were fighting in 
Mogadishu and in Somalia. You have international 
terrorists with their wives and children 
sheltering in Somalia. You find the wife, you 
don't find the husband, and the wife is fleeing 
the battlefield; you don't know whether the wife 
is just a wife or a comrade and a colleague in 
the art of terrorism. You catch her. You detain her."



Ethiopia says it has now released most of the 
prisoners, including all of the women and 
children. But many remain missing. Zenawi 
confirmed that Ethiopia had worked closely with 
the US but denied the operation was orchestrated 
by Washington. He said any intelligence agency 
with access to the prisoners got to interrogate 
them. "Not just the Americans. Anybody who knows 
about these individuals and wants to ask questions."



It was clear that the interrogations had been led 
by the Americans. Every day prisoners were taken 
from the jail to a separate villa where the 
questioning took place. When they had appeared on 
Ethiopian television, some prisoners had 
announced they were well treated, but it emerged 
they had been told to make this statement ahead 
of a promised immediate release. Instead, they 
were returned to jail and further interrogations. 
One of them was a Tunisian named Adnan whose wife 
was also held; she gave birth to a baby on the 
day of their release. In a video statement he 
sent to me from Cairo, he described an American 
who used to beat up prisoners. Adnan was 
threatened with being sent back to Tunisia to be 
tortured. "They were trying to force me to 
confess to things. When I refused, I was taken to 
another room, they tied my hands behind my back 
and blindfolded me. I had to stand there barefoot 
for six hours. One said: `You are a criminal, you 
are a murderer. You'll be tried. Then you'll be executed.' "



All these stories show how, after the scandals of 
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and rendition, the war on 
terror and US treatment of prisoners is evolving. 
In Washington, the Democrats now control 
Congress, the CIA's secret rendition programme is 
no longer a secret and the US administration has 
been made to swear repeatedly it has nothing to 
do with torture or ill-treatment of prisoners. So 
things are being handled differently. Under a 
policy of host nation detention, the USemphasis 
has been on keeping its hands off prisoners and its role deniable.



A convenient and secret place



Yet the fundamentals remain the same: prisoners 
moved in great numbers across borders without 
legal process for an interrogation led by 
Americans. Western diplomats in Nairobi said the 
events were choreographed. "You can assume the 
Americans were involved at all stages," said one. 
"Moving prisoners to Ethiopia provided a 
convenient and secret place for the US to send its interrogators."



There are no longer secret CIA jails within 
European territory, nor will European air space 
be used widely for rendition operations. But the 
policy of rendition exists because politically 
the US is uncomfortable with the idea of proving 
the guilt or innocence of terror suspects in a 
court of law. Until there is a political shift, 
it has no alternative but to continue with 
rendition. On NBC's Today Show last year, 
President Bush criticised those who lived outside 
the US who second-guessed his policies. "But let 
me remind you: September 11th for them was a bad 
day; for us it was a change of attitude." This is 
a point constantly missed by analysts in Europe. 
The US still believes itself to be in a state of war.



Jeffrey Addicott is director of the Centre for 
Terrorism Law at St Mary's University in San 
Antonio, Texas, and a former legal adviser to US 
Special Forces, who continues to advise the 
Pentagon. He said the search for a new legal 
paradigm has not been the top priority: "Justice 
in my view of things is the last priority, as it 
is in any war. I mean in any war that you're 
fighting your first concern is to neutralise the 
enemy. And the second concern would be to gather 
intelligence to further neutralise the enemy. And 
your third concern is to bring justice to those 
most culpable. And generally that third concern 
follows the cessation of hostilities." For 
Addicott, mistakes have been made in the legal approach.



But a tough approach is needed. "These people are 
murderers. They want to kill us wholesale in 
large numbers if they can. This is not a game of 
chess. It's not an academic exercise. It's reality."



The case of Abu Omar



However, the problem with this military approach 
is that many of the US's allies, particularly the 
Europeans, are bound by their constitutions or 
basic law to judge US actions by its legal 
system. The facts uncovered by prosecutors in 
Milan, Italy, suggest that the Italian government 
led by Silvio Berlusconi approved a CIA rendition 
- the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, Abu Omar, on Italian soil, in May 2003.



But whether approved or not by politicians, the 
courts may judge it illegal and all those 
involved as kidnappers. The trial that opened in 
a Milan court this summer may provide the most 
detailed exposure of the legality of the 
rendition programme. The case was suspended while 
Italy's constitutional court considers if 
prosecutors have violated state secrets by 
pursuing the case. The prosecutors are asking the 
court to uphold the basic tenets of the rule of 
law in Europe: that no elected government has the 
right to order an action that is in violation of 
the country's written laws, regardless of any 
secret state interest. The rendition of Abu Omar 
was likely a violation of such laws, on the 
grounds that it constituted an arrest conducted 
without any legal authority. But this offence was 
aggravated by the purpose of the operation, the 
transfer of a suspect across borders to a country 
where he or she was likely to face torture, an 
offence under the UN convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.



The US is a signatory to the UN convention 
against torture. The main problem with the 
rendition programme is that since terrorist 
suspects have systematically been tortured in 
countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and 
Morocco, it defies reason to presume that a 
"terrorist" will not be tortured if transferred 
to their custody. In defending its programme, the 
US maintains that it has always obtained 
guarantees that prisoners would not be tortured. 
I interviewed US diplomats, and CIA and White 
House officials who all told me the promises of non-torture were a sham.



This year another senior CIA official reiterated 
that their rendered prisoners were unlikely to be 
well treated. Tyler Drumheller, chief of European 
operations from 2001 to 2005, said that 
assurances of non-torture were a fraud in 
countries with a notorious human rights 
record:"When you turn someone over to another 
country you can't say to them `this is how we 
expect you to treat them'." If you knew how a 
country had dealt with its prisoners then"you 
have to be honest that that is going to be a part 
of it. You can say we asked them not to do it - 
and they do say that - but you have to be honest 
with yourself and say there's no way we can guarantee they are not to do that."



This is all theoretical: victims of rendition are 
mostly ghosts. We are dealing with shadows - 
people who have disappeared and whose fate can 
only be guessed, whose crimes are rarely proved 
and who are usually voiceless. If they do speak, 
we hear them through officially-released 
confessions we cannot trust; or through the 
mouths of lawyers who choose not to ask the difficult questions.



This year Abu Omar was finally released. He was 
threatened with being locked up again if he ever 
spoke about his treatment, but he wanted to speak 
to me. "I was out of history. My lawyer searched 
prisons all over Egypt and no one could find a 
trace of me. There were witnesses who saw me 
kidnapped but no one knew where I had gone," he told me.



  `Justice' without a charge



In his little apartment in Alexandria, he talked 
for hours. We filled up video tape after tape. 
How would we leave the country with this 
material? And what would happen to Abu Omar after 
his story is made public? Abu Omar is 44. He 
walks with a limp, is deaf in one ear, and has 
scars visible more than four years after his 
torture. Some of what he says is familiar; I feel 
I've met him before from the words he smuggled 
out of prison or the transcript of the 
conversation when he phoned home to tell of his 
kidnap after he was briefly released in 2004.



That prisoners sent to Egypt are tortured has 
been established by almost every expert I have 
spoken to. But, in Abu Omar's painful account, it becomes tangible.



He was accused of being a former member of the 
Gama'a al-Islamiya, the Egyptian militant group 
responsible for terrorist attacks in the 1990s - 
a charge he denies. He fled Egypt in 1988 and was 
later granted political asylum in Italy. When he 
disappeared on 17 February 2003, he was walking 
to midday prayers at a radical mosque in Milan 
where he was a part-time preacher. He was bundled 
into a white van and then driven first to Aviano 
air force base, near Venice. He was beaten while 
bound and gagged, began to choke and thought he would die.



His journey to Egypt was surreal. He was put 
aboard a US air force jet and flown to Ramstein, 
Germany. There, he was put on a Gulfstream jet 
hired from one of the owners of the Boston Red 
Sox baseball team. Its logo was painted on the 
tail of the plane, although covered over for the 
CIA mission. Throughout the 13-hour journey no 
one said a word to him or explained what was 
happening. He remembered the sound of classical 
music in the cabin. The CIA agents had wrapped 
him in thick masking tape like a mummy, which 
made his face bleed when it was ripped off later 
in Cairo. He had been so tightly wrapped up that 
his body went into shock: "I felt the soul was 
coming out of my body." The CIA team quickly 
responded by putting on an oxygen mask and 
inserted a tube in his mouth to give him water. He vomited.



When he arrived in Cairo, he was taken to a room 
and told he was meeting two pashas (important 
people); one appeared to be the Egyptian interior 
minister. He was asked: "Do you want to be an 
informer for us? If you say `yes' then you can be 
back in Italy in 24 hours." He said no and was sent back to his cell.



For the first seven months, he found out later, 
he was in the hands of Egis, Egypt's foreign 
intelligence service. At a secret location, they 
tortured him - stripped him naked and beat him 
with bare hands, sticks and electric cables. He 
said they handcuffed his leg to his hands, and 
forced him to stand for hours on the other leg, and beat him.



On 14 September 2003 he was handed over to 
Egyptian state security, the secret police. He 
was held in their special interrogation compound 
in the Nasr City district of Cairo. Here things 
got worse. He was hit in every part of his body 
and humiliated. Until now, he had not wanted to 
talk of this so as not to upset his family.



In April 2004 he was released for 23 days on 
condition of the seven "sacred do nots", which 
included not speaking to the media, not calling 
his wife and family left behind in Italy, and not 
talking to human rights groups. When he broke the 
rules and phoned home, his telephone calls were 
tapped. One tap in Italy alerted the police as to 
how he had been kidnapped and started the 
criminal investigation that identified the CIA 
team responsible. But another phone tap in Egypt 
led to his re-arrest. He was held without charge 
in prison until early this year.



At no point was he charged with any criminal 
offence. Renditions by the US to foreign 
countries are described again and again as a 
"rendition to justice", but few, if any, of those 
rendered are brought to trial in a regular court. 
Even under Egypt's emergency laws, people like 
Abu Omar are held without conviction. He 
illustrated this point by showing me the white 
uniform he wore in prison, which has the word 
"interrogation" printed on it. Convicted 
prisoners have a blue uniform. When Abu Omar left 
prison in Cairo, most of the rendered prisoners 
were still wearing white. 
________________________________________________________



(1) In an interview for Channel 4's Dispatches, 
Kidnapped to Order, 11 June 2007.



(2) The journalist who did most to track down 
these renditions was Anthony Mitchell, a Nairobi 
correspondent for Associated Press who died in an 
accident in Cameroon on 5 May 2007.



© Stephen Grey Stephen Grey is a journalist in 
London and author of Ghost Plane (St Martin's Press/Hurst, 2006)







Original text in English





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