CIA Rendered 14 Prisoners to Jordan: Report
The CIA secretly transported at least 14 war on terror detainees to Jordan between 2001 and 2004, making it the top “rendition” destination at that time, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
“While a handful of countries received persons rendered by the United States during this period, no other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan,” the rights group said in a statement.
The prisoners were interrogated and tortured by Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, according to a new Human Rights Watch report that documents eight previously unknown cases of rendition.
GID officials who met with Human Rights Watch in Amman in 2007 denied receiving CIA prisoners and denied using torture. The group said the denials were unconvincing “given the weight of credible evidence showing otherwise.”
The report is “based largely on firsthand information from Jordanian former prisoners who were detained with the non-Jordanian terrorism suspects,” it said.
“We’ve documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture,” said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch.
Prisoners rendered to Jordan included at least five Yemenis, three Algerians, two Saudis, a Mauritanian, a Syrian, a Tunisian, and one or more Chechens from Russia, the group said.
They may also have included a Libyan, an Iraqi Kurd, a Kuwaiti, one or more Egyptians, and a national of the United Arab Emirates.
The report includes an excerpt of a note handwritten by a rendered prisoner while in Jordanian custody in late 2002. The prisoner is now at the US war on terror prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi wrote that GID interrogators beat him “in a way that does not know any limits.”
“They threatened me with electricity, with snakes and dogs …. [They said] we’ll make you see death …. They threatened to rape me,” the note said.
A common torture method was falaqa, by which prisoners are given extended beatings on the bottoms of their feet.
“Just about everyone at GID was beaten with sticks,” a Jordanian former prisoner told Human Rights Watch. “People were beaten on their feet. They did it in the basement.”
“Outsourcing torture is not only wrong, it’s illegal,” Mariner said. “And the US can’t say it doesn’t torture if it sends people to countries that do.”
© 2008 Agence France Presse
I feel better now that we don’t torture; we outsource it.
And Abu Grhaib was just a blip on the screen from a few bad apples (rummy and cheney).
Better than getting ‘rendered to dog-food’ (but, not-by-much!)…
Disappointing that Jordan would participate with the US in such crimes.
Can anything that the US government say be taken without a huge degree of scepticism? They have told too many lies to be taken seriously anymore. “We don’t torture” I wish that they would be called out on their lies by the MSM when they occur but I don’t think that it will ever happen.
Well the actual number will never be known it is probably at least 10 times that many. Most of the time they simply murder the torture victim after they get through with the torture, so bad press does not leak out. Which makes the enhanced interrogation techniques the North Vietcong used on McCain look like child’s play.
And all this time I thought that the Ministry of Information Retrieval was in Brazil.
We will not rest until the architects of this-from the White house to John Yoo are all standing trial for War Crimes; Crimes Against Humanity. We will not rest!
Thank you, Mr. Bush! You have truly shown the world what an *&#$%* we have in you as a President. Just throw out the window any respect the US built up over the last 200 years!
“This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe,” the president said.
The CIA no longer waterboards anyone and can officially (and cynically) deny it.
It is expedient for them to outsource this primitive business of physical coercion via the process of rendition flights to other allied sovereignties whose populations are already well conditioned to the idea of state-sponsored inhumanity.
As rendition flights continue so too must torture.
With no real oversight, Congress has little choice but to believe exactly what the CIA offer up voluntarily or whatever fairy tale El Presidente chooses to invent.
When are Bush and Cheney’s hangings scheduled?
America’s image is in tatters. It has been exposed for what it is. It’s not a good look.
Have Americans heard of the French Revolution? Seems there was a corrupt system over there and the people rose up and got rid of them, brought in democracy even. You can learn from history.
Well, some people can.
p.s. Would banning religions help? Dangerous Creation.
Don’t you mean coronations, canuckchuck?
After all, there have been no terrorist acts committed in the US since 9/11 (according to them).
Makes one wonder when an act of terror without our prior knowledge EVER took place.
And I’m sure that there is no contingency plan to create an incident to reinforce the ‘rule of fear’ currently in place.
I am so ashamed of America. Sickened. Disgusted.
Very easy to blame it on the Shrub and Yoo and the other neo-cons who have flushed our country’s values and laws down the toilet, but a good long look in the collective mirror is also in order. All 51 million Americans who voted for Bush in the 2004 election need to seriously consider either a move to a country more in line with their obvious masochistic tendencies - like China - or else take part in a mass suicide. By 2004 most of Bush’s crimes had already been reported and were common knowledge, even if you had to look on page 161 of the local paper to find them.
And ignorance is not an excuse.
RE: - Prisoners rendered to Jordan included at least five Yemenis, three Algerians, two Saudis, a Mauritanian, a Syrian, a Tunisian, and one or more Chechens from Russia, the group said.
CanuckChuck, do you think they are counting Maher Arar as a Syrian rather than a Canadian!
We all know that, after the Americans picked up Maher Arar at JFK airport that they made a pitstop in Jordan before “deporting” him to Syria. Didn’t Abdullah Almalki (another Syrian born Canadian) also make a pitstop in Jordan?
I am sure that even CSIS and the RCMP know about more than the forsaid 14.
“I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him.” Mr. Arar’s whereabouts were unknown at the time.” - Jack Hooper, October 10, 2002
And this:
The newly uncensored passages also reveal the CSIS security liaison officer in Washington, in a memo to his superiors two days after Arar’s deportation, “spoke of a trend they had noted lately when the CIA or FBI cannot legally hold a terrorist suspect, or wish a target questioned in a firm manner, they have them rendered to countries willing to fulfil that role.” Arar, he said, was “a case in point.” – Janice Tibbetts, Winnipeg Free Press, Fri Aug 10 2007
nicnews: The respect the US has accumulated over the last 200 years.
This respect is the same respect held by mafiosi, it comes from guns. The US has been respected for its power and its wealth, as well as its music and hollywood. But the world has never had respect for the personality of Americans. They are seen by the world as nouveau riche. In the US they speak of old money, but its nouveau riche just the same. Americans have never been loved because wherever they go they have an attitude that alienates people. The people who have been screwed by the US, and this number is huge, are aware that they were screwed. Greeks have not forgotten the US installed military junta. Iranians have not forgotten the US installed Shah, Mexicans are not unaware of the theft of half their land and Colombians still remember the theft of Panama. Cubans know what the US is. The Russians understand the need to oppose the US since it has a victim of its agggression. Do you really think that Russians with their long history have much respect for us hicks? The vietnamese respect us? They have moved beyond us, like the Japanese. Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua,Guatemala,El Salvador, Bolivia… all their people remember the horror they were put through and know the US was behind it. Respect or fear? Sure fear is a form of respect, is that the respect you mean? Americans have always required tolerance from the world and the world has been tolerant because it had no choice and you can’t be too bitter. The only respect we truly have, and it’s not a true one, is that of white people, especially the Europeans who share our belief in white supremacy. Even they will chortle behind our backs because we are so uncouth and have such a poor sense of living.
Demonstorm: My sentiments exactly.
Once upon a time armies marched to the battlefield and faced each other. Then at a civilized hour after a good breakfast, the bugles sounded and the cannons fired.
This changed with the American War of Independence when the colonialists copied the means of the defence used by the poorly armed native Americans. When these methods of guerilla warfare were used, the British were outraged that Americans were not abiding by the ‘rules of war’.
How is ‘terrorism’ any different? A poorly armed force without jets, missiles and aircraft carriers is using strap on bombs, road mines and passenger aircraft. It’s still warfare but we are engaging it as if our opponents were criminals.
What this means is that our torturing and harsh treatment can only exaccerbate the conflict and drive people into the ranks of the enemy. By not recognising it as a legitimate war there can be no ending because there can be no peace table or an airing of grievances.
If people cannot or will not respond to the inhumanitarian aspects of the war on terror and don’t mind allowing these monsters - torturers - to live next door in our communities, then perhaps they can be convinced that those waging this war on terror will be remembered as the dumbest military planners of all time.
Privatization, a Republican trait.
The American legislators who are profiting from the continuation of this illegal Occupation, are literally realizing a profit from torture. Absolutely disgraceful.
They should all stand trial for War Crimes; Crimes Against Humanity. We really need to “clean house,” here.
Let’s see if we can name the 14 who went to Jordan.
Maher Arar did.
We suspect Abdullah Almalki did.
Who are the other 12?
America doesn’t torture… anymore… we just pay dictatorial thugs to do it for us!
-James
www.thepoliticus.org
Does anyone know if Evergreen International Aviation was involved in these renditions?
We need a referendum on punishments for torturers.
Shouldn’t we be looking into privatizing some justice …
So someone is disappointed in Jordan for taking our prisoners and torturing them? Do you think, MAYBE, we paid Jordan to do that ????