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Rendition of Terror Suspects Will Continue Under Obama
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration's practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to ensure they are not tortured, administration officials said on Monday.
The administration officials, who announced the changes on condition that they not be identified, said that unlike the Bush administration, they would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused.
"The emphasis will be on insuring that individuals will not face torture if they are sent over overseas," said one administration official, adding that no detainees will be sent to countries that are known to conduct abusive interrogations.
But human rights advocates condemned the decision, saying it would permit the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture and that promises of humane treatment, called "diplomatic assurances," were no protection against abuse.
"It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture," said Amrit Singh of the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under President George W. Bush.
She cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian sent in 2002 by the United States to Syria, which offered assurances against torture but beat Mr. Arar with electrical cable anyway.
The Obama task force proposed improved monitoring of treatment of prisoners sent to other countries, but Ms. Singh said the usual method of such monitoring - visits from American or allied consular officials - had also been ineffective. A Canadian consular official visited Mr. Arar several times, but the prisoner was too frightened to tell him about the torture, according to a Canadian investigation of the case.
The new transfer policy was one of a series of recommendations proposed by a working group set up in January to study changes in rendition and interrogation policies under an executive order signed by President Obama.
In addition, the Obama administration is setting up a new administrative interrogation unit, to be housed within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which will oversee the interrogations of top terror suspects using largely non-coercive techniques approved by the administration earlier this year.
The creation of the new unit will formally end the Central Intelligence Agency's primary role in questioning high level detainees after years in which some lawmakers and human rights groups complained of abusive treatment.
Bill Burton, the deputy White House spokesman who is with the vacationing president in Oak Bluffs, Mass., said that creation of the unit does not mean the C.I.A. is out of the interrogation business. The new unit will include "all these different elements under one group," he said at the briefing, and would work out of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington.
The announcement of the new unit came as the administration released a long withheld C.I.A. Inspector General's report written in 2004 that is said to be a scathing critique of how the C.I.A. carried out interrogations of terror suspects.
The new unit, to be called the High Value Interrogation Group, will be comprised of analysts, linguists and other personnel from the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies who will contribute expertise to interrogations. The group will operate under policies set by the National Security Council.
The officials said all interrogations will comply with guidelines contained in the Army Field Manual, which outlaws the use of physical force. The new interrogation group will study interrogation methods, however, and may add additional non-coercive methods in the future, the officials said.
19 Comments so far
Show AllVarious books have been written imagining the contours of Hell. Obama is 48 years old. If he starts reading them now, he might finish nearly all of them by the time he shuffles off out of this life.
How about that change, folks? That change you can believe in? (Pausing to spit disgustedly)
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration's practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to ensure they are not tortured, administration officials said
,,, but no one else can monitor their 'treatment' ,,, Deja Yoo all over again???
Silly me, I thought it was not lawful to kidnap people and spirit them off to other countries. How many people who get rendered are taken from countries other than those occupied by the usa or from the usa itself I wonder...
So prisoners will be subjected to procedures designed by the tender, merciful National Security Council. We can all feel so much better now. And just wait until the NSC redefines "non-coercive measures" just like the Bush administration redefined torture. This is change Yoo can believe in!
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Ted...
Is a Terrorist a: Communist,Socialist,Labor Leader, Whistleblower, or someone defending his country against an "Invasion Force"?
I have a hard time with Government and Media Propagandists doing the "Enemy Lists" !!!! There have been far too many mysterious suicides without suicide notes. There have been too many car and plane accidents that have killed too many activists, witnesses, suspects, or whistleblowers.
Since very few of the "tortured " prisoners in Guantanamo have been brought to trial, my guess is that there never was "Just Cause" to arrest or kidnap them.
Today, Guantanamo has on going construction projects and there seems to be no intent to close it down!
If the NSC was monitoring every phone call of Osama Bin Laden since mid 90's through 2001 and that agency is monitoring you and I, then why would you trust such an agency to do what is: legal, moral, or ethical.
Obama is protecting all those involved in the rendition program and the attacks of 9/11 from prosecution because that is what he is there for, "We must not be concerned with the past, I only want to look forward."
@ herbert r chersonsky August 25th, 2009 4:59 am. One correction: Guantanamo is a US naval base. The prison facilities are due to be shut down, but not the base itself. I believe those on-going construction projects are to the base, not to the prison facilities.
We'll have to see, in the fullness of time, whose side Obama is on.
uncle tom rode his wagon to washington where he dumped off
his sons obama and eric. these spine less corporate
tool swallower's immediately did massa's evil bidding
and further pushed america toward a national crisis and
dictorship. if malcom x and mlk were around today they would
have led us all to the promised land and renewed our
democracy! and malcom probably would have bitch slapped obama
as well! when will our suffering end?
"Rendition of Terror Suspects Will Continue Under Obama"
EVERY tool of U.S. geopolitical strategy, from spying, torture and not-so-extraordinary rendition to political subversion and wars of aggression, will continue under EVERY political facade of USA Incorporated, regardless of nominal party affiliations. It's simply the essential nature of the beast and will NEVER be changed under or within the system established by those same "U.S. interests" to perpetuate their "full spectrum dominance" both globally and domestically.
Many Americans will fight and die for the promotion and defence of those corporate interests in foreign lands without even realising that most of their designated foreign "enemies" are actually opposing the same powers that oppress them. But Americans will NEVER find either the courage or the cohesion or the means required to defeat their real enemy's total and complete mastery of all the fundamentals of power at home -- not even as it leads inexorably to their own self-destruction.
End of story. Good bye.
According to the Geneva Conventions on Warfare citizens of occupied countries may not be transported across that country's borders. I wonder how often this has been violated already by the Obama administration.
If the US is going to so carefully oversee the prisoners subjected to rendition, then what is the purpose of rendition in the first place? Why are they not interrogated in the US? It is only to provide plausible denial for the extreme torture suffered in those countries.
"If the USA were another nation, the USA would invade the USA to keep the world safe; and they would be justified."
It can only be a matter of time before the rest of the world decides that it will tolerate the USA: no longer.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
Where am I? I can barely recognize the place it has changed so much. That Barack Obama is like a magician. Henceforth let him be known as the changemeister.
Why would we send detainees to other countries if not to subject them to procedures that are not allowed here? What's the rationale?
Just asking.
Joe
Whew! Glad the U.S. replaced those oil guys with a genuine Constitutional Law scholar.
Ah, those blessed "diplomatic assurances" that will constitute the "better oversight" of our rendition interrogations. From the reading of history (I was only 8 at the time) weren't Japanese officials in Washington giving "diplomatic assurances" that Japan would not attack the U.S. at the very moment that their planes were taking off to bomb Pearl Harbor? Hasn't Israel given numerous "diplomatic assurances" that they intend to stop settlements in Palestine? If you think you can believe a diplomatic assurance, kids, please raise your hand and proceed directly to the dunce corner.
"The new interrogation group will study interrogation methods, however, and may add additional non-coercive methods in the future, the officials said."
This is pretty much an admission that the interrogators used in the past didn't know what they were doing, and didn't care.
"...but will monitor their treatment to ensure they are not tortured, administration officials said on Monday."
Great. Now we'll have the State Department version of "Don't ask. Don't Tell."