Felix the Cat
12-08-2005, 01:00 AM
So, what’s all the fuss? (http://www.economist.com/agenda/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=5277867)
America seeks, but fails, to quell the uproar over CIA shenanigans in Europe
STORIES have long circulated of people being snatched off streets by American secret agents and whisked off to covert CIA prisons around the world for harsh interrogation, even torture. Now, for the first time, America has admitted that at least part of this is true. For decades, the United States—and other countries—have used “renditions” to transport terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured to third countries “where they can be questioned, held or brought to justice”, Condoleezza Rice, America’s secretary of state, declared this week.
But, she insisted at the start of a five-day trip to Europe, the United States “does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances”. It was American policy to comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the UN Convention Against Torture, of which it is a signatory. The United States was a “country of laws” and believed in the rule of law, she said. It had always respected, and would continue to respect, the sovereignty of other countries co-operating with it in its war on terror. America would continue to use “every lawful weapon” to defeat the terrorists.
Ms Rice’s aim was to reassure America’s European allies, still fuming over reports that their own airspace and territory had been used by the CIA for its covert operations, including secret prisons. But such is the suspicion about America and its treatment of terrorist suspects after Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib that few Europeans found comfort in her words. Instead, they scoured her meticulously crafted declaration for loopholes—and found plenty.
Ms Rice claims, for example, that the United States does not transport detainees from one country to another “for the purpose of interrogation using torture”. But she says nothing about the use of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which is also banned. She insists that the United States does not use the airspace or airports of any country to transport detainees to a country where they will be tortured. But the Convention Against Torture makes it unlawful to transport anyone to a country where there are “substantial grounds” for believing he might be tortured. On this, she is silent.
Ms Rice refuses to confirm or deny the existence of secret CIA prisons for interrogating terrorist suspects in Europe. America never discusses information that could compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement or military matters, she explains. But, given her admission that detainees have been transported to third countries for interrogation, the presumption must be that undisclosed detention centres do exist—or have done so in the past—where such interrogations take place, possibly under torture.
In a November 2nd report that provoked the present furore in Europe, the Washington Post claimed to have evidence of covert CIA camps in at least eight countries, including eastern Europe. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group, identified two of these with “a high degree of confidence” as being in Poland and Romania—a charge denied by both countries. But according to ABC News, citing past and present CIA officials, those camps, allegedly containing 11 top al-Qaeda suspects, have now been moved to north Africa.
Under the Geneva Conventions, largely crafted by the United States, any country involved in an international armed conflict must notify the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of anyone it is holding prisoner and allow it to visit them. But America’s “war on terror” is not classified as an international conflict. So the ICRC can only “offer its services” to monitor detention facilities; it has no right of access. Of some 80 countries whose facilities the organisation is currently visiting, the vast majority are not engaged in any international conflict. Although Washington has granted it access to American camps in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, it has refused to reply to the ICRC’s repeated requests for notification of, and access to, its undisclosed detention camps, despite the organisation’s policy of absolute confidentiality.
Ms Rice insists that America always respects the “sovereignty” of other countries. Where a foreign government chooses to co-operate in a rendition, this is perfectly permissible under international law, she says. That is correct, provided that the detainee has not been illegally abducted, and he is not being sent to a country where he may maltreated. Helping another nation to violate international law is itself a violation of the law.
European allegations of “hundreds” of CIA “torture flights” to a new “Gulag Archipelago” in eastern Europe are “so ludicrously overblown as to be laughable”, American officials protest. The Europeans’ moral fastidiousness not only reflects a lack of realism about the seriousness of the terrorist threat, but is also often hypocritical, they say. Many of those protesting loudest about America’s anti-terrorist policies have secretly acquiesced to the CIA operations in their airspace and on their soil, they suggest.
All this is probably true. But snatching people off a foreign country’s streets and holding them incommunicado in an undisclosed place without charge for months, even years, without even their families’ knowledge, is unlawful whether or not torture is involved. Such hidden detention is explicitly banned under a new Convention on Enforced Disappearance, now being drawn up by the UN. It would also be made illegal under American law under Senator John McCain’s proposed bill prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by American military personnel or intelligence agents anywhere in the world.
One rule at home, another abroad
Hitherto, the Bush administration has always argued that the Convention Against Torture applies only to acts carried out within America’s territorial jurisdiction. Hence, many believe, the creation of prisons outside the United States at Guantánamo, an American air base in Cuba, and at other alleged secret “black sites” around the world. The attempt by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, to exclude America’s intelligence services from such legislation, coupled with George Bush’s threat to veto it, has aggravated suspicions. But in a notable concession to America’s critics, Ms Rice insisted this week that the ban on the torture or cruel treatment of detainees applied to all American personnel wherever they were in the world.
She also admitted that America had made mistakes in its war on terror. During Ms Rice’s visit to Berlin, Angela Merkel, Germany’s new chancellor, said that the United States had “accepted” that it had “erroneously taken” a German citizen, Khaled al-Masri, to a jail in Afghanistan. Mr Masri, who is now suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment, claims to have been abducted by American agents while on holiday in Macedonia with his family in 2003, before being flown to Afghanistan, accused of being an al-Qaeda terrorist. There, he says, he was held for five months and tortured, before being released without charge after the Americans had discovered that they wanted someone else of the same name.
While refusing to comment on that case, Ms Rice confessed that “any policy will sometimes result in errors”. When this happened, the United States would “rectify it”, she promised. But many Europeans find it hard to take Americans, however sincere, at their word any longer.
America seeks, but fails, to quell the uproar over CIA shenanigans in Europe
STORIES have long circulated of people being snatched off streets by American secret agents and whisked off to covert CIA prisons around the world for harsh interrogation, even torture. Now, for the first time, America has admitted that at least part of this is true. For decades, the United States—and other countries—have used “renditions” to transport terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured to third countries “where they can be questioned, held or brought to justice”, Condoleezza Rice, America’s secretary of state, declared this week.
But, she insisted at the start of a five-day trip to Europe, the United States “does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances”. It was American policy to comply with its treaty obligations, including those under the UN Convention Against Torture, of which it is a signatory. The United States was a “country of laws” and believed in the rule of law, she said. It had always respected, and would continue to respect, the sovereignty of other countries co-operating with it in its war on terror. America would continue to use “every lawful weapon” to defeat the terrorists.
Ms Rice’s aim was to reassure America’s European allies, still fuming over reports that their own airspace and territory had been used by the CIA for its covert operations, including secret prisons. But such is the suspicion about America and its treatment of terrorist suspects after Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib that few Europeans found comfort in her words. Instead, they scoured her meticulously crafted declaration for loopholes—and found plenty.
Ms Rice claims, for example, that the United States does not transport detainees from one country to another “for the purpose of interrogation using torture”. But she says nothing about the use of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which is also banned. She insists that the United States does not use the airspace or airports of any country to transport detainees to a country where they will be tortured. But the Convention Against Torture makes it unlawful to transport anyone to a country where there are “substantial grounds” for believing he might be tortured. On this, she is silent.
Ms Rice refuses to confirm or deny the existence of secret CIA prisons for interrogating terrorist suspects in Europe. America never discusses information that could compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement or military matters, she explains. But, given her admission that detainees have been transported to third countries for interrogation, the presumption must be that undisclosed detention centres do exist—or have done so in the past—where such interrogations take place, possibly under torture.
In a November 2nd report that provoked the present furore in Europe, the Washington Post claimed to have evidence of covert CIA camps in at least eight countries, including eastern Europe. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group, identified two of these with “a high degree of confidence” as being in Poland and Romania—a charge denied by both countries. But according to ABC News, citing past and present CIA officials, those camps, allegedly containing 11 top al-Qaeda suspects, have now been moved to north Africa.
Under the Geneva Conventions, largely crafted by the United States, any country involved in an international armed conflict must notify the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of anyone it is holding prisoner and allow it to visit them. But America’s “war on terror” is not classified as an international conflict. So the ICRC can only “offer its services” to monitor detention facilities; it has no right of access. Of some 80 countries whose facilities the organisation is currently visiting, the vast majority are not engaged in any international conflict. Although Washington has granted it access to American camps in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, it has refused to reply to the ICRC’s repeated requests for notification of, and access to, its undisclosed detention camps, despite the organisation’s policy of absolute confidentiality.
Ms Rice insists that America always respects the “sovereignty” of other countries. Where a foreign government chooses to co-operate in a rendition, this is perfectly permissible under international law, she says. That is correct, provided that the detainee has not been illegally abducted, and he is not being sent to a country where he may maltreated. Helping another nation to violate international law is itself a violation of the law.
European allegations of “hundreds” of CIA “torture flights” to a new “Gulag Archipelago” in eastern Europe are “so ludicrously overblown as to be laughable”, American officials protest. The Europeans’ moral fastidiousness not only reflects a lack of realism about the seriousness of the terrorist threat, but is also often hypocritical, they say. Many of those protesting loudest about America’s anti-terrorist policies have secretly acquiesced to the CIA operations in their airspace and on their soil, they suggest.
All this is probably true. But snatching people off a foreign country’s streets and holding them incommunicado in an undisclosed place without charge for months, even years, without even their families’ knowledge, is unlawful whether or not torture is involved. Such hidden detention is explicitly banned under a new Convention on Enforced Disappearance, now being drawn up by the UN. It would also be made illegal under American law under Senator John McCain’s proposed bill prohibiting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by American military personnel or intelligence agents anywhere in the world.
One rule at home, another abroad
Hitherto, the Bush administration has always argued that the Convention Against Torture applies only to acts carried out within America’s territorial jurisdiction. Hence, many believe, the creation of prisons outside the United States at Guantánamo, an American air base in Cuba, and at other alleged secret “black sites” around the world. The attempt by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, to exclude America’s intelligence services from such legislation, coupled with George Bush’s threat to veto it, has aggravated suspicions. But in a notable concession to America’s critics, Ms Rice insisted this week that the ban on the torture or cruel treatment of detainees applied to all American personnel wherever they were in the world.
She also admitted that America had made mistakes in its war on terror. During Ms Rice’s visit to Berlin, Angela Merkel, Germany’s new chancellor, said that the United States had “accepted” that it had “erroneously taken” a German citizen, Khaled al-Masri, to a jail in Afghanistan. Mr Masri, who is now suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment, claims to have been abducted by American agents while on holiday in Macedonia with his family in 2003, before being flown to Afghanistan, accused of being an al-Qaeda terrorist. There, he says, he was held for five months and tortured, before being released without charge after the Americans had discovered that they wanted someone else of the same name.
While refusing to comment on that case, Ms Rice confessed that “any policy will sometimes result in errors”. When this happened, the United States would “rectify it”, she promised. But many Europeans find it hard to take Americans, however sincere, at their word any longer.