The United States government is making secret deals to hand over Al-Quaeda suspects to states which use torture. The US is prohibited by the constituiton from torturing suspects, but that’s not stopping them from violating the spirit of that prohibition. As if you needed any more proof that the government has no scruples or morality. Via the Syndey Morning Herald:
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The United States has been secretly sending prisoners with suspected al-Qaeda connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources.
Prisoners are being moved to places in Egypt and Jordan where they can be subjected to torture and threats to their families to extract information sought by the US.
The normal extradition procedures have been bypassed in the transportation of dozens of prisoners suspected of terrorist connections, according to a report in the Washington Post, with suspects moved to countries where the CIA has close ties with the local intelligence services.
The report says US intelligence agents have been involved in a number of interrogations. A CIA spokesman refused to comment on the allegations on Monday.
A State Department spokesman said the US had been “working very closely with other countries … It’s a global fight against terrorism”.
“After September 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the time,” a diplomat told the Washington Post. “It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can’t do on US soil.”
Suspects are being sent to a third country rather than to the US so as to avoid highly publicised cases that could lead to a further backlash from Islamist extremists, diplomats say.
One of the prisoners, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, is allegedly linked to Richard Reid, the Briton accused of the attempted “shoe bomb” attack on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December. He was flown from Indonesia to Egypt without a court hearing, after his name appeared on al-Qaeda documents. He remains in custody in Egypt and has been subjected to interrogation byintelligence agents.
An Indonesian Government official said disclosing the Americans’ role would haveexposed President Megawati Sukarnoputri to criticism from Muslim political parties.
“We can’t be seen to be co-operating too closely with the United States,” the official said.
A Yemeni microbiology student has also been flown from Pakistan to Jordan, and US forces seized five Algerians and a Yemeni in Bosnia on January 19 and flew them to Guantanamo Bay after the men were released by the Bosnian supreme court for lack of evidence, and despite an injunction from the Bosnian human rights chamber that four of them be allowed to remain there pending further proceedings.
Civil rights lawyers based in Los Angeles have tried unsuccessfully to have Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in US courts or treated as prisoners of war. The US administration has resisted this, arguing that those detainedwere not entitled to be regarded as prisoners of war because they were terrorists rather than soldiers and were not part of a recognised army.