Investigators mapped flight paths of private contractor planes that stopped in Djibouti, a suspected CIA ‘black site’

New evidence culled from a court case involving CIA contractors has revealed flight paths through Djibouti that appear to indicate the country’s role as a hub of the CIA’s rendition network in Africa, according to documents released by the U.K.-based human rights group Reprieve and New York University’s Global Justice Clinic.

The documents could support the case of Mohammad al-Asad, a former CIA detainee who is suing the government of Djibouti for its alleged role in hosting CIA “black sites” — specifically the one where he says he was detained and tortured for two weeks between December 2003 and January 2004. A Senate investigation into the agency’s “detention and interrogation program” had previously confirmed that several individuals had in fact been detained in Djibouti, according to two officials who read the still-classified report and spoke to Al Jazeera.

Investigators behind the document release combed through contracts, invoices and letters put into evidence for a court case — which involved CIA contractors and was separate from the Djibouti allegations — and pieced together a series of rendition circuits, or flight paths, between 2003 and 2004. They include legs through Djibouti — even though the Horn of Africa did not appear to be a convenient stopover between the United States and Afghanistan, the circuits’ endpoints.

“Djibouti was not on the way, it was a destination,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, al-Asad’s attorney and a professor at the Global Justice Clinic. “That’s kind of a telltale sign of a rendition circuit.”

The evidence also implicated private companies — including Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC), DynCorp Systems and Solutions (which was purchased by CSC in 2003 and later divested), Richmor Aviation and First Flight — in the Africa rendition program for the first time.

“These documents provide further evidence of how U.S. corporations played a crucial role in the CIA’s torture network, rendering people to torture around the world far from public scrutiny and even further from the rule of law,” said Kevin Lo, corporate social responsibility advocate at Reprieve.

A spokesman for Computer Sciences Corp. said his company did not comment on “speculation about its clients or their activities” but added in an email to Al Jazeera: “CSC has had the privilege for over fifty years of supporting governments and private sector organizations worldwide, and has done so within the law.”

Richmor Aviation and First Flight did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment in time for publication.

Al-Asad’s case is currently under consideration by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, al-Asad, who is now 54 years old, said he was taken from his home in Tanzania to Djibouti, where he was detained for two weeks. He was then rendered to Afghanistan, where he says he was tortured at various points over the course of more than a year at several CIA black site prisons.

Djibouti has vehemently denied “knowing” participation in any U.S. rendition or torture programs in the country. Its ambassador to the U.S., Roble Olhaye, called al-Asad a “liar.”

“Everything about his case relies on hearsay and conjecture. There were no flights that came to Djibouti on that day he said he was brought to my country from Tanzania,” Olhaye said. “That was checked by our lawyers.”

Human rights researchers say that after the 9/11 attacks, dozens of suspects captured by the U.S. were secretly detained, interrogated and tortured in Djibouti. Although President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2009 banning the CIA’s use of black-site prisons, the order states that it does “not apply to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”

And while Djibouti says it is not aware the CIA had ever operated a black-site prison on its soil, Olhaye pointed out: “If something was done in the context of the American base there, how would we know?”

Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, which hosts the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa, is a known hub for U.S. drone operations against Al-Qaeda in Yemen and Al-Shabab in Somalia.

Satterthwaite said the choice of Djibouti for a black site is logical not only because the country has been a strategic partner in the U.S. “war on terror” for more than a decade, but also because the country has a long history of silencing human rights advocates and journalists. “It’s not hard to keep things secret there,” she said.

May 9, 2014 9:15AM ET
by Michael Pizzi @michaelwpizzi

Find this story at 9 May 2014

© 2014 Al Jazeera America, LLC.

Horn of Africa nation has denied hosting secret prison facilities for US, but classified document may undermine claim

The legal case of a former CIA detainee suing the government of Djibouti for hosting the facility where he says he was detained could be helped by the contents of a still-classified Senate report. Djibouti, a key U.S. ally, has denied for years that its territory has been used to keep suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in secret captivity. But the Senate investigation into the agency’s “detention and interrogation program” concluded that several people had been secretly detained in the tiny Horn of Africa state, two U.S. officials who read an early draft of the report told Al Jazeera.

Official confirmation of Djibouti’s role in hosting “black sites” used in the CIA’s rendition program would be welcomed by Mohammad al-Asad, a Yemeni arrested at his home in Tanzania on Dec. 27, 2003, blindfolded and flown to a location he insists was Djibouti. Two U.S. officials who read an early draft of the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation — and who requested anonymity because the report remains classified — were unaware of whether al-Asad’s case was specifically cited in the document. But they confirmed that the report found that several detainees had been held in Djibouti, and that at least two of them had been wrongfully detained.

Djibouti’s Ambassador to the U.S., Roble Olhaye, told Al Jazeera his country was not a “knowing participant” in the CIA’s rendition program and he rejected claims by al-Asad that he was temporarily imprisoned there.

However, Olhaye said, “If something was done in the context of the American base there how would we know?” But, he said, Djibouti’s agreement with the U.S. precluded the base from being used to house prisoners.

Al-Asad said that after his arrival in the country he alleges was Djibouti, he was held in a prison cell and tortured. He said he was interrogated by an American woman about his connections to the now-defunct Saudi charity Al-Haramain. The group, later accused by the U.S. Treasury of supporting terrorism, had in 1994 rented apartment space from al-Asad in a building he owned in Tanzania.

Asad
Yemeni citizen Mohammad al-Asad
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, al-Asad, now 54 years old, said he was detained for about two weeks in Djibouti and then rendered to Afghanistan, where he says he was tortured at various points over the course of more than a year at several CIA black site prisons.

Before he was released in 2005 and sent back to Yemen, he said, he received a visitor from Washington.

“What I remember through the interpreter was that he said, ‘I am the head of the prison, and you will be the first one at the top of the list of the people we are going to release because we have nothing on you,’” al-Asad told Al Jazeera. “The interpreter said that he was the director of all the prisons.”

Al-Asad was never charged with terrorism or related crimes, but he pleaded guilty in Yemen to making false statements and using forged documents to obtain his Tanzanian travel papers.

Al-Asad, who still lives in Yemen, has been trying since his release to hold Djibouti officials accountable for his detention. In 2009, he sought redress from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, a quasi-judicial body that has jurisdiction over Djibouti and other countries that approved the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In the coming days, that commission, which is based in Gambia, is expected to decide whether it will take up al-Asad’s case.

Olhaye called al-Asad a “liar”, adding, “Everything about his case relies on hearsay and conjecture. There were no flights that came to Djibouti on that day he said he was brought to my country from Tanzania. That was checked by our lawyers.”

But John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, who has spent more than a decade investigating the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation program testified before the commission last year and said “the fact that the flight records of CIA aircraft that are public do not include a flight that matches Mr. al-Asad’s trajectory is not indicative of anything in and of itself.”

Sifton said the CIA could “easily circumvent data collection” and “aircraft used by the CIA could easily be rendered untraceable while flying in and around Djibouti.”

Al-Asad has based his legal case on flight records, collected by Human Rights Watch and the U.K.-based human rights charity Reprieve, demonstrating CIA-linked aircraft flying in and out of Djibouti (PDF).

His lawyers have also obtained documents from Tanzanian immigration officials stating that al-Asad was sent to Djibouti on a Tanzanair aircraft after his 2003 arrest.

“This is one of the most direct pieces of evidence we have showing that Djibouti is where our client was held before being handed to the rendition team on the tarmac,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, al-Asad’s attorney and a professor at New York University’s Global Justice Clinic.

Al-Asad, who still lives in Yemen, has been trying since his release to hold Djibouti officials accountable for his detention.
If the case proceeds, it will mark the first such investigation into the workings of the rendition program in Africa, and could open the door to additional legal challenges by former “war on terror” captives.

A handful of similar cases are already pending before the European Court of Human Rights. However, U.S. courts — citing state secrecy — have rejected attempts by detainees to hold their former captors accountable.

Al Jazeera’s sources noted that in addition to 6 million pages of CIA records, Senate committee investigators obtained some information about the wrongful detentions from people they characterized as “whistleblowers.” The U.S. officials declined to elaborate.

Djibouti, a former French colony, has been one of the key U.S. counterterrorism partners for more than a decade, hosting the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier. The U.S. Air Force also reportedly uses Djibouti as a base for a fleet of drones to strike at Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabab suspects in Yemen and Somalia.

According to human rights researchers, after 9/11 dozens of suspects captured by the U.S. were secretly detained, interrogated and tortured in Djibouti.

The Obama administration, as recently as August 2012, reportedly continued to render suspects to Djibouti for short-term detention. Although President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2009 banning the CIA’s use of black-site prisons, the order states that it does “not apply to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”

Confirmation by the Senate Intelligence Committee of Djibouti’s role in the rendition program would be a “critical” development, said Satterthwaite.

“The cooperation of countries all over the world — including Djibouti — was central to the operation of the U.S. rendition, secret detention, and torture program,” Satterthwaite said. “While the role of European partners such as Poland and Romania has been the subject of much reporting and investigation, the assistance of countries such as Djibouti has yet to be scrutinized. Further, as the home of a fleet of U.S. drones, Djibouti is an enormously important partner but has not received adequate scrutiny for its role in facilitating U.S. abuses.”

The cooperation of countries all over the world — including Djibouti — was central to the operation of the U.S. rendition, secret detention, and torture program.
Margaret Satterthwaite
Al-Asad’s attorney
Jonathan Horowitz, who works on national security and legal issues at the Open Society Justice Initiative, said al-Asad’s case provides the African human rights commission with an opportunity “to state that African governments can’t collude with other governments to abuse human rights, and they can’t use the fight against terrorism to justify violating people’s rights.”

Last year, Open Society issued a report, Globalizing Torture, which found that 54 countries, including Djibouti, were complicit in the extraordinary rendition of 136 CIA prisoners. The nonpartisan Constitution Project also produced a Detainee Task Force report identifying Djibouti as a CIA rendition partner and focused heavily on al-Asad’s case to support its conclusions.

“One of the things that is really important to recognize here is that the CIA torture and rendition program couldn’t have gone global without the assistance from other countries,” Horowitz said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to work on strengthening its counterterrorism relationship with Djibouti. Next week, Djibouti’s president, Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, will travel to the U.S. to meet with President Obama at the White House. Ambassador Olhaye does not believe the Senate’s report, if it is ever released, will identify his country as a rendition partner.

“I don’t believe the Senate report will say anything about my government,” he said. “Maybe about the American base. Our prisons have not been participating in that kind of thing.” Olhaye said neither he nor anyone from his country has had any discussions with U.S. officials about the Senate’s report.

May 2, 2014 5:00AM ET
by Jason Leopold @JasonLeopold

Find this story at 2 May 2014

© 2014 Al Jazeera America, LLC.

Senate investigators want public reckoning of torture tactics under Bush admin., despite CIA attempts to obstruct

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted 11-3 Thursday to declassify parts of a secret report on Bush-era interrogations of terrorism suspects.
“The purpose of this review was to uncover the facts behind this secret program, and the results were shocking. The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never again be allowed to happen,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the committee, said in a statement. “This is not what Americans do.”
Now that the 15-member panel votes has approved the declassification of a 400-page summary and the key findings of its report, the onus is on the Central Intelligence Agency and a reluctant White House to speed the release of one of the most definitive accounts about the government’s actions after the 9/11 attacks.

The CIA will now start scanning the report’s contents for any passages that compromise national security.

That has led to fears that the CIA, already accused of illegally monitoring the Senate’s investigation and deleting files, could sanitize key elements of what Senate investigators aim to be the fullest public reckoning of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on Al-Qaeda suspects in CIA-run prisons abroad. Feinstein has urged the White House to get involved.
Thumbnail image for Senate CIA torture report could throw Gitmo hearings into chaos
Senate CIA torture report could throw Gitmo hearings into chaos
Release of study on detention program might further disrupt military commissions for terrorist suspects at Guantánamo

Congressional aides and outside experts familiar with the document say it is highly critical of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, and concludes among other things that such practices provided no key evidence in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The CIA disputes many of the conclusions in the report.

“It’s important to tell the world, ‘Yes, we made a mistake and we’re not going to do it again,'” said Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who planned to vote for the summary’s release.

Human rights groups and advocates too believe the release of the report crucial to ensuring that similar tactics are never adopted again and that the debate over torture is settled once and for all.
“This information has been kept secret from the American people and from policymakers for years and keeping it secret just perpetuates the false impression that torture is effective and works,” said Laura Pitter, senior national security researcher at Human Rights Watch. “In fact, is is immoral, illegal and ineffective and never should be employed, and was a terrible mistake that the U.S. needs to reckon with on so m any levels.”

But some in the intelligence community said the Senate report, which was written by the committee’s Democratic staff, was missing a key element: the voices of key CIA officials.

Those missing include former Bush administration officials involved in authorizing the use of waterboarding and other harsh questioning methods, or managing their use in secret “black site” prisons overseas.

“Neither I or anyone else at the agency who had knowledge was interviewed,” said Jose Rodriguez, the CIA’s chief clandestine officer in the mid-2000s, who had operational oversight over the detention and interrogation program. “They don’t want to hear anyone else’s narrative,” he said of the Senate investigation. “It’s an attempt to rewrite history.”

Rodriguez himself is a key figure in the Senate report, not least for his order in 2005 to destroy 92 videotapes showing waterboarding of terror suspects and other harsh techniques.

Rodriguez said the Senate’s report would be a “travesty” without input from him and officials such as former CIA directors Michael Hayden and Porter Goss. Congressional aides said the CIA’s own field reports, internal correspondence, cables and other documents described day-to-day handling of interrogations and the decision-making and actions of Rodriguez and others.

Senate investigators have griped for years about what they contend is the CIA’s failure to be held accountable for the harsh methods used during the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror.

Bad blood between Senate aides and the CIA ruptured into the open last month when Feinstein took to the Senate floor to accuse the agency of improperly monitoring the computer use of Senate staffers and deleting files, undermining the Constitution’s separation of powers. The CIA alleges the Senate panel illegally accessed certain documents. The Justice Department is reviewing criminal complaints against each side.

Feinstein said this week she had “no idea” how long a declassification process would take, but expressed hope that it could be resolved in a matter of weeks.

Amid all the distrust, Senate Democrats are pressing for President Barack Obama to step into the fray.

Obama, who outlawed waterboarding after taking office, sought closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and released long-secret, Bush-era legal documents on harsh interrogations. He has publicly supported declassification of at least the findings of the Senate committee’s report “so that the American people can understand what happened in the past, and that can help guide us as we move forward.”

Still, the president has so far declined to weigh in publicly on Congress’ dispute with the CIA.

April 3, 2014 12:19PM ET Updated 3:26PM ET
Al Jazeera and The Associated Press

Find this story at 3 April 2014

© 2014 Al Jazeera America, LLC.

Human rights group representing Gaddafi opponent rendered to Libya via Diego Garcia says Britain must ‘come clean’ over role
Jamie Doward

The government is under mounting pressure to “come clean” about the role of an overseas UK territory leased to the US and allegedly used as a secret “black site” detention centre.

An opponent of Colonel Gaddafi who was rendered in a joint MI6-CIA operation, and a leading human rights group representing him, have demanded that the foreign secretary, William Hague, clarify the UK’s position on Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean leased to the US until 2016. The Senate’s intelligence security committee is preparing to declassify a file that reportedly confirms that the CIA detained “high-value suspects on Diego Garcia” and that “the black site arrangement on the atoll was made with the ‘full cooperation’ of the British government”.

The revelations are hugely troubling for the government and threaten to raise awkward questions about the UK’s relationship with the US, its closest security ally. They strengthen claims made by Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, a rebel military commander and opponent of Gaddafi, who was arrested in Malaysia and rendered with his pregnant wife to Libya, allegedly via Diego Garcia, in a joint US-UK intelligence operation.

Papers discovered in Tripoli in 2011 show that the British security services were instrumental in helping Libya to seize Belhaj, who says he was tortured during his rendition and during his subsequent four-and-a-half-year incarceration by the Gaddafi regime. A flight plan confirmed the CIA had intended to render him via Diego Garcia.

Belhaj, who unsuccessfully tried to bring a case against former foreign secretary Jack Straw, former senior MI6 official Sir Mark Allen, the security services and the Foreign Office, told the Observer that the Senate report raised new questions about the role played by the British overseas territory in facilitating the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme.

“The first time I heard that I had gone through a place called Diego Garcia was when I was told by the head of the Libyan intelligence, Moussa Koussa, during my first interrogation session in a prison outside Tripoli,” Belhaj said.

“He was running the interrogation and was angry that it had taken a long time for me to arrive in Libya. I told him that the plane had stopped somewhere on the way from Bangkok. He told me that he knew, and that the plane had landed on an island in the Indian Ocean called Diego Garcia.

“Perhaps he was showing off, or perhaps he had been given wrong information, I don’t know. I just know that the flight stopped somewhere. I was chained up in a very painful position and had no means to know where I was, or even whether my pregnant wife – who had been kidnapped at the same time – was with me.”

Although the British government admitted in 2008 that two rendition flights carrying detainees had stopped for refuelling on Diego Garcia in 2002, it has consistently denied that detainees were held on it.

“Each year the US government reaffirms to us during our official political-military discussions that all previous assurances since 2008 on this subject remain correct,” Mark Simmonds, the minister for overseas territories, wrote in a letter last month to Richard Ottaway, the chairman of parliament’s foreign affairs select committee. “Namely that, apart from two instances in Diego Garcia during 2002, there have been no other instances in which US intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, UK overseas territories or crown dependencies, with a detainee on board since 11 September 2001.”

Polly Rossdale, deputy director at human rights group Reprieve, which has acted for Belhaj, said: “The government must come clean about the UK’s role in this dirty affair.”

A spokesman for the Foreign Office declined to add any comment to what ministers had already told parliament.

The Observer, Sunday 13 April 2014

Find this story at 13 April 2014

© 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the C.I.A. for an internal study done by the agency that lawmakers believe is broadly critical of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program but was withheld from congressional oversight committees.
The committee’s request comes in the midst of a yearlong battle with the C.I.A. over the release of the panel’s own exhaustive report about the program, one of the most controversial policies of the post-Sept. 11 era.
The Senate report, totaling more than 6,000 pages, was completed last December but has yet to be declassified. According to people who have read the study, it is unsparing in its criticism of the now-defunct interrogation program and presents a chronicle of C.I.A. officials’ repeatedly misleading the White House, Congress and the public about the value of brutal methods that, in the end, produced little valuable intelligence.
Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, disclosed the existence of the internal C.I.A. report during an Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday. He said he believed it was begun several years ago and “is consistent with the Intelligence’s Committee’s report” although it “conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the committee’s report.”
“If this is true,” Mr. Udall said during a hearing on the nomination of Caroline D. Krass to be the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, “this raises fundamental questions about why a review the C.I.A. conducted internally years ago — and never provided to the committee — is so different from the C.I.A.’s formal response to the committee study.”
The agency responded to the committee report with a vigorous 122-page rebuttal that challenged both the Senate report’s specific facts and its overarching conclusions. John O. Brennan, one of Mr. Obama’s closest advisers before taking over the C.I.A. this year — and who denounced the interrogation program during his confirmation hearing — delivered the agency’s response to the Intelligence Committee himself.
It is unclear what the agency specifically concluded in its internal review.
Mr. Udall, whose public criticisms of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone data has raised his profile in Congress and won him praise from privacy advocates, said he would not support Ms. Krass’s nomination until the C.I.A. provided more information to the committee about the interrogation program.
Ms. Krass did not respond directly to Mr. Udall’s statements about the internal C.I.A. review. Dean Boyd, an agency spokesman, said the agency was “aware of the committee’s request and will respond appropriately.”
Mr. Boyd said that the C.I.A. agreed with a number of the conclusions of the voluminous Senate investigative report, but found “significant errors in the study.”
“C.I.A. and committee staff have had extensive dialogue on this issue, and the agency is prepared to work with the committee to determine the best way forward on potential declassification,” he said.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is the Intelligence Committee’s chairwoman, said recently that her committee would soon vote to adopt the report’s executive summary and conclusion, which would then be subject to a formal declassification process before it was publicly released.
Republican members of the committee, angry about what they see as a biased and shoddy investigation by their Democratic colleagues, are planning to make public a rebuttal of their own.
The Senate report, which took years to complete and cost more than $40 million to produce, began as an attempt to document what was perhaps the most divisive of the Bush administration’s responses to the Sept. 11 attacks. But it has since become enmeshed in the complex politics of the Obama administration.
President Obama ended the detention program as one of his first acts in the Oval Office, and has repeatedly denounced the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods under the program. During a speech in May, he said that the United States had “compromised our basic values by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.”
And yet Mr. Obama has repeatedly resisted demands by human rights groups to seek prosecutions for the lawyers who approved the interrogation methods or the people who carried them out, and the White House has been mostly silent during the debate over the past year about declassifying the Senate report.
For all his criticisms of the counterterrorism excesses during the Bush administration, Mr. Obama has put the C.I.A. at the center of his strategy to kill militant suspects in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
Human rights groups have tried to pressure the White House to intervene to get the Senate report declassified.
“Whether it’s stalling or concealing, the C.I.A. is trying to avoid reckoning with its past abuse,” said Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA. “And that’s what makes declassifying the Senate’s report so crucial right now.”
Ms. Krass is a career government lawyer who works at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the arm of the department that advises the White House on the legality of domestic and foreign policies.
The office was particularly controversial during the Bush administration, when lawyers there wrote lengthy memos approving C.I.A. interrogation methods like waterboarding and sleep deprivation, as well as signing off on the expansion of surveillance by the National Security Agency.
Under Mr. Obama, the office has approved other controversial practices, including the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric living in Yemen who was an American. Mr. Awlaki was killed in September 2011 by a C.I.A. drone strike, launched from a secret base in Saudi Arabia.
Much of Tuesday’s hearing was consumed by a debate about whether the White House should be forced to share Justice Department legal memos.
Under polite but persistent questioning by members of both parties, Ms. Krass repeatedly said that while the two congressional intelligence committees need to “fully understand” the legal basis for C.I.A. activities, they were not entitled to see the Justice Department memos that provide the legal blueprint for secret programs.
The opinions “represent pre-decisional, confidential legal advice that has been provided,” she said, adding that the confidentiality of the legal advice was necessary to allow a “full and frank discussion amongst clients and policy makers and their lawyers within the executive branch.”
Senator Feinstein appeared unmoved. “Unless we know the administration’s basis for sanctioning a program, it is very hard to oversee it,” she said.
Still, it is expected that the committee will vote to approve Ms. Krass.
December 17, 2013
By MARK MAZZETTI
Find this story at 17 December 2013
© 2013 The New York Times Company

Aborted inquiry found that British spies knew detainees were abused, deprived of sleep and made to wear hoods.
The Obama Administration has repeatedly said it wishes to close the Guantanamo detention facility [AP]
British spies knew about detainee abuse but were told they did not have to intervene because they might damage relations with the US, a senior British judge has found.
The report, from Peter Gibson, comes from an inquiry intended to examine whether Britain was implicated in the mistreatment of detainees following the 9/11 attacks.
But it was scrapped earlier this year after Libya alleged that Britain was complicit in “rendition” – capturing people suspected of terrorism and transferring them to third countries without legal process.
Gibson found evidence that British spies had been aware of physical assault, sleep deprivation and the use of hoods.
“Officers were advised that, faced with apparent breaches of Geneva Convention standards, there was no obligation to
intervene,” he said in the report.
Britain had been reluctant to complain about the ill-treatment of detainees for fear of damaging relations with allies, including the US, the report said.
Allegations of torture
In some cases, British officials failed to raise objections about renditions when they should have, while ministers were unaware of the operations.
Britain’s MI6 linked to Libya torture scandal
After reviewing 20,000 documents, Gibson said he had found 27 issues that needed further investigation, including allegations of torture.
“Documents indicate that in some instances UK intelligence officers were aware of inappropriate interrogation techniques,” the report said.
“(The) government or its agencies may have become inappropriately involved in some cases of rendition.”
In response the British government said on Thursday that a parliamentary committee would take over from Gibson’s role and look at Gibson’s outstanding concerns.
Cabinet minister Ken Clarke said the inquiry’s findings showed Britain’s spy agencies had struggled to come to terms with the threat from armed groups after the 9/11 attacks.
Unprepared and inadequate
“It is now clear that our agencies and their staff were in some respects not prepared for the extreme demands suddenly
placed upon them,” Clarke told parliament.
“Guidance regulating how intelligence officers should act was inadequate, the practices of some of our international partners should have been understood much sooner. Oversight was not robust enough.”
The heads of MI5 and MI6, Britain’s domestic and overseas intelligence agencies, have repeatedly said they would never use, or encourage others to use, torture to gain information.
In November 2010, however, Britain agreed to make payments to 16 former Guantanamo Bay detainees in settlements over claims they were mistreated abroad with the knowledge and in some cases complicity of British spies.
Last updated: 19 Dec 2013 20:22
Source:
AP
Find this story at 19 December 2013
Copyright Aljazeera

Today the Government has published a report submitted to the Prime Minister by Sir Peter Gibson and Dame Janet Paraskeva, the Panel of the Detainee Inquiry, on the Inquiry’s work.
The Inquiry’s Report speaks for itself. It is a rigorous, thorough and independent piece of work. It reveals more information than ever before about the workings of Government and the Agencies, on the issues highlighted in the report.
Sir Peter said:
“There are matters which deserve further investigation. That is what the documents have disclosed and we explain why in our report.”
Dame Janet said:
“We have worked hard to put as much as possible into the public domain. I do hope the Government will decide to build on our work in a future Inquiry and give the detainees a chance to have their say.”
The library of documents, the analysis of information and preliminary identification of potential witnesses the Inquiry carried out, will save any subsequent Inquiry a huge amount of time and resource.
The report does not find facts or reach conclusions. It is based on the scrutiny of documents, no witness has yet had the opportunity to explain or add to this information. But the Inquiry has shone a bright light onto issues which might be investigated further by a future Inquiry or on which the Government can take action now.
The Inquiry covered four separate themes: interrogation and treatment issues, rendition, training and guidance as well as policy and communications. Its work revealed 27 separate issues the Inquiry would like to have investigated further and which might be followed up by a future Inquiry.
In summary the report says:
Interrogation and Treatment issues:
Documents indicate that in some instances UK intelligence officers were aware of inappropriate interrogation techniques and mistreatment or allegations of mistreatment of some detainees by liaison partners from other countries.
Rendition
Documents indicate that Government or its Agencies may have become inappropriately involved in some cases of rendition.
Training and Guidance
No reason to doubt that instruction to personnel was that detainees must be treated humanely and consistently with UK’s international legal obligations. But officers on the ground needed clear guidance on when and with whom to raise concerns.
Policy and Communications
Documents raise the question whether the Agencies could have identified possible patterns of detainee mistreatment more quickly and whether or not sufficient information was given to the ISC to enable it to perform its duties.
Notes for editors:
The Inquiry’s original task was set out by the Prime Minister when he announced its establishment on 6 July 2010, to: “….look at whether Britain was implicated in the improper treatment of detainees, held by other countries, that may have occurred in the aftermath of 9/11”
On 18 January 2012, the then Justice Secretary, told the House: “….. following consultations with Sir Peter Gibson, the chair of the Inquiry we have decided to bring the work of his Inquiry to a conclusion. We have agreed with Sir Peter that the Inquiry should provide Government with a report on its preparatory work to date, highlighting particular themes or issues which might be the subject of further examination. The Government are clear that as much of this report as possible will be made public.”
As the Justice Secretary made clear in his statement to the House, the CPS’ announcement of new criminal investigations to be carried out by the Metropolitan Police meant that the Inquiry start its mandate as originally envisaged.
The Inquiry examined some 20,000 documents and as a result has raised a number of robust questions for a future Inquiry to investigate further and a number of areas where the Government can act now. The vast majority of the documents the Inquiry examined were highly classified.
For more information including the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference, Protocol, biographies of Sir Peter Gibson and Dame Janet Paraskeva, and a link to the report please visit: www.detaineeinquiry.org.uk
Find this story at 19 December 2013
Find the report at
© UK Crown Copyright 2013

British intelligence officers were told to ignore evidence of breaches of the Geneva convention when detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan were being interrogated in 2002, a report by the aborted inquiry into alleged British complicity in torture has found.
The inquiry was axed earlier this year after fresh criminal investigations were launched into allegations involving Libyan victims Photo: EPA
British intelligence officers were told to ignore evidence of breaches of the Geneva convention when detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan were being interrogated in 2002, a report by the aborted inquiry into alleged British complicity in torture has found.
The orders from MI6’s head quarters to intelligence officers came as Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was telling MPs that anyone who is captured “should be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Convention”.
The report published by Sir Peter Gibson disclosed that in 2002 spies working for MI6 overseas were told to turn a “blind eye” to any evidence they witnessed of breaches of the Convention, which sets out how prisoners should be treated.
Documents uncovered by the inquiry showed that “officers were advised that, faced with apparent breaches of Geneva Convention standards, there was no obligation to intervene”, the report said.
“Officers were also advised that such conduct should only be raised with the detaining authority ‘if circumstances allow’. Officers were not advised to cease any interview immediately if they felt that the detainee was not being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards.”
Related Articles
Government ‘risks accusations of burying bad news by publishing Gibson on day of Woolwich verdicts’ 19 Dec 2013
Britain pays out £2m to illegal rendition Libyan 13 Dec 2012
Gibson torture inquiry abandoned 18 Jan 2012
Ken Clarke abandons Gibson torture inquiry 18 Jan 2012
MI5 and MI6 in the clear over allegations of torture in Pakistan 12 Jan 2012
MI6 spies died in battle against al-Qaeda, Hague to say 16 Nov 2011
Mr Blair had told MPs on January 16, 2002 : “I totally agree that anybody who is captured by American troops, British troops or anyone else should be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Convention and proper international norms.”
Yet two days later, Mr Blair wrote on the bottom of a Number 10 note about detainees in Guantanamo: “The key is to find out how they are being treated.
“Though I was initially sceptical about claims of torture, we must make clear to the US that any such action wd be totally unacceptable & v. quickly establish that it isn’t happening” [sic].
The partly-redacted report recommended 27 areas which should be examined further, adding that it “would also want to put on its recognition of the extreme harshness of the conditions and the treatment experienced by the detainees”.
One area it wanted to examine was whether “UK officers may have turned a blind eye to the use of specific, inappropriate techniques or threats used by others and used this to their advantage when resuming an interview session with a now compliant detainee”.
The inquiry was axed earlier this year after fresh criminal investigations were launched into allegations involving Libyan victims. The report also found that Britain “may have become inappropriately” involved in some cases of rendition of suspected terrorists.
The heads of both MI5 and MI6 have been asked to give their responses to MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is investigating the claims, by February.
Ken Clarke, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of the inquiry, said the report “finds no evidence in the documents to support any allegation that UK intelligence officers were directly responsible for the mistreatment of detainees held by other countries overseas”.
He added that it was important when considering the report to bear in mind it was a period “when we and our international partners were suddenly adapting to a completely new scale and type of threat from fundamentalist religious extremists.
Mr Clarke said: “It is now clear that our agencies and their staff were in some respects not prepared for the extreme demands suddenly placed on them.”
He said: “There is some damage to our reputation which prides itself as a beacon of justice, human rights and the rule of law. If failures and mistakes were made in this period that is a matter of sincere regret.”
Jack Straw, who was Labour foreign secretary at the time, flatly denied that he knowingly facilitated the torture of British citizens by US authorities, even though he authorised their transfer to Guantanamo Bay.
By Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent
4:34PM GMT 19 Dec 2013
Find this story at 19 December 2013
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

MI6 agents in Afghanistan were told they were not obliged to intervene if they witnessed suspected terrorists being harmed by their American captors, an official inquiry into allegations Britain was complicit in torture has disclosed.
It also concluded that UK operatives “may have become inappropriately” involved in some cases of rendition of captives who were believed to be al-Qa’ida fighters.
Sir Peter Gibson’s investigation listed 27 areas he believed needed further inquiry, including whether the Government should have done more to obtain the release of UK nationals locked up at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
It suggested that the Labour minister Jack Straw should have asked more questions when he was Foreign Secretary about the UK’s possible involvement in activities in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Documents released by Sir Peter, a former High Court judge, showed an MI6 officer reported back to headquarters in London what he had seen as American officers interrogated captives at Bagram airbase, near Kabul, in January 2002.
A telegram he received in reply read: “It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this.”
He was reminded that the “Americans understand that we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it”.
But the telegram made clear there was no automatic requirement to intervene if UK officers witnessed inhuman treatment of captives. It said: “If circumstances allow, you should consider drawing this to the attention of a suitably senior US official locally.”
No official complaint over the episode was passed to the American authorities and seven days later Tony Blair reassured MPs that detainees in the US detention camp of Guantanamo were being treated humanely.
Sir Peter said he wished he has been able to investigate further “whether in some cases, UK officers may have turned a blind eye to the use of specific, inappropriate techniques or threats used by others and used this to their advantage when resuming an interview session with a now compliant detainee”.
The inquiry was set up two and a half years ago by David Cameron but was heavily criticised by human rights lawyers who abandoned co-operation.
It was scrapped last year and responsibility for examining alleged complicity transferred to a parliamentary committee. Human rights groups denounced the decision as a “whitewash”.
Sir Peter on Thursday published an interim report setting out the reasons he believed his inquiry should be re-established.
In a damaging finding, he said: “A theme that runs through a number of the lead cases considered by the inquiry is whether treatment issues – such as sleep deprivation, hooding and media reports of waterboarding – were raised appropriately with the relevant liaison partner responsible for the detention and treatment in question”.
He said the inquiry had received papers suggesting that in “some instances there was a reluctance to raise treatment issues” for fear of harming relations with the United States.
The inquiry also found that while no formal request was put to the UK, records show the Government was aware that US officials were considering the use of Diego Garcia, an island in the British Indian Ocean Territory, for holding or transiting detainees between November 2001 and January 2002.”
The report said: “There is an issue as to whether the Government and the Agencies may have become inappropriately involved in some cases of rendition.”
Mr Straw told MPs on Thursday: “As Foreign Secretary I acted at all times in a manner which was fully consistent with my legal duties with national and international law. And I was never in any way complicit with the unlawful rendition or detention of individuals by the United States or any other state.”
Nigel Morris
Thursday, 19 December 2013
Find this story at 19 December 2013
© independent.co.uk

Al Jazeera investigates how information gathered through torture of Gaddafi dissidents was used to track Libyans in UK.
Last updated: 18 Dec 2013 18:04
Intelligence extracted by torture in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison has been linked to arrests of Libyan dissidents in the United Kingdom, an investigation by Al Jazeera’s People and Power has revealed.
In this exclusive report, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the anti-Gaddafi resistance group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), explains that he and fellow leader Sami al-Saadi were subjected to torture by his Libyan interrogators, which forced them to give up the names of innocent residents in the UK.
Al-Saadi and Belhaj also claim foreign agents, including British agents, questioned them in Abu Salim prison. These allegations form the basis of a lawsuit against the British government.
According to Belhaj’s lawyers, the men and their families were pawns in a deal struck by Britain in 2004.
After Gaddafi’s fall, the role played by British intelligence agencies was discovered.
“When the rebels came to Tripoli they ransacked all sorts of buildings … associated with Gaddafi’s old regime,” said Al Jazeera’s Juliana Ruhfus, who was involved in the investigation.
“It was in the office of spy chief Moussa Koussa that they found a stash of documents that revealed, in startling detail, the collaboration between British and Libyan intelligence services.”
Belhaj says he was pressured by Gaddafi’s interrogators to give up information about Libyans living in Britain.
“Sometimes they would come to me with the questions and answers already done and force me to sign it. They would mention names to me and say that these people supported armed activities,” he said.
One of the men named under torture was Ziad Hashem, a Libyan who obtained asylum in the UK after Belhaj’s rendition. Hashem claims he was arrested in Britain without any charges: “We were just put in prison arbitrarily without any explanation.”
Hashem is part of yet another law suit against the British government. One of the things he is hoping to reveal is the flow of information between Libyan and British intelligence agencies which led to his detention.
The British government says it is committed to investigating allegations of mistreatment, that it stands firmly against torture and that it never asks any other country to carry it out.
But the dissidents accuse the British government of being complicit in their rendition into Gaddafi’s prisons, showing Al Jazeera documents from MI6 tipping off Gaddafi’s intelligence apparatus about their flight movements.
Libya: Renditions airs on People & Power on Al Jazeera English from Wednesday 18 December at 10.30pm London time (22.30 GMT) and is available online at aje.me/libyarenditions
 
Find this story at 18 December 2013
Copyright Al Jazeera

Lawyers say a Saudi national and a Palestinian were tortured in a secret US facility in a remote part of Poland.
Human rights groups believe about eight ‘terror’ suspects were held in Poland [AP]
The secret network of black site prisons across Europe that the CIA used to interrogate “terror” suspects has had a rare public hearing at Europe’s human rights court.
Lawyers for two suspects, currently held by the US in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, accuse Poland of human rights abuses.
They told the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday that the two fell victim to the CIA’s programme to kidnap suspects and transfer them to third countries.
They also allege they were tortured in a remote Polish prison.
One of the cases concerns 48-year-old Saudi national, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who faces “terror” charges in the US for allegedly orchestrating the al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
The second case involves 42-year-old Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian.
Both men say they were brought to Poland in December 2002, where they were detained and subjected to harsh questioning in a Polish military installation in Stare Kiejkuty, a village in the country’s remote northeast.
They are asking the court to condemn Poland for various abuses of rights guaranteed by Europe’s Convention on Human Rights.
Former CIA officials have told the Associated Press news agency that a prison in Poland operated from December 2002 until the fall of 2003.
Human rights groups believe about eight suspects were held in Poland, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Polish leaders in office at the time, former President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former Prime Minister Leszek Miller denied the prison’s existence.
Last updated: 03 Dec 2013 16:23
Find this story at 3 December 2013

The European Court of Human Rights is hearing a case brought by two terror suspects who accuse Poland of conniving in US human rights abuses.
The two men are currently held at the US Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
It is the first time that allegations about a CIA “black site” prison in a European country have been heard in an open court.
Abu Zubaydah and another al-Qaeda suspect say they were tortured at a secret prison in Poland in 2002-2003.
Nearly a year ago the court ruled against Macedonia for abuses suffered by Khaled el-Masri, another suspect who was held for CIA interrogation.
Abu Zubaydah, a 42-year-old Palestinian, allegedly made travel arrangements for jihadis loyal to Osama Bin Laden, including those who carried out the September 2001 attacks in the US.
The other suspect in the Poland case is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 48, a Saudi accused of organising the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen, in which 17 sailors died.
Their lawyers are representing them in Strasbourg and a court statement said their submissions are based mainly on publicly available sources, because of the restrictions imposed at Guantanamo Bay.
Only part of the hearing is public – the rest is being held behind closed doors.
Mr Nashiri’s lawyers accused Poland of turning a blind eye to CIA abuses
‘Extraordinary rendition’
The two men allege that they were subjected to torture, other ill treatment and incommunicado detention in Poland, while in US custody.
The “waterboard” technique – simulated drowning – was among the methods allegedly used during their interrogation. Their lawyers also say the men were subjected to mock executions in Poland and told their families would be sexually abused.
The men were allegedly flown to Poland on the same “rendition plane” in December 2002.
Reports by a Council of Europe investigator, Swiss senator Dick Marty, detailed “war on terror” operations by the CIA in several European countries. He named the Polish detention centre as Stare Kiejkuty, an intelligence training base near Szczytno in northern Poland.
Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
The Polish government’s investigation into the issue was in reality nothing more than a smoke-screen”
Crofton Black
Investigator at Reprieve
The Strasbourg judges will deliver their verdict on the case at a later stage.
Former President George W Bush authorised the rendition policy shortly after the 9/11 attacks to allow the CIA to interrogate terror suspects secretly outside the US.
Crofton Black, an investigator at the human rights campaign group Reprieve, said: “European support for the CIA’s torture programme is one of the darkest chapters of our recent history – it is encouraging that the court now looks set to bring it to light, where the [Polish] government has sought to sweep it under the carpet.”
“We have now heard overwhelming and uncontested evidence that the CIA was running a secret torture prison on Polish soil, with the Polish government’s knowledge.
“The Polish government has failed to contest that it knew prisoners were being held beyond the rule of law and tortured by the CIA inside their own country. It has also become clear that the Polish government’s investigation into the issue was in reality nothing more than a smoke-screen, which was neither designed nor intended to get to the truth,” he said.
A lawyer representing Poland said the Polish authorities should be allowed to complete their own investigation into the claims first.
In December 2012 the judges ruled that Macedonia had violated the rights of Khaled al-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen, and ordered Macedonia to pay him 60,000 euros (£50,000; $82,000). He was kidnapped in Macedonia in 2003, flown to a secret jail in Afghanistan and tortured there.
3 December 2013 Last updated at 10:31 ET
Find this story at 3 December 2013
BBC © 2013 The BBC

Terror suspects subjected to extraordinary rendition tell European court of human rights they were waterboarded
Judges of the European court of human rights during a hearing at the court in Strasbourg on Tuesday. Photograph: Vincent Kessler/Reuters
Lawyers for two men subject to extraordinary rendition by the CIA told the European court of human rights (ECHR) on Tuesday that Poland, which permitted a secret “black” site to operate on its territory, should be held responsible for their torture.
The two-day hearing at Strasbourg was the first time a European country has been taken to court for allowing US agencies to carry out “enhanced” interrogation and “waterboarding” programmes. In a highly unusual legal move, the media and public were barred from the opening day’s session.
The military base at Stare Kiejkuty, north of Warsaw, it was revealed, had previously been used by German intelligence and later the Soviet army during the second world war. One of the men, it was alleged, was subjected to mock executions while hooded and otherwise naked.
Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian national of Yemeni descent, and Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, also known as Abu Zubaydah, a stateless Palestinian, maintain they were waterboarded and abused during interrogation in Poland. Both men are being held by the US in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The court also heard a submission from Ben Emmerson QC, the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, who argued that where gross or “systematic human rights violations are alleged to have occurred, the right to know the truth is not only an individual right that belongs to the immediate victim of the violation, but also a collective right that belongs to the whole of society”.
Nashiri, who was born in 1965, is the prime suspect in the terrorist attack on the US navy ship USS Cole in the harbour of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000. He is also suspected of playing a role in the attack on the French oil tanker MV Limburg in the Gulf of Aden in October 2002.
Husayn, born in 1971, was considered by US authorities to be an important member of al-Qaida and is alleged to have been involved in planning the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
They claim that after being captured by the CIA they were transferred on the same “rendition” plane in December 2002 to a secret detention site in Poland, with the knowledge of the Polish authorities, for the purpose of interrogation and were tortured.
Nashiri maintains he was seized in Dubai in October that year and subsequently moved around secret CIA detention facilities in Afghanistan and Thailand before being taken to Poland. He remained in a secret detention centre until early June 2003, when he was secretly transferred, with the assistance of the Polish authorities, to Morocco and then, in September 2003, to Guantánamo Bay.
He claims he was subjected to the so-called “waterboard technique”, where a detainee is tied to a bench with his feet elevated above his head, a cloth placed over his mouth and nose and water poured on to the cloth producing the sensation of drowning and suffocation.
Nashiri alleges he was also forced into prolonged stress positions – kneeling on the floor and leaning back – and was threatened that his family would be abused if he did not provide information.
Amrit Singh, of the Open Society Justice Initiative who represented Nashiri, said that her client had been repeatedly tortured. “The court heard expert testimony [on Monday] confirming how Polish officials filed false flight plans and assisted in the cover-up of CIA operations,” Singh said. “In a secluded villa, hidden from sight, CIA interrogators subjected him to torture: to mock executions while he stood naked and hooded before them; to painful stress positions that nearly dislocated his arms from his shoulders; and to threats of bringing in his mother to sexually abuse her in front of him.” He now faces the death penalty before a US military commission, she added.
Husayn alleges that, having been captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and subsequently transferred to a secret CIA detention facility in Thailand, he was brought to Poland in early December 2002 where he was held in a secret CIA detention facility until September 2003.
According to his submissions, Husayn was waterboarded, placed in a box and exposed to extreme noise.
Communication with his lawyers is restricted, making it impossible to pass on information or evidence directly from him to the ECHR. The presentation of his case is principally based on publicly available sources.
Pádraig Hughes, a lawyer with Interights who presented Husayn, said before the hearing: “We hope that the court’s ruling will make it clear that the actions by the Polish authorities were a clear violation of human rights and should never be repeated by any country that properly respects human rights and the rule of law.”
Crofton Black, a researcher with the London-based human rights organisation Reprieve, who has been researching the issue of secret prisons in Europe during the ‘War on Terror’ sat in on the first, closed day of the hearing.
“We have now heard overwhelming and uncontested evidence that the CIA was running a secret torture prison on Polish soil, with the Polish Government’s knowledge,” he said. “Despite being given many opportunities to do so, the Polish Government has failed to contest that it knew prisoners were being held beyond the rule of law and tortured by the CIA inside their own country.
“It has also become clear that the Polish government’s investigation into the issue was in reality nothing more than a smoke-screen, which was neither designed nor intended to get to the truth.
A Polish offical told the court that his country was the only European state that was “conducting a real investigation” and that the inquiry had been hindered by the fact that it was difficult for the prosecutor to talk to the complainants. Relations between Poland and the US, he added, were subject to secrecy.
Romania and Lithuania also have cases pending at the ECHR for hosting secret CIA prisons. Judgment was reserved.
Owen Bowcott and Ian Cobain
theguardian.com, Tuesday 3 December 2013 13.15 GMT
Find this story at 3 December 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Doctors were asked to torture detainees for intelligence gathering, and unethical practices continue, review concludes
An al-Qaida detainee at Guantanamo Bay in 2002: the DoD has taken steps to address concerns over practices at the prison in recent years. Photograph: Shane T Mccoy/PA
Doctors and psychologists working for the US military violated the ethical codes of their profession under instruction from the defence department and the CIA to become involved in the torture and degrading treatment of suspected terrorists, an investigation has concluded.
The report of the Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centres concludes that after 9/11, health professionals working with the military and intelligence services “designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees”.
Medical professionals were in effect told that their ethical mantra “first do no harm” did not apply, because they were not treating people who were ill.
The report lays blame primarily on the defence department (DoD) and the CIA, which required their healthcare staff to put aside any scruples in the interests of intelligence gathering and security practices that caused severe harm to detainees, from waterboarding to sleep deprivation and force-feeding.
The two-year review by the 19-member taskforce, Ethics Abandoned: Medical Professionalism and Detainee Abuse in the War on Terror, supported by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and the Open Society Foundations, says that the DoD termed those involved in interrogation “safety officers” rather than doctors. Doctors and nurses were required to participate in the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike, against the rules of the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association. Doctors and psychologists working for the DoD were required to breach patient confidentiality and share what they knew of the prisoner’s physical and psychological condition with interrogators and were used as interrogators themselves. They also failed to comply with recommendations from the army surgeon general on reporting abuse of detainees.
The CIA’s office of medical services played a critical role in advising the justice department that “enhanced interrogation” methods, such as extended sleep deprivation and waterboarding, which are recognised as forms of torture, were medically acceptable. CIA medical personnel were present when waterboarding was taking place, the taskforce says.
Although the DoD has taken steps to address concerns over practices at Guantánamo Bay in recent years, and the CIA has said it no longer has suspects in detention, the taskforce says that these “changed roles for health professionals and anaemic ethical standards” remain.
“The American public has a right to know that the covenant with its physicians to follow professional ethical expectations is firm regardless of where they serve,” said Dr Gerald Thomson, professor of medicine emeritus at Columbia University and member of the taskforce.
He added: “It’s clear that in the name of national security the military trumped that covenant, and physicians were transformed into agents of the military and performed acts that were contrary to medical ethics and practice. We have a responsibility to make sure this never happens again.”The taskforce says that unethical practices by medical personnel, required by the military, continue today. The DoD “continues to follow policies that undermine standards of professional conduct” for interrogation, hunger strikes, and reporting abuse. Protocols have been issued requiring doctors and nurses to participate in the force-feeding of detainees, including forced extensive bodily restraints for up to two hours twice a day.
Doctors are still required to give interrogators access to medical and psychological information about detainees which they can use to exert pressure on them. Detainees are not permitted to receive treatment for the distress caused by their torture.
“Putting on a uniform does not and should not abrogate the fundamental principles of medical professionalism,” said IMAP president David Rothman. “‘Do no harm’ and ‘put patient interest first’ must apply to all physicians regardless of where they practise.”The taskforce wants a full investigation into the involvement of the medical profession in detention centres. It is also calling for publication of the Senate intelligence committee’s inquiry into CIA practices and wants rules to ensure doctors and psychiatrists working for the military are allowed to abide by the ethical obligations of their profession; they should be prohibited from taking part in interrogation, sharing information from detainees’ medical records with interrogators, or participating in force-feeding, and they should be required to report abuse of detainees.
Sarah Boseley, health editor
The Guardian, Monday 4 November 2013
Find this story at 4 November 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

It cost $40 million to produce, documents serious wrongdoing, and doesn’t threaten national security. Team Obama won’t release it.
One year ago today, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to adopt a 6,000-page report on the CIA rendition, detention, and interrogation program that led to torture. Its contents include details on each prisoner in CIA custody, the conditions of their confinement, whether they were tortured, the intelligence they provided, and the degree to which the CIA lied about its behavior to overseers. Senator Dianne Feinstein declared it one of the most significant oversight efforts in American history, noting that it contains “startling details” and raises “critical questions.” But all these months later, the report is still being suppressed.
The Obama Administration has no valid reason to suppress the report. Its contents do not threaten national security, as evidenced by the fact that numerous figures who normally defer to the national-security state want it released with minor redactions. The most prominent of all is Vice President Joe Biden.
Another is Senator John McCain.
“What I have learned confirms for me what I have always believed and insisted to be true—that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners is not only wrong in principle and a stain on our country’s conscience, but also an ineffective and unreliable means of gathering intelligence,” he said in a statement. “… It is therefore my hope that this Committee will take whatever steps necessary to finalize and declassify this report, so that all Americans can see the record for themselves, which I believe will finally close this painful chapter for our country.”
They are hardly alone.
In order to mark the one-year anniversary of the report being adopted (only to be suppressed), the Center for Victims of Torture has assembled a list of 58 figures of note who insist that the public ought to be able to read the important document. It includes a total of eight U.S. senators and numerous former Obama Administration officials, including Harold Koh and Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering.
Former CIA employees who want the report released include John Rizzo, former CIA general counsel; Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of operations and analysis at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center; and Glenn Carle, 23-year veteran of CIA (among others). If it’s former military flag officers that will sway you, here are fewer than half of the ones who want the report on CIA imprisonment released:
General Joseph P. Hoar, former Commander, U.S. Central Command; General Charles C. Krulak, former Commandant of the Marine Corps; General David M. Maddox, former Commander in Chief, U.S. Army, Europe; General Barry McCaffrey, former Assistant Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Merrill A. McPeak, former Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force; Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard Jr.; Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, former Inspector General, Department of the Navy; Lieutenant General Arlen D. Jameson, former Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Command; Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, former Deputy Chairman, NATO Military Committee; Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; Lieutenant General James M. Thompson, former Director for Estimates, Defense Intelligence Agency; Major General Paul D. Eaton, former Commanding General of the command charged with reestablishing Iraqi Security Forces.
Despite all these figures calling for the report’s release, the Obama Administration, which promised voters that it would be the most transparent in history, has bowed to pressure from a faction within the CIA to keep secret the most thorough accounting we have of the agency’s lawless, immoral behavior during the Bush years. In doing so, Team Obama makes it less likely that we learn the lessons of CIA torture, and more likely that America tortures again one day.
Conor Friedersdorf
Dec 13 2013, 12:01 AM ET
Find this story at 13 December 2013
Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group