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During the last Parliamentary session of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg before the summer recess, an interesting debate took place. Dick Marty, the Swiss President of the Council's Committee on human rights, delivered his second report on illegal CIA secret flights and jails in Europe.
His report was based on interviews conducted with 30 European and US intelligence officials and concrete evidence was established of secret flights from European flight records. The evidence collated he said, had been independently confirmed by sources in the US and Europe and approved by the Council Committee on Human Rights.
Marty then went on to accuse the US, who had the approval of NATO, of illegally transporting prisoners to detention centres in Europe and the US and torturing them and holding them incommunicado for extended periods of time.
The Celtic League have reported widely in these pages about the many illegal CIA 'extraordinary rendition' flights that have passed through Shannon (Ireland) and Prestwick (Scotland) - and possibly other UK - airports. The rendition flights that regularly stopped off in Shannon and Prestwick airports in order to refuel carried a human cargo of prisoners who, for the most part, had been illegally seized by the CIA and bundled onto US military chartered planes.
The British authorities, who have been complicit in aiding the transit of such flights, have reported to the League in correspondence that no flights of this nature had taken place illegally. It is a point of conjecture in Ireland that Shannon airport is still being used by the US military in its 'war on terror'. With the exception of Canada and Bosnia Herzegovina, who admitted involvement, Marty said that he had encountered a 'wall of silence' in his investigation by governments who had often refused to even answer his questions.
In a rare glimpse of the way people have been seized and transported by the CIA on these flights, the story of one such captive conveys the extraordinary brutality inflicted by those responsible.
Bisher al-Rawi, a British citizen of Iraqi decent, was detained by the CIA in Gambia in November 2002 and transported to Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, via Egypt and Afghanistan. Rawi spent more than four years in US captivity until his release last March, but it was not until a week last Sunday that his case drew world wide media attention when he sharply criticised British and US authorities in an interview for the The Observer newspaper.
It was reported by the newspaper that Rawi was an intelligence source for the British domestic spy agency MI5 at the time of his capture, but despite assurances from British officials that should he be captured everything would be done to ensure his release, minimum action was taken. In the interview, Mr Rawi recounted how he had been stripped naked by the US agents, made to wear a nappy and a tracksuit before being bound, blindfolded, ear muffed and tied onto a stretcher. He told The Observer:
"All the way through the flight I was on the verge of screaming…At last we landed. I thought thank God its over. But it wasn't; it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were still hours to go.
My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight. All the time they kept me on my back. Once I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side. Then I felt someone hit my hand."
Mr Rawi then explain that he was put into a prison in Afghanistan, deprived of light for 24 hours a day in freezing temperatures, before being moved to Guantanamo in March 2003. It wasn't until this year that a US tribunal cleared him of any involvement in terrorism. Last week the British authorities commented that the CIA should have been aware of Rawi's position, because of an agreement on intelligence sharing between the US and Britain and he should never have been seized.
However, Rawi's case highlights that the 'war on terror' has no friends and any state implicated in its illegal activities should be held accountable.
Mr Rawi may not have passed through the airports of Shannon or Prestwick on his torturous journey to Guantanamo, but there are probably tens if not hundreds of people who did. Some of the captives may well have been linked to terrorist activities, but that on the whole is beside the point. We should not be surprised any more that the US, Britain and Ireland flaunt international treaties and laws like the European Convention on Human Rights, but that they are allowed to continue to do so without significant consequences.
The prisoners on board these flights that have passed through airports in the Celtic countries had no access to lawyers and have not been offered compensation, even when found innocent. They experienced torture, including a technique known as 'waterboarding', and were subject to sexual humiliation. During the Council session, delegates from several state governments, notably Romania and Poland, vehemently denied the accusations and said that Marty's report was a 'conspiracy theory' and 'anti-American'.
However, Marty said that he was convinced that NATO states, which include the UK, had made secret agreements with the US to allow flights and to detain prisoners in secret European locations. (Ireland however, is not a NATO member and it is unclear as to why they would agree to allow such flights to have taken place in the first place). Towards the end of the debate, Marty accused members of the Council of doing little to seek the truth and told journalists afterwards that sooner or later the truth would come out, because people would not be able to live with their guilty consciences.
Dick Marty's report can be found by following the link:
(This article for Celtic News compiled by Rhisiart Tal-e-bot)
J B Moffatt Director of Information Celtic League
06/08/07
The Celtic League has branches in the six Celtic Countries. It works to promote cooperation between these countries and campaigns on a broad range of political, cultural and environmental matters. It highlights human rights abuse, monitors all military activity and focuses on socio-economic issues.
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