Britain Accused of Colluding in US Rendition Flights

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Britain Accused of Colluding in US Rendition Flights

Crimes of Massacres and Torture Organised at the Top:
No to US State Terrorism against Iraqi People

Countless My Lai Massacres in Iraq

Britain was named on June 7 as one of 14 European countries which colluded with the CIA in the operation of secret flights delivering “terrorist suspects” for interrogation.

            A report from Swiss MP Dick Marty for the Council of Europe says a group of countries acted as "staging posts" in the transfer by American authorities of men wanted for questioning. These countries include Britain, Germany, Spain and Turkey, who co-operated in the running of so-called "rendition" flights – the covert transport of prisoners for questioning in countries where many faced torture.

            He named seven countries which he said "could be held responsible, in varying degrees, which are not always settled definitively, for violations of the rights of specific individuals". They were the UK, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

            A preliminary report by Mr Marty earlier this year said European governments were almost certainly aware of the CIA's secret prisoner flights via European airspace or airports. Now, at the end of a seven-month inquiry, the final report says it is clear that "authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities".

            Mr Marty warns that the inquiry has still not established the whole truth. But he condemns what he calls a "spider's web" of US rendition flights as "utterly alien" to the concept of basic human rights.

            It was reported in the Washington Post last November that the CIA had been running interrogation centres in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and Thailand, and that more than 100 people had been sent to the so-called "black sites" since they were set up following September 11, 2001.

            Mr Marty said his inquiry had identified the "rendition" of more than one hundred prisoners "affecting Europe". He described the system as "the outsourcing of torture”.

            His report states: "It is now clear, although we are still far from having established the truth, that authorities in several European countries actively participated with the CIA in these unlawful activities." Some European countries, while not actively involved in rendition flights, "ignored them knowingly or did not want to know".

            Mr Marty commented: "Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centres did indeed exist in Europe." Those elements warranted further investigation, he added.

            Mr Marty said he used evidence from national and international air traffic control authorities, as well as sources inside intelligence services, including in the United States, to compile a detailed picture of a global system of secret detentions and unlawful transfers – including new analysis revealing what he called "rendition circuits".

            Mr Marty's report specifically criticises Britain for helping in the detention and physical abuse of Binyam Mohamed al Habashi, an Ethiopian citizen who was a UK resident from 1994. The report claims Mr al Habashi, who says he was arrested in Pakistan after visiting Afghanistan, was tortured in Morocco by local intelligence officers and at least one CIA agent, who used personal information to try to get him to confess to terrorist activities. Mr Marty argues: "Much of the personal information, including details of his education, his friendships in London and even his kickboxing trainer, could only have originated from collusion in this interrogation process by UK intelligence services."

            The report further accuses MI5 of co-operating with the CIA in "abducting persons against which there is no evidence enabling them to be kept in prison lawfully". It cites the case of Bisher Al-Rawi and Jamil El-Banna, two UK residents who were arrested in Gambia and later transferred to Afghanistan and then Guantanamo Bay.

            Mr Marty's report is now due to be debated by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly later this month.

            Torture is illegal under international conventions and specifically outlawed by laws enacted by individual states. Almost 150 countries, including Britain, have signed the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture. To authorise or even play a complicit role in "extraordinary renditions", or "torture flights", is to undermine the rule of law.

            Tony Blair’s comment on the report was that it contained nothing new. But the report is confirmation of the complicity of the British government in acts of torture. Tony Blair had been critical of the judiciary in not recognising that “the rules of the game are changing”, and this is one example of what this contempt for the rule of law and for the rights and dignity of human beings entails.

US Marxist-Leninist Organisation - June 12, 2006

The broad impunity and terrorism of the US state is again being shown with the massacre of 24 civilians – many of them children – in the western Iraqi town of Haditha. Haditha, like Fallujah, is well known as a town of resistance to the US occupation and war against the Iraqi people. The particular massacre referred to took place in November of 2005, but many others have and are taking place all across Iraq.

            The evidence of repeated and on-going massacres is clear and abundant. Dr Salam Ishmael, projects manager with the organisation Doctors for Iraq, and former chief of the junior doctors in Baghdad’s Medical City Hospital, emphasised, “There are many, many, many cases like Haditha that are still undercover and need to be highlighted in Iraq.” In Haditha itself, he said, the US military cut electricity and water to the entire city, attacked the hospital, and burned the pharmacy. “The hospital has been attacked three times. In November 2005 the hospital was occupied by the American and Iraqi Army for seven days, which is a severe breach of the Geneva Conventions,” said Dr Ishmael. The Iraqi Red Crescent reported at the time that nearly 1,000 families had been forced to flee their homes in Haditha following the November attacks by the US.

            Abdul Salam Al-Kubaissi, spokesperson for the Muslim Clerics Association, speaking recently at a news conference in Baghdad said: “The situation has reached a level when the US soldier becomes a professional killer, who kills with premeditation and deliberation. This should be among war crimes, and the ones who should be put on trial are the US commanders and not the US soldier, because the commanders are the ones who instruct those (soldiers) and justify their acts as it happened in Abu Ghraib’s scandal.”

            Consistent with the government’s policy of lying on principle, the Pentagon denies these massacres, usually claiming those killed were terrorists, or that they were killed by bombs planted by those resisting occupation, or were “collateral damage” from the massive US bombing raids, and so forth. When the government can no longer get away with these lies, as occurred with Abu Ghraib and the photographs, and now with Haditha and witness testimony from survivors, then they target individual soldiers who are acting on their own, supposedly “against” government policy.

            As President Bush claimed, “I am troubled by the initial news stories. I am mindful there is a thorough investigation going on. If in fact laws were broken there will be punishment.” Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld went so far as to say that “US troops respect the rights of Iraqis,” something that is not possible as long as the US is an occupying force.

            These lies and complete denial of responsibility from the top are coming in the face of a recent UN report condemning the US for its repeated violations of the Convention on Torture. The UN called for the closing of the Guantánamo concentration camp, and said the US was violating the convention in prisons worldwide and in the US. All of these are crimes.

            The Convention was signed by the US in 1995 and is law of the land, as well as being international law. To date, none of those responsible for the crimes committed in Iraq, in Afghanistan, at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and dozens of other concentration camps and prisons in the US and worldwide has been punished. Such punishment would require first of all that Bush and Rumsfeld be tried for war crimes, an action that neither the Pentagon nor Congress will take.

            The Pentagon has instead echoed Bush, targeting the soldiers directly involved, not the officers, not the Commander in Chief. An “investigation” is on going. Like Abu Ghraib, it is expected that the “investigation” will confirm that this is an “isolated” incident of a few soldiers, when in fact it is representative of the broad terrorism and impunity of the US state.

            The Pentagon is also launching yet another round of “ethical training” for American troops, much as they have “sensitivity training” for police and prison guards notorious for their brutality against the people. The soldiers and guards carry out their impunity in a situation where those in command have systematically organised such impunity and terrorism, beginning with Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the top military brass.

            Outrage over the massacre of civilians has prompted leaders of the US-installed government to respond to the Haditha massacre. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki recently condemned the killings in Haditha as an “odious crime” and called for talks “to redefine the obligations of coalition forces”. He said violence against civilians by US-led coalition forces had become a “daily phenomenon”. The American forces, he charged, “do not respect the Iraq people.... They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion or a hunch.” On June 1, Iraq said it was launching its own probe into the Haditha killings.

            In addition, on June 3 the Iraqi government rejected the findings of a recent US inquiry into the death of 11 civilians in a March 15 US raid in the town of Ishaqi 60 miles north of Baghdad. It said it would conduct its own investigation. The government will demand an apology and compensation, said a government spokesman. These actions are indications of the failure of the US state to install a government in Iraq and suppress the Iraqi people, despite using massive military might and broad impunity to commit war crimes.

            The Iraqi people, like the Vietnamese before them, will emerge victorious against the criminal US war and occupation. They are supported by the world’s peoples, with Americans joining to take their stand to reject US state terrorism and aggression, end the war and punish Bush and all those guilty of war crimes.

Reject the Failed US State! Strengthen the Peoples’ Forces!

 

by Dahr Jamail*

The media feeding frenzy around what has been referred to as "Iraq's My Lai" has become frenetic. Focus on US Marines slaughtering at least 20 civilians in Haditha last November is reminiscent of the media spasm around the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib during April and May 2004.

            Yet just like Abu Ghraib, while the media spotlight shines squarely on the Haditha massacre, countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out of the awareness of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because the media finally decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the story, and the daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by US forces and US-backed Iraqi "security" forces had not stopped either.

            Earlier this month, I received a news release from Iraq, which read, "On Saturday, May 13th, 2006, at 10:00 p.m., US Forces accompanied by the Iraqi National Guard attacked the houses of Iraqi people in the Al-Latifya district south of Baghdad by an intensive helicopter shelling. This led the families to flee to the Al-Mazar and water canals to protect themselves from the fierce shelling. Then seven helicopters landed to pursue the families who fled and killed them. The number of victims amounted to more than 25 martyrs. US forces detained another six persons including two women named Israa Ahmed Hasan and Widad Ahmed Hasan, and a child named Huda Hitham Mohammed Hasan, whose father was killed during the shelling."

            The report from the Iraqi NGO called The Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI) continued, "The forces didn't stop at this limit. They held an attack on May 15th, 2006, supported also by the Iraqi National Guards. They also attacked the families' houses, and arrested a number of them while others fled. US snipers then used the homes to target more Iraqis. The reason for this crime was due to the downing of a helicopter in an area close to where the forces held their attack."

            The US military preferred to report the incident as an offensive where they killed 41 "insurgents", a line effectively parroted by much of the media.

            On that same day, MHRI also reported that in the Yarmouk district of Baghdad, US forces raided the home of Essam Fitian al-Rawi. Al-Rawi was killed along with his son Ahmed; then the soldiers reportedly removed the two bodies along with Al-Rawi's nephew, who was detained.

            Similarly, in the city of Samara on May 5, MHRI reported, "American soldiers entered the house of Mr Zidan Khalif Al-Heed after an attack upon American soldiers was launched nearby the house. American soldiers entered this home and killed the family, including the father, mother and daughter who is in the 6th grade, along with their son, who was suffering from mental and physical disabilities."

            This same group, MHRI, also estimated that between 4,000 and 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during the November 2004 US assault on Fallujah. Numbers that make those from the Haditha massacre pale in comparison.

            Instead of reporting incidents such as these, mainstream outlets are referring to the Haditha slaughter as one of a few cases that "present the most serious challenge to US handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal".

            Marc Garlasco, of Human Rights Watch, told reporters recently, "What happened at Haditha appears to be outright murder. The Haditha massacre will go down as Iraq's My Lai."

            Then there is the daily reality of sectarian and ethnic cleansing in Iraq, which is being carried out by US-backed Iraqi "security" forces. A recent example of this was provided by a representative of the Voice of Freedom Association for Human Rights, another Iraqi NGO which logs ongoing atrocities resulting from the US occupation.

            "The representative visited Fursan Village (Bani Zaid) with the Iraqi Red Crescent Al-Madayin Branch. The village of 60 houses, inhabited by Sunni families, was attacked on February 27, 2006, by groups of men wearing black clothes and driving cars from the Ministry of Interior. Most of the villagers escaped, but eight were caught and immediately executed. One of them was the Imam of the village mosque, Abu Aisha, and another was a 10-year-old boy, Adnan Madab. They were executed inside the room where they were hiding. Many animals (sheep, cows and dogs) were shot by the armed men also. The village mosque and most of the houses were destroyed and burnt."

            The representative had obtained the information when four men who had fled the scene of the massacre returned to provide the details. The other survivors had all left to seek refuge in Baghdad. "The survivors who returned to give the details guided the representative and the Red Crescent personnel to where the bodies had been buried. They [the bodies] were of men, women and one of the village babies."

            The director of MHRI, Muhamad T Al-Deraji, said of this incident, "This situation is a simple part of a larger problem that is orchestrated by the government the delay in protecting more villagers from this will only increase the number of tragedies."

            Arun Gupta, an investigative journalist and editor with the New York Independent Media Centre, said, "The fact is, while I think the militias have, to a degree, spiralled out of US control, it's the US who trains, arms, funds, and supplies all the police and military forces, and gives them critical logistical support," he told me this week. "For instance, there were reports at the beginning of the year that a US army unit caught a "death squad" operating inside the Iraqi Highway Patrol. There were the usual claims that the US has nothing to do with them. It's all a big lie. The American reporters are lazy. If they did just a little digging, there is loads of material out there showing how the US set up the highway patrol, established a special training academy just for them, equipped them, armed them, built all their bases, etc. It's all in government documents, so it's irrefutable. But then they tell the media we have nothing to do with them and they don't even fact check it. In any case, I think the story is significant only insofar as it shows how the US tries to cover up its involvement."

            Once again, like Abu Ghraib, a few US soldiers are being investigated about what occurred in Haditha. The "few bad apples" scenario is being repeated in order to obscure the fact that Iraqis are being slaughtered every single day. The "shoot first ask questions later" policy, which has been in effect from nearly the beginning in Iraq, creates trigger-happy American soldiers and US-backed Iraqi death squads who have no respect for the lives of the Iraqi people. Yet, rather than high-ranking members of the Bush administration who give the orders, including Bush himself, being tried for the war crimes they are most certainly guilty of, we have the ceremonial "public hanging" of a few lowly soldiers for their crimes committed on the ground.

            In an interview with CNN on May 29 concerning the Haditha massacre, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace commented, "It's going to be a couple more weeks before those investigations are complete, and we should not prejudge the outcome. But we should, in fact, as leaders take on the responsibility to get out and talk to our troops and make sure that they understand that what 99.9 percent of them are doing, which is fighting with honour and courage, is exactly what we expect of them."

            This is the same Peter Pace who when asked how things were going in Iraq by Tim Russert on Meet the Press this past March 5 said, "I'd say they're going well. I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at."

            Things are not "going very, very well" in Iraq. There have been countless My Lai massacres, and we cannot blame 0.1% of the soldiers on the ground in Iraq for killing as many as a quarter of a million Iraqis, when it is the policies of the Bush administration that generated the failed occupation to begin with.

* Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who spent over 8 months reporting from occupied Iraq, see dahrjamailiraq.com.