They were secretly abducted from city streets, highways, supermarkets and parks. They were imprisoned and tortured without trial or investigation. With the consent of the President and the US government, hundreds of men, women and children are still languishing in the dungeons of the CIA special prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria and some European countries.
All means are good …
All over the world, "terror suspects" were hastily pushed into planes. The Gulf Streams and Boeings landed off-schedule at night on the cold windy fields of Great Britain. Refueling - and again into the air, to an unknown country, to the secret facilities of the CIA, where inhuman torture and torture awaited passengers. Prisons and camps were scattered throughout Eastern Europe and beyond. I would like to think that this is just the speculation of the conspiracy debunkers …
Alas, the facts suggest otherwise. In late 2001, Swedish police arrested Mohammed al-Zeru and Ahmed Agiz as terrorist suspects. They were deported to Egypt, to a secret CIA facility, where they were tortured. Two years later, al-Zeru was released without charge, and Agiz was sentenced without trial to 25 years in prison for unproven membership in a banned Islamic organization.
Maher Arar is a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent. The CIA secretly kidnapped him and transported him through Jordan to Syria, where he was subjected to brutal physical torture. Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, was abducted in Macedonia and taken to Afghanistan. There he was repeatedly beaten and tortured. Syrian Mohammed Haydar Zammar was captured in Morocco, after which he spent four years in Syrian dungeons. But these were only the first victims of the "American extradition".
Destroy the evidence
In 2002, the world community was shocked by the reports of the American media: “All over the world terrorists are hiding, who are preparing another, similar to the 9/11 attack, on the West. And the most reliable way to prevent terrorism is to capture suspects, transport them to special bases and interrogation with the use of torture to find out all the information."
The question is: if a criminal is caught and his guilt is proven, why take him out in such a monstrous way? The fact is that for America the main problem is not at all the detention and identification of the "suspects". Much harder to get around US and international law
- Surveillance, kidnapping, detention without a court sentence, torture during interrogation are illegal methods and equate to crimes. But the Americans found a way out: extradition! The suspects are transported to a country where torture is allowed or where no one knows about them. The catch phrase of the American intelligence agent spread all over the world: “We do not knock information out of them, we do not break the laws! We send them to other countries, where they do it for us!"
In September 2005, the Guardian reported: “Since 2001, there have been about 210 CIA charter flights. The planes landed at night at the airfields of the Air Force and civil airports Heathrow, Gatwick. Stansted and Glasgow to refuel. These planes transported people suspected of terrorism to countries where they were tortured.” In response to these statements, Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary, said that this was just another gossip. However, the message interested UK public organizations. Following a private investigation in November 2005, the British civil rights group Liberty presented strong evidence to the United Police Chiefs Association that aircraft carrying "terrorism suspects" were landing on British soil.
Unsurprisingly, a month later, this issue was raised in the House of Commons. But JackStrolish shrugged his shoulders: "There are no documents to prove that American planes stopped on British soil." Yes, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Raiet hastened to assure the British government that this is complete nonsense! "Svoboda" again took up the investigation and found out that by order of the highest authorities of Great Britain, after refueling of special flights, all documents were diligently destroyed.
American style: lies and violence
A harmless and interesting hobby - photographing the takeoff and landing of aircraft - was a coup in the investigation of the "American extradition". Pictures of airplanes, taken by amateurs and posted on the Internet, have become the object of close attention of journalists and specialists. They checked the terrain, registration numbers, take-off and landing times, and based on many coincidences, they concluded that these flights were carried out with the purpose of transporting "suspects".
But a real scandal broke out in Europe in February 2005 - the Swiss Senator Dick Marty made a speech at the Council of Europe. The report detailed the work of the CIA - kidnapping and transporting "suspects" across European borders to secret prisons, where torture and violence were used without trial. The report was so compelling that by the following February, Germany, Spain, Poland and Romania had launched their own investigations into the CIA's secret prisons.
Soon, the European Union published the rest of Senator Marty's findings: UK airspace and airports were freely available for CIA special flights. By January 2007, the European Parliament had determined that there were about 1,200 suspicious flights in Eastern Europe between 2001-2005. The European Parliament Commission has accused the UK and several EU countries of conspiring with the CIA to assist in the transportation and kidnapping of people around the world.
The Joint Association of Police Chiefs released the findings of a 19-month Council of Europe investigation: “About 20 countries, 14 of which are located in Europe, were involved in one way or another in the secret transport of CIA prisoners. Of course, all European states should have known about flights, because after September 11, NATO allowed the CIA to cross European airspace without obstacles. Nevertheless, despite the obvious evidence, the governments of European countries
Senator Marty's report is still rejected for lack of “concrete evidence.” And what else is left for them?..
However, the governments of states where secret prisons exist may not have known about them! According to US intelligence, information about prisons is kept in the strictest confidence from both the public and politicians. The location of such secret facilities is known only to a few US leaders, as well as to the president and the heads of the special services of the country on whose territory this secret facility is located.
Child torture is a common CIA technique
For two years, journalist Thompson and military geographer Trevor Paglen scrutinized the CIA's secret prison programs. The private investigation, eyewitness confessions, documentaries and photographs shocked the world media and formed the basis of the book Taxi of Torture. The book contains documents, facts and testimonies proving that all over the world, by order of the CIA, Arabs were kidnapped, who were secretly transported to Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Syria and subjected to torture. The victims were not only men, but women and even children at the age of seven !!! Why kidnap children? It turns out that the children of the victims are an effective part of the torture program. The voice of a child being tortured and abused is being recorded on tape and given to parents to listen to!
The program of the "American extradition" was expertly thought out to keep everything in the strictest confidence. The abducted persons were taken aboard the aircraft in handcuffs, often in shackles, flights were made at night or in the early morning, the registration data of the aircraft changed frequently, Flight records and other documents were destroyed immediately after the arrival and disembarkation of the suspects "at the facility."
Various forms of physical and mental violence, extreme temperatures, electric shocks, round-the-clock blinding lamps and deafening music, poor or no food were used as torture. Dogs were set on prisoners. They used "imitation of executions" and "imitation of drowning", torture with a drill, extinguishing cigarettes on the face of prisoners …
The Red Cross and lawyers are not allowed to such facilities, because they seem to be not there.
Mr. Obama's double standards
Torture by proxy - this dark tale has long come true. Gradually, more and more new facts and evidence emerge that affect politicians in many countries. Conspiracy theorists argue that the scale of these operations is global, and Europe is only a small piece of the puzzle.
In 2009, at the initiative of US President Barack Obama, the Department of Justice resumed consideration of the CIA secret prisons case. "High-ranking patrons of illegal methods used during interrogations against" terror suspects "should be under investigation," the American president assures. And at the same time he signs an order to create an "elite team of investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects."
A new group, uniting foremen from various departments, will kidnap, torture and maim adults and children, only now, under the cover of not the CIA, but the FBI. Significant change, isn't it?
