EU demands to know location of CIA jails
Thu Sep 7, 2006 11:30 AM BST254
STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - European lawmakers demanded on Thursday that their governments reveal the location of secret CIA prisons after U.S. President George Bush admitted Washington held terror suspects in jails abroad.
Bush said on Wednesday the Central Intelligence Agency had interrogated dozens of suspects at undisclosed overseas locations and 14 of those held had now been sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
A leader of Europe's chief human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, said the revelation vindicated the exhaustive investigation the body had conducted on secret prisons and CIA flights moving suspects around Europe.
"Our work has helped to flush out the dirty nature of this secret war, which -- we learn at last -- has been carried out completely beyond any legal framework," said Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly president Rene van der Linden.
A Washington Post report last year that the CIA had run secret prisons in Europe and flown suspects to states where they could be tortured unleashed a spate of probes -- including one by the European Parliament -- prompting uncomfortable denials by European governments and evasions from Washington.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?t...
In a robust defence of the detention regime that has brought condemnation around the world, the US president said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaida operative believed to have plotted the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, and 13 other terror suspects had been brought to Guantánamo and would be brought to trial.
Administration officials later said there were no more prisoners in the CIA's secret detention system. However, the programme has not been shut down. Instead, Mr Bush's disclosure was intended to put pressure on the US Congress to support draft legislation put forward by the White House yesterday for a system of military tribunals for the Guantánamo detainees.
The US supreme court struck down the military tribunals established by the administration for the 450 inmates at Guantánamo last June, ruling that they had no basis in US law and violated the Geneva Convention.
The president's account yesterday of the CIA interrogation and detention of Mohammed and other suspects also appeared designed to enshrine national security as a core issue of November's congressional elections.
While Mr Bush refused to give details of interrogation methods, he said the CIA resorted to an "alternative set of procedures" when confronted with resistance from one of the men in its custody, the senior al-Qaida leader, Abu Zubaydah. "The procedures were tough and they were safe, lawful and necessary," he said.
That interrogation and the detention of Ramzi Binalshibh, a would-be hijacker, and Hambali, the suspected architect of the Bali bombings, had been invaluable in the war on terror, he said. "It has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held in secret, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts."
The announcement that the 14 prisoners would be moved from CIA prisons to Guantánamo frustrates hopes that the Cuba detention camp detainees, who have been held for five years without trial, would earn early release and the prison would be shut down.
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STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - European lawmakers demanded on Thursday that their governments reveal the location of secret CIA prisons after U.S. President George Bush admitted Washington held terror suspects in jails abroad.
Bush said on Wednesday the Central Intelligence Agency had interrogated dozens of suspects at undisclosed overseas locations and 14 of those held had now been sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
A leader of Europe's chief human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, said the revelation vindicated the exhaustive investigation the body had conducted on secret prisons and CIA flights moving suspects around Europe.
"Our work has helped to flush out the dirty nature of this secret war, which -- we learn at last -- has been carried out completely beyond any legal framework," said Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly president Rene van der Linden.
A Washington Post report last year that the CIA had run secret prisons in Europe and flown suspects to states where they could be tortured unleashed a spate of probes -- including one by the European Parliament -- prompting uncomfortable denials by European governments and evasions from Washington.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?t...
In a robust defence of the detention regime that has brought condemnation around the world, the US president said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaida operative believed to have plotted the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, and 13 other terror suspects had been brought to Guantánamo and would be brought to trial.
Administration officials later said there were no more prisoners in the CIA's secret detention system. However, the programme has not been shut down. Instead, Mr Bush's disclosure was intended to put pressure on the US Congress to support draft legislation put forward by the White House yesterday for a system of military tribunals for the Guantánamo detainees.
The US supreme court struck down the military tribunals established by the administration for the 450 inmates at Guantánamo last June, ruling that they had no basis in US law and violated the Geneva Convention.
The president's account yesterday of the CIA interrogation and detention of Mohammed and other suspects also appeared designed to enshrine national security as a core issue of November's congressional elections.
While Mr Bush refused to give details of interrogation methods, he said the CIA resorted to an "alternative set of procedures" when confronted with resistance from one of the men in its custody, the senior al-Qaida leader, Abu Zubaydah. "The procedures were tough and they were safe, lawful and necessary," he said.
That interrogation and the detention of Ramzi Binalshibh, a would-be hijacker, and Hambali, the suspected architect of the Bali bombings, had been invaluable in the war on terror, he said. "It has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held in secret, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts."
The announcement that the 14 prisoners would be moved from CIA prisons to Guantánamo frustrates hopes that the Cuba detention camp detainees, who have been held for five years without trial, would earn early release and the prison would be shut down.
Link Here
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 6:22 PM
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