For decades, the United States and other countries have used "renditions" to transport terrorist suspects from the country where they were captured to their home country or to other countries where they can be questioned, held, or brought to justice.

In some situations a terrorist suspect can be extradited according to traditional judicial procedures. But there have long been many other cases where, for some reason, the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option. In those cases the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in a rendition. Such renditions are permissible under international law and are consistent with the responsibilities of those governments to protect their citizens.

Rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism. Its use is not unique to the United States, or to the current administration. Last year, then Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet recalled that our earlier counterterrorism successes included "the rendition of many dozens of terrorists prior to September 11, 2001."

[Bold Face emphasis mine - Oui]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Dec. 6 -- The United States held captured al Qaeda suspects at two secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe until last month when the facilities were shut down after media reports of their existence, ABC News reported on Monday, citing current and former CIA agents.

Eleven al Qaeda prisoners who were held in Eastern Europe were relocated "to a CIA site somewhere in north Africa," ABC reported, citing CIA sources. The United States scrambled to get all of the suspects off European soil before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Europe on Monday.

CIA declined comment and an agency spokesman was not available when Reuters tried to contact him.

According to ABC News, eight top al Qaeda figures and three others were held at one time at a former Soviet air base in Eastern Europe and some were later moved to a second country. Polish sources had identified a base as the site of one of the secret prisons.

U.S-based Human Rights Watch has said Poland and Romania were the most likely locations for the detention centers, but both countries have denied it. The United States has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the secret prisons which the Washington Post first reported on last month.

In an expanded report on its Web site, ABC News cited sources directly involved in setting up the CIA secret prison system as saying that it began with the capture of Osama bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan. Zubaydah was first held in Thailand in an unused warehouse on an active air base.

After Zubaydah recovered from life-threatening wounds according to the report, he was made to stand long hours in a cold cell and strapped feet up to a "water board" until he begged for mercy and began to cooperate. In "waterboarding," a detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe that he might be drowned.

NEW DIARY @BooMan —
● Breaking: CIA Prison News ◊ by Chris Kulczycki

 
Leaders Failing to Keep America Safe: Report 911 Commission  

The former commissioners issued a "report card" reviewing how the commission's 41 recommendations have been implemented, and gave the government five failing grades of F -- including one for not providing adequate emergency communications.

They noted that police, firefighters and other emergency workers still did not have a dedicated radio spectrum, and could not communicate with each other if disaster strikes.

Amnesty International today revealed that six planes used by the CIA for renditions have made some 800 flights in or out of European airspace including 50 landings at Shannon airport in the Republic of Ireland.

George Bush - President | Dick Cheney - VP | Donald Rumsfeld - DoD | Alberto Gonzales - AG | John Bolton - U.S. Ambassador at U.N. | Ariel Sharon - PM & War Hero Israel | Musharraf - Dictator Pakistan | Abdullah II - King Jordan | Bashar al-Asad - Dictator of Syria | Hosni Mubarak - Dictator Egypt | Muammar al-Gadhafi - Dictator Libya | Abdallah Al Saud - King Saudi Arabia | (vacancy) - Somalia | Vladimir Putin - President & ex-KGB Russia | Aleksandr Lukashenko - Dictator Belarus | Islom Karimov - Dictator Uzbekistan | Diego Garcia- Caretakers Tony and George | Tommy Esang Remengesau Jr. - Palau |

Coalition of the Willing
Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Palau, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Ruwanda, Singapore, Slovakia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Tonga, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, and Uzbekistan.

CIA Factbook  

MILAN (Washington Post) Dec. 6 -- In March 2003, the Italian national anti-terrorism police received an urgent message from the CIA about a radical Islamic cleric who had mysteriously vanished from Milan a few weeks before. The CIA reported that it had reliable information that the cleric, the target of an Italian criminal investigation, had fled to an unknown location in the Balkans.

In fact, according to Italian court documents and interviews with investigators, the CIA's tip was a deliberate lie, part of a ruse designed to stymie efforts by the Italian anti-terrorism police to track down the cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Egyptian refugee known as Abu Omar.

This surveillance photo of Hassan Mustafa
Osama Nasr was found on a disk in the home
of the CIA's ranking official in Milan,
according to Italian police. Courtesy Corriere Della Sera

NEW DIARY @BooMan —
● New Developments in the Abu Omar Kidnapping Case ◊ by rom wyo