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Extraordinary rendition is a
euphemism for state-sponsored
forcible abduction in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
-led program used during the
War on Terror
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international Counterterrorism, counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campa ...
, which had the purpose of circumventing the source country's laws on
interrogation,
detention,
extradition
Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdi ...
and/or
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
. Extraordinary rendition is a type of
extraterritorial abduction Extraterritorial abduction, also known as international abduction, is the practice of one country abducting someone from another country's territory outside the legal process of extradition. Extraordinary rendition is a form of extraterritorial abdu ...
, but not all extraterritorial abductions include transfer to a third country.
The administration of President
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
abducted hundreds of "
illegal combatant
An unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a person who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war and therefore is claimed not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.
The Internati ...
s" for U.S. detention, and transported detainees to U.S.-controlled sites as part of an extensive interrogation program that included
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
. Extraordinary rendition continued under the
Obama administration, with targets being interrogated and subsequently taken to the U.S. for trial. A 2018 report by the
Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is a statutory joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, appointed to oversee the work of the UK intelligence community.
The committee was established in 1994 by the ...
found the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, specifically
MI5
The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...
and
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
, to be complicit in many of the renditions carried out by the U.S., by helping to fund them, by supplying intelligence, and by knowingly allowing the abductions to happen.
In July 2014, the
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, is an international court of the Council of Europe which interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. The court hears applications alleging that a ...
condemned the
government of Poland
The Government of Poland takes the form of a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the President is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. However, its form of government has also been iden ...
for participating in CIA extraordinary rendition, ordering Poland to pay restitution to men who had been abducted, taken to a CIA
black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...
in Poland, and tortured.
Background
By 2004, critics alleged that torture was used against subjects with the knowledge or acquiescence of the United States, where the transfer of a person for the purpose of torture is unlawful.
[America's gulag]
By Stephen Grey. 17 May 2004. ''New Statesman
The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...
''. In addition, some former detainees, such as the
Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal A ...
citizen
Mamdouh Habib
Mamdouh Habib (born 3 June 1955) is an Egyptian and Australian citizen with dual nationality, best known for having been held for more than three years by the United States as an enemy combatant, by both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and ...
, claimed to have been transferred to other countries for interrogation under torture. In December 2005, then
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted:
The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured.
Between 2001 and 2005, CIA officers captured an estimated one hundred fifty people and transported them around the world.
[Background Paper on CIA's Combined Use of Interrogation Techniques]
. 30 December 2004. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
. ''Huffington Post''. 28 August 2009. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
. Retrieved 29 March 2007
Under the
Bush administration, rendered persons were reported to have undergone torture by receiving countries. Journalists, civil and constitutional rights groups, and former detainees have alleged that this occurred with the knowledge or cooperation of the administrations of the United States and the United Kingdom.
Such revelations prompted several official investigations into alleged secret detentions and unlawful interstate transfers involving
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold European Convention on Human Rights, human rights, democracy and the Law in Europe, rule of law in Europe. ...
members. A
June 2006 report estimated that one hundred people had been kidnapped by the CIA on
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
soil with the cooperation of Council of Europe members and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centers ("
black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...
s"), some located in Europe. According to the separate
European Parliament report of February 2007, the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of Article 3 of the
United Nations Convention Against Torture
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (commonly known as the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT)) is an international human rights treaty under the review of the United Nation ...
. A large majority of the
European Union Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopt ...
endorsed the report's conclusion that many member states tolerated illegal actions by the CIA, criticizing several European governments and
intelligence agencies
An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives.
Means of informatio ...
for their unwillingness to cooperate with the investigation.
Within days of his 2009 inauguration,
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
signed an
executive order
In the United States, an executive order is a directive by the president of the United States that manages operations of the federal government. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources. Article Two of t ...
opposing rendition torture and established a task force to provide recommendations about processes to prevent rendition torture.
His administration distanced itself from some of the harshest
counterterrorism techniques but permitted the practice of rendition to continue,
[Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool]
. ''LA Times'' 1 February 2009. Access 21 November 2011. restricting transport of suspects to countries with jurisdiction over them for the purpose of prosecution after diplomatic assurances "that they
ould Ould is an English surname and an Arabic name ( ar, ولد). In some Arabic dialects, particularly Hassaniya Arabic, ولد (the patronymic, meaning "son of") is transliterated as Ould. Most Mauritanians have patronymic surnames.
Notable p ...
not be treated inhumanely" had been received.
[ Panetta's clarification of current US "Rendition policy".]
Definitions
Rendition, in law, is a transfer of persons from one jurisdiction to another, and the act of handing over, both after legal proceedings and according to law. "Extraordinary rendition," however, is a rendition that is extralegal, i.e. outside the law (see:
kidnapping). Rendition refers to the transfer; the apprehension, detention, interrogation, and any other practices occurring before and after the movement and exchange of extrajudicial prisoners do not fall into the strict definition of ''extraordinary rendition''. In practice, the term is widely used to describe such practices, particularly the initial apprehension. This latter usage extends to the transfer of suspected terrorists by the US to countries known to torture prisoners or employ harsh interrogation techniques that may rise to the level of torture.
[Michael John Garcia, Legislative Attorney American Law Division]
"Renditions: Constraints Imposed by Laws on Torture"
8 September 2009; link from the United State
The Bush administration freely admitted to this practice; stating, among other provisions, that they have specifically asked that torture not be used. However, torture can still occur despite these provisions, and much documentation exists alleging that it has happened in many cases.
In these instances, the initial captor allows the possibility of torture by releasing the prisoner into the custody of nations that practice torture.
The next distinction of degree is that of intent, where much of the search for evidence continues. It has been alleged that some of those detainees have been tortured with the knowledge, acquiescence, or even participation of US agencies. A transfer of anyone to anywhere for torture would be a violation of US law.
New York attorney Marc D. Falkoff stated that such evidence, i.e. transfer for the purposes of torture, was an operational practice. In a court filing, Falkoff described a classified prisoner transfer memo from
Guantanamo as noting that information could not be retrieved, as torture could not be used, and recommending that the prisoner be sent to a nation that practiced torture.
Historical instances
Historical cases
The
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
alleges that extraordinary rendition was developed during the
Clinton administration. CIA officials in the mid-1990s were trying to track down and dismantle
militant Islamic organizations in the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
, particularly
Al Qaeda.
According to Clinton administration official
Richard Clarke:
Both the Reagan and Clinton cases involved apprehending known terrorists abroad, by covert means if necessary. The Bush administration expanded the policy after the
9/11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerci ...
.
In a ''
New Yorker
New Yorker or ''variant'' primarily refers to:
* A resident of the State of New York
** Demographics of New York (state)
* A resident of New York City
** List of people from New York City
* ''The New Yorker'', a magazine founded in 1925
* '' The ...
'' interview with CIA veteran
Michael Scheuer
Michael F. Scheuer (pronounced "SHOY-er"), (born 1952) is an American former intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, blogger, author, commentator and former adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Sec ...
, an author of the rendition program under the Clinton administration, writer
Jane Mayer
Jane Meredith Mayer (born 1955) is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1995. She has written for the publication about money in politics; government prosecution of whistleblowers; the Uni ...
noted:
In 1995, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally — including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea ... 'What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,' Scheuer said. 'It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.' Technically, U.S. law requires the CIA to seek 'assurances' from foreign governments that rendered suspects won't be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was 'not sure' if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed.
Scheuer testified in 2007 before Congress that no such assurances were received. He acknowledged that treatment of prisoners may not have been "up to U.S. standards":
This is a matter of no concern as the Rendition Program's goal was to protect America. The rendered fighters delivered to Middle Eastern governments are now either dead or in places from which they cannot harm America. Mission accomplished, as the saying goes.
Thereafter, with the approval of President Clinton and a presidential directive (
PDD 39), the CIA elected to send suspects to Egypt, where they were turned over to the Egyptian
Mukhabarat
( ar, مخابرات, also transliterated '' / ''), is the Arabic term for intelligence, as used by an intelligence agency. In most of the Middle East, the term is colloquially used in reference to secret police agents who spy on civilians. Organi ...
.
20th century
The CIA was granted permission to use rendition of indicted terrorists to American soil in a 1995
presidential directive
A presidential directive, or executive action, is a written or oral instruction or declaration issued by the president of the United States, which may draw upon the powers vested in the president by the U.S. Constitution, statutory law, or, in cert ...
signed by President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
, following a procedure established by
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...
in January 1993.
The United States has since increasingly used rendition as a tool in the "
war on terror
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international Counterterrorism, counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campa ...
", ignoring the normal
extradition
Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdi ...
processes outlined in international law. Suspects taken into United States custody are delivered to third-party states, often without ever having been on United States soil, and without involving the rendering countries.
Critics have accused the CIA of employing rendition for the purpose of circumventing American laws mandating
due process and prohibiting
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
, labeling the practice "torture flights". Sociological comparisons have been drawn between extraordinary rendition and the
death flights
Death flights ( es, vuelos de la muerte, links=no) are a form of extrajudicial killing practiced by military forces in possession of aircraft: victims are dropped to their death from airplanes or helicopters into oceans, large rivers or even mount ...
implemented, most notably, by Argentina during the 1960s and 1970s. Defenders of the practice argue that culturally informed and native-language interrogations are more successful in gaining information from suspects.
Hundreds of documents retrieved from
Libyan foreign ministry offices in
Tripoli
Tripoli or Tripolis may refer to:
Cities and other geographic units Greece
*Tripoli, Greece, the capital of Arcadia, Greece
* Tripolis (region of Arcadia), a district in ancient Arcadia, Greece
* Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient Greek city in ...
following the
2011 Libyan civil war show that the CIA and
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
rendered suspects to Libyan authorities knowing they would be tortured.
In a number of cases, such as those of
Khalid El-Masri
Khaled El-Masri (also Khalid El-Masri and Khaled Masri, Levantine Arabic pronunciation: , ar, خالد المصري) (born 29 June 1963) is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed ov ...
and
Maher Arar
Maher Arar ( ar, ماهر عرار) (born 1970) is a telecommunications engineer with dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship who has resided in Canada since 1987.
Arar was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Septem ...
, suspects caught up in the procedure suffered lengthy detentions, despite ultimately being found innocent. The CIA reportedly launched an investigation into such incidents of "
erroneous rendition".
21st century
![ExtRenditionMap](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/ExtRenditionMap.gif)
Following the
11 September 2001 attacks the United States, in particular the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
, has been accused of rendering hundreds of people suspected by the government of being terrorists—or of aiding and abetting terrorist organizations—to third-party states such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Uzbekistan. Such "
ghost detainees
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous.[judicial
The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...]
oversight, often without ever entering US territory, and may or may not ultimately be transferred to the custody of the United States.
[Mayer, Jane. ''The New Yorker'', 14 February 2005. ]
According to a 4 December 2005 article in ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' by
Dana Priest
Dana Louise Priest (born May 23, 1957) is an American journalist, writer and teacher. She has worked for nearly 30 years for the ''The Washington Post, Washington Post'' and became the third John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Public Affairs Jo ...
:
Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema
An enema, also known as a clyster, is an injection of fluid into the lower bowel by way of the rectum.Cullingworth, ''A Manual of Nursing, Medical and Surgical'':155 The word enema can also refer to the liquid injected, as well as to a device ...
and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons—referred to in classified documents as "black sites", which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
Following mounting scrutiny in Europe, including investigations held by the
Swiss senator
Dick Marty
Dick Marty (born 7 January 1945) is a Swiss politician ( FDP.The Liberals) and former state prosecutor of the canton of Ticino. He is a former member of the Swiss Council of States (from 1995 to 2011) and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Coun ...
who released a public report in June 2006, the
US Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and po ...
, in December 2005, was about to approve a measure that would include amendments requiring the Director of National Intelligence to provide regular, detailed updates about secret detention facilities maintained by the United States overseas, and to account for the treatment and condition of each prisoner.
Reported methods
Media reports describe suspects as being arrested, blindfolded, shackled, and sedated, or otherwise
kidnapped
Kidnapped may refer to:
* subject to the crime of kidnapping
Literature
* ''Kidnapped'' (novel), an 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson
* ''Kidnapped'' (comics), a 2007 graphic novel adaptation of R. L. Stevenson's novel by Alan Grant and Ca ...
, and transported by private jet or other means to the destination country. The reports also say that the rendering countries have provided interrogators with lists of questions.
Airline flights
![Premier Executive Transport Services Boeing 737-700 KvW](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Premier_Executive_Transport_Services_Boeing_737-700_KvW.jpg)
On 4 October 2001, a secret arrangement was made in Brussels by all
members of NATO.
Lord George Robertson, British defense secretary and later NATO's secretary-general, would later explain NATO members agreed to provide "blanket overflight clearances for the United States and other allies' aircraft for military flights related to operations against terrorism."
Boeing Jeppesen international trip planning
On 23 October 2006, the ''New Yorker'' reported that
Jeppesen, a subsidiary of
Boeing
The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and p ...
, handled the logistical planning for the CIA's extraordinary rendition flights. The allegation is based on information from an ex-employee who quoted Bob Overby, managing director of the company as saying "We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights—you know, the torture flights. Let's face it, some of these flights end up that way. It certainly pays well." The article went on to suggest that this may make Jeppesen a potential defendant in a lawsuit by
Khaled El-Masri
Khaled El-Masri (also Khalid El-Masri and Khaled Masri, Levantine Arabic pronunciation: , ar, خالد المصري) (born 29 June 1963) is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed o ...
. Jeppesen was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by the
ACLU on 30 May 2007, on behalf of several other individuals who were allegedly subject to extraordinary rendition.
The suit was dismissed on 8 September 2010 by a federal appeals court because "going forward would reveal state secrets".
Black sites
In 2005, ''The Washington Post'' and
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
(HRW) published revelations concerning CIA flights and "
black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...
s", covert prisons operated by the CIA and whose existence is denied by the US government. The
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
published a report in February 2007 concerning the use of such secret detention centers and extraordinary rendition (''
See below''). These detention centers violate the
European Convention on Human Rights
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by ...
(ECHR) and the
UN Convention Against Torture
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (commonly known as the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT)) is an international human rights treaty under the review of the United Nation ...
, treaties that all EU member states are bound to follow.
According to
ABC News
ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...
two such facilities, in countries mentioned by Human Rights Watch, have been closed following the publicity. CIA officers say the captives were relocated to the North African desert. All but one of these 11 high-value
al Qaeda prisoners were subjected to torture by the CIA, sometimes referred to as "
enhanced interrogation techniques" authorized for use by about 14 CIA officers.
Extraordinary renditions and black sites in Europe
![CIA illegal flights](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/CIA_illegal_flights.svg)
In January 2005, Swiss senator
Dick Marty
Dick Marty (born 7 January 1945) is a Swiss politician ( FDP.The Liberals) and former state prosecutor of the canton of Ticino. He is a former member of the Swiss Council of States (from 1995 to 2011) and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Coun ...
, representative at the
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold European Convention on Human Rights, human rights, democracy and the Law in Europe, rule of law in Europe. ...
in charge of the European investigations, concluded that 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA in Europe—thus qualifying as ghost detainees—and then rendered to a country where they may have been tortured. Marty qualified the sequestration of
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr ( ar, حسن مصطفى أسامة نصر ''Ḥassan Muṣṭafā Usāmah Naṣr'') (born 18 March 1963), also known as Abu Omar, is an Egyptian cleric. In 2003, he was living in Milan, Italy, from where he was kidnapped ...
(aka "Abu Omar") in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
in February 2003 as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition."
(
See below: The European investigation and its June 2006 report)
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' reported on 5 December 2005, that the
British government is "guilty of breaking
international law
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
if it knowingly allowed secret CIA "rendition" flights of terror suspects to land at UK airports, according to a report by American legal scholars."
According to ''
Raw Story
''Raw Story'' (also stylized as ''RawStory'') is an American progressive news website. It was founded in 2004 by John K. Byrne and is owned by Byrne and Michael Rogers.
History
Byrne, the former editor-in-chief of ''The Oberlin Review'', ...
'', the Polish site identified by reporter
Larisa Alexandrovna and Polish intelligence officer
David Dastych is
Stare Kiejkuty. In response to these allegations, former Polish intelligence chief,
Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, embarked on a media blitz and claimed that the allegations made by Alexandrovna and Dastych were "...part of the domestic political battle in the US over who is to succeed current Republican President George W Bush," according to the German news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur."
Prison ships
The United States has also been accused of operating "
floating prisons" to house and transport those arrested in its
''War on Terror'', according to human rights lawyers. They have claimed that the US has tried to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. Although no credible information to support these assertions has ever come to light, the alleged justification for prison ships is primarily to remove the ability for jihadists to target a fixed location to facilitate the escape of high value targets, commanders, operations chiefs etc.
Example cases
Khaled Masri case
Khalid El-Masri
Khaled El-Masri (also Khalid El-Masri and Khaled Masri, Levantine Arabic pronunciation: , ar, خالد المصري) (born 29 June 1963) is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed ov ...
(born 1963) is a German citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the
Macedonian police, and handed over to the U.S.
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
. While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly held in a
black site
In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...
, interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other
inhuman and degrading treatment
Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (CIDT) is treatment of persons which is contrary to human rights or dignity, but is not classified as torture. It is forbidden by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3 of the European Convention ...
, which at times escalated to torture, though none of those claims can be verified.
After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the "
Salt Pit
The Salt Pit and Cobalt are the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It is located north of Kabul and was the location of a brick factory prior to the Afgh ...
", the CIA finally admitted his arrest was a mistake and released him.
He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees, including several key leaders of al Qaeda, whom the CIA captured from 2001 to 2005, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks.
Abu Omar case
In 2003,
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr ( ar, حسن مصطفى أسامة نصر ''Ḥassan Muṣṭafā Usāmah Naṣr'') (born 18 March 1963), also known as Abu Omar, is an Egyptian cleric. In 2003, he was living in Milan, Italy, from where he was kidnapped ...
(aka "Abu Omar") was kidnapped by the CIA in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
(Italy),
and deported to Egypt. His case has been characterized by the Swiss senator
Dick Marty
Dick Marty (born 7 January 1945) is a Swiss politician ( FDP.The Liberals) and former state prosecutor of the canton of Ticino. He is a former member of the Swiss Council of States (from 1995 to 2011) and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Coun ...
as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition".
Abu Omar was kidnapped as he walked to his mosque in Milan for noon prayers.
He was transported on a
Learjet (using the
call sign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...
SPAR 92) to
Ramstein, Germany. SPAR (Special Air Resources) is the call sign used by US senior military officers and civilian VIPs for airlift transport.
A second plane took him to
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
, where he was imprisoned and, he claims, tortured.
[Wilkinson, T. and G. Miller. (2005).]
"Italy Says It Didn't Know of CIA Plan"
, ''Los Angeles Times'', 1 July 2005.
In 2005, the Italian judge Guido Salvini issued a warrant for the arrest of 13 persons said to be agents or operatives of the CIA in association with Nasr's kidnapping. In December 2005, an Italian court issued a
European arrest warrant against 22 CIA agents suspected of this kidnapping (including
Robert Seldon Lady
Robert Seldon Lady (born February 2, 1954 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; nicknamed "Mister Bob") is a United States agent convicted of kidnapping in Italy for his role in the CIA's abduction of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in February 200 ...
,
Eliana Castaldo, Lt. Col.
Joseph L. Romano
Colonel Joseph L. Romano III is an officer in the United States Air Force and one of 26 American nationals charged by Italian authorities with the 2003 kidnapping of Italian resident cleric Hassan Nasr as part of an alleged covert CIA operation. ...
, III, etc.). The CIA has not commented on the case, while
Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; born 29 September 1936) is an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies ...
's government has denied any knowledge of a kidnapping plot.
Just after the
2006 Italian general elections,
Roberto Castelli
Roberto Castelli (born 12 July 1946) is an Italian politician. He was the Minister of Justice in the second and third governments of Silvio Berlusconi. He has been one of the main representatives of the Northern League.
Early life and education ...
(
Lega Nord), outgoing Justice Minister, declared to Italian prosecutors that he had not passed the
extradition
Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdi ...
request to the US.
In 2005, ''The Washington Post'' reported Italian court documents which showed that the CIA tried to mislead Italian anti-terrorism police who were looking for the cleric at the time. Robert S. Lady, the CIA's substation chief in Milan, has been implicated in the abduction. In a written opinion upholding the arrest warrant, judge Enrico Manzi wrote that the evidence taken from Lady's home "removes any doubt about his participation in the preparatory phase of the abduction."
Lady, however, alleged that the evidence had been gathered illegally, and has denied involvement in the abduction. Photos of Robert (Bob) Lady and other defendants surfaced on the Web.
Marco Mancini Marco Mancini was the second-highest-ranking officer of SISMI, the military intelligence agency of Italy Wilkinson, T. (2006)."Italian Probe Broadens Beyond Abduction: Prosecutors in the case of a Muslim cleric seek evidence of illegal spying by in ...
, the
SISMI
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (abbreviated SISMI, ''Military Intelligence and Security Service'') was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services app ...
director of anti-terrorism and counterespionage, and Gustavo Pignero, the department's director in 2003, have been arrested on charges of complicity in a kidnapping, with the aggravating circumstances of
abuse of power
Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other t ...
. Italian judges have issued 26 EU arrest warrants for U.S. citizens in connection with this event. A judge also issued arrest warrants for four Americans, three CIA agents and an
Air Force
An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an ...
officer who commanded the
security forces
Security forces are statutory organizations with internal security mandates. In the legal context of several nations, the term has variously denoted police and military units working in concert, or the role of military and paramilitary forces (su ...
at
Aviano Air Base at the time of the abduction.
In 2007, Nasr's lawyer said Egypt had released him and he was back with his family.
In 2009, an Italian judge convicted 22 suspected or known CIA agents, a U.S. Air Force (USAF) colonel, and two Italian secret agents of the kidnapping. These were the first legal convictions in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.
Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmad case
A story in the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' in 2005 seems to corroborate the claims of "torture by proxy." It mentions the attorneys for
Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmad, a detainee held by the Pentagon at Guantanamo Bay, filed a petition to prevent his being transferred to foreign countries. According to the petition's description of a redacted classified
Defense Department memo from 2004, its contents say "officials suggested sending Ahmad to an unspecified foreign country that employed torture in order to increase chances of extracting information from him."
Mr Falkoff, representing Ahmad, continued: "There is only one meaning that can be gleaned from this short passage," the petition says. "The government believes that Mr. Ahmad has information that it wants but that it cannot extract without torturing him." The petition goes on to say that because torture is not allowed at Guantanamo, "the recommendation is that Mr. Ahmad should be sent to another country where he can be interrogated under torture."
In a report, regarding the allegations of CIA flights, on 13 December 2005, the rapporteur and Chair of the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, a 46-nation international organisation dedicated to upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
The Assembly is made up ...
's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Swiss councillor
Dick Marty
Dick Marty (born 7 January 1945) is a Swiss politician ( FDP.The Liberals) and former state prosecutor of the canton of Ticino. He is a former member of the Swiss Council of States (from 1995 to 2011) and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Coun ...
, concluded: "The elements we have gathered so far tend to reinforce the credibility of the allegations concerning the transport and temporary detention of detainees—outside all judicial procedure—in European countries."
In a press conference in January 2006, he stated ''"he was personally convinced the US had undertaken illegal activities in Europe in transporting and detaining prisoners."''
Muhammad Bashmila case
Muhammad Bashmila, a former secret prisoner, now free in Yemen, gave an interview to the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
''
Newsnight
''Newsnight'' (or ''BBC Newsnight'') is BBC Two's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines. The programme is broadcast on weekdays at 22:30. and is also availa ...
'' programme, where he spoke of being transferred from Afghanistan to a
detention center
A detention center, or detention centre, is any location used for detention. Specifically, it can mean:
* A jail or prison, a facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state as a ...
where it was cold, where the food appeared European and where evening prayers were held. Somewhere in Eastern Europe is suspected. This claim cannot be confirmed.
Maher Arar case
Maher Arar, a Syrian-born dual Syrian and Canadian citizen, was detained at
Kennedy International Airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport (colloquially referred to as JFK Airport, Kennedy Airport, New York-JFK, or simply JFK) is the main international airport serving New York City. The airport is the busiest of the seven airports in the Ne ...
on 26 September 2002, by US
Immigration and Naturalization Service officials. He was heading home to Canada after a family holiday in Tunisia. After almost two weeks, enduring hours of interrogation chained, he was sent, shackled and bound, in a private jet to Jordan and then Syria, instead of being deported to Canada. There, he was interrogated and tortured by Syrian intelligence. Maher Arar was eventually released a year later. He told the BBC that he was repeatedly tortured during 10 months' detention in Syria—often whipped on the palms of his hands with metal cables. Syrian intelligence officers forced him to sign a
confession
A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of persons – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information th ...
linking him to
Al Qaeda.
He was finally released following intervention by the Canadian government. The Canadian government lodged an official complaint with the US government protesting Arar's deportation. On 18 September 2006, a Canadian public enquiry presented its findings, entirely clearing Arar of any terrorist activities. In 2004 Arar filed a lawsuit in a federal court in New York against senior U.S. officials, on charges that whoever sent him to Syria knew he would be tortured by intelligence agents.
["Renditions: Tales of Torture"](_blank)
''BBC News Online
BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. It is one of the most popular news websites, with 1.2 billion website visits in April 2021, as well as being used by 60% of the U ...
'', 7 December 2005 US Attorney General
The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the p ...
John Ashcroft
John David Ashcroft (born May 9, 1942) is an American lawyer, lobbyist and former politician who served as the 79th U.S. Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2005. A former U.S. Senator from Missouri and the 50th ...
,
Homeland Security
Homeland security is an American national security term for "the national effort to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards where American interests, aspirations, and ways of life can thrive" t ...
Secretary
Tom Ridge
Thomas Joseph Ridge (born August 26, 1945) is an American politician and author who served as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security from 2001 to 2003, and the first United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005. ...
and
FBI Director
The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a United States' federal law enforcement agency, and is responsible for its day-to-day operations. The FBI Director is appointed for a single ...
Robert Mueller were all named in the lawsuit.
[Canadian sues US over deportation]
BBC News, 23 January 2004 In 2009, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that U.S. law did not allow victims of extraordinary rendition to sue U.S. officials for torture suffered overseas.
In 2006, Arar received the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award from the
Institute for Policy Studies
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is an American progressive think tank started in 1963 that is based in Washington, D.C. It was directed by John Cavanagh from 1998 to 2021. In 2021 Tope Folarin was announced as new Executive Director. ...
for his ordeal. In 2007, Maher Arar received a public apology from the U.S. House of Representatives. U.S. Representative
Dana Rohrabacher
Dana Tyrone Rohrabacher (; born June 21, 1947) is a former American politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 2019. A Republican, he represented for the last three terms of his House tenure.
Rohrabacher ran for r ...
, who apologized, stated that he would fight any efforts to end the practice.
In 2007, Arar was awarded $10.5 million in compensation from the Canadian government for pain and suffering in his ordeal and a formal apology from Prime Minister
Stephen Harper.
[U.S. legislators apologize to Maher Arar](_blank)
''CBCNews'', 18 October 2007
''Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.''
Bohumil Laušman
Other cases
''This is a non-exhaustive list of some alleged examples of extraordinary rendition. Most cannot be confirmed.''
* A Pakistani newspaper reported that in the early hours of 23 October 2001 a Yemeni citizen, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, a 27-year-old
microbiology student at
Karachi University
The University of Karachi ( sd, ; informally Karachi University, KU, or UoK) is a public research university located in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. Established in June 1951 by an act of Parliament and as a successor to the University of Sindh ...
, was spirited aboard a private plane at Karachi's airport by Pakistani security officers.
* In October 2001,
Mamdouh Habib
Mamdouh Habib (born 3 June 1955) is an Egyptian and Australian citizen with dual nationality, best known for having been held for more than three years by the United States as an enemy combatant, by both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and ...
, who lives in Australia and has both Australian and Egyptian nationality (having been born in Egypt), was detained in Pakistan, where he was interrogated for three weeks, and then flown to Egypt in a private plane. From Egypt, he was later flown to a US airbase in Afghanistan. He told the BBC that he did not know who had held him, but had seen Americans, Australians, Pakistanis, and Egyptians among his captors. He also said that he had been beaten, given electric shocks,
deprived of sleep
Sleep deprivation, also known as sleep insufficiency or sleeplessness, is the condition of not having adequate duration and/or quality of sleep to support decent alertness, performance, and health. It can be either chronic or acute and may vary ...
, blindfolded for eight months and brainwashed.
After signing confessions of involvement with al-Qaeda, which he has now retracted, Mr Habib was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. He was released without charge in January 2005.
Former Pakistani Interior Minister
Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat told in an interview by the Australian current affairs programme ''
Dateline
A dateline is a brief piece of text included in news articles that describes where and when the story was written or filed, though the date is often omitted. In the case of articles reprinted from wire services, the distributing organization i ...
'' that Mr Habib was linked with the "terrorist element" operating at that time. However, he contradicted himself a few minutes later, in the same interview, saying that Habib had been assumed guilty because he was in the restricted province of
Baluchistan without proper visa documents.
[Profile: Mamdouh Habib](_blank)
BBC News, 7 December 2005
* In late 2001
Saddiq Ahmad Turkistani was freed by US forces from a
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...
prison in
Kandahar
Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a List of cities in Afghanistan, city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population ...
, Afghanistan. At a news conference, he told reporters and U.S. officials he had been wrongly imprisoned for allegedly plotting to kill
Osama bin Laden. He was then taken to a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, where he was stripped, bound and thrown behind bars. According to U.S. lawyers who represent him, in January 2002 he was sent to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Nearly four years later, Turkistani remained there, despite being cleared for release early 2005 after a government review concluded he is "no longer an
enemy combatant
Enemy combatant is a person who, either lawfully or unlawfully, engages in hostilities for the other side in an armed conflict. Usually enemy combatants are members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. In the case ...
." It is unclear exactly when that determination was made, but
Justice Department
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
lawyers gave notice of it in an 11 October court filing.
According to a 26 June 2006 press release from the Saudi Arabian embassy, Turkistani was released from Guantanamo to Saudi custody.
* In 2002, captured Al Qaeda leader
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (; ALFB transliteration: ''Ḁbnʋ ălŞɑỉƈ alLibi''; born Ali Mohamed Abdul Aziz al-Fakheri; 1963 – May 10, 2009) was a Libyan national captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the fall of the Taliban; he was i ...
was rendered to Egypt where he was allegedly tortured. The information he provided to his interrogators formed a fundamental part of the Bush administration case for attacking Iraq, alleging links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. Al-Libi later recanted his story and it is generally believed that his stories of contact between the Saddam Hussein regime and Al-Qaeda were fabricated to please his interrogators.
*
Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden, were arrested by Swedish police in December 2001. They were taken to Bromma airport in Stockholm, had their clothes cut from their bodies, suppositories were inserted in their anuses and they were put in diapers, overalls, hoods, hand and ankle cuffs, they were then put onto a jet with
American registration N379P with a crew of masked men. They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured according to Swedish investigative programme ''Kalla fakta''. The Swedish ambassador visited them only six weeks later. Agiza was previously charged and sentenced in absentia with being an Islamic militant and was sentenced to 25 years, a sentence that was reduced to 15 years due to the political pressure after the Rendition became known. Al-Zery wasn't charged, and after two years in jail without ever seeing a judge or prosecutor he was sent to his village in Egypt. In 2008 AL Zery was awarded $500,000 in damages by the Swedish government for the wrongful treatment he received in Sweden and the subsequent torture in Egypt.
* In March 2002,
Abou Elkassim Britel, an Italian citizen with Moroccan origins, was arrested in Pakistan and subsequently interrogated by Pakistani and US officials. He was then rendered to Moroccan authorities, detained and tortured in a secret
Temara interrogation centre
The Temara interrogation center, also known as Temara secret detention center ( ar, معتقل تمارة السري), is an extrajudicial detainment and secret prison facility of Morocco located within a forested area of Rabat, Morocco. It is ope ...
. He was finally released without any charges brought against him, before being rearrested in May 2003 at the border crossing of the Spanish enclave of
Melilla
Melilla ( , ; ; rif, Mřič ; ar, مليلية ) is an autonomous city of Spain located in north Africa. It lies on the eastern side of the Cape Three Forks, bordering Morocco and facing the Mediterranean Sea. It has an area of . It was par ...
in North Africa. He is currently imprisoned in
Äin Bourja prison in
Casablanca
Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...
after having been sentenced to nine years in January 2004 for membership of a subversive organisation and for activities including holding unauthorised meetings. This in spite of conclusions in September 2006 by Italian Justice, after a five years investigation, that there was "an absolute lack of grounds of evidence of charge which may be used in trial" and that the suspicion motivating the inquiries had proved unfounded. Nonetheless, allegations in the Italian press and the judicial proceedings that were underway in Italy influenced court proceedings against Britel in Morocco that led to him being sentenced. MPs from Italy and from the European Parliament are set to ask the
Moroccan Royal Cabinet to grant a pardon to the Italian citizen. According to the European Parliament ''Temporary Committee on the Alleged Use of European Countries by the CIA for the Transport and the Illegal Detention of Prisoners'' headed by rapporteur
Giovanni Claudio Fava, documents demonstrated that "the Italian judicial authorities and the Italian Ministry for Home Affairs (the latter, acting on behalf of the ''Direzione Centrale della Polizia di Prevenzione'' cited in connection with the investigation by the ''Divisione Investigazioni Generali ed Operazioni Speciali'') cooperated constantly with foreign secret services and were well aware of all Britel's movements and whatever unlawful treatments he received, from the time of his initial arrest in Pakistan."
[ , Rapporteur Giovanni Claudio Fava, ]European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
DT/65174EN.doc 7 February 2007, made accessible by Statewatch. Retrieved 18 February 2007
* In 2003, an Algerian named Laid Saidi was abducted in Tanzania and taken to Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned and tortured along with Khalid El-Masri.
mirror
) His detention appears to have arisen through a mistranslation of a telephone conversation, in which U.S. officials believed he was speaking about airplanes (''tairat'' in Arabic) when he had in fact been speaking about tires (''tirat'' in Arabic).
*
Binyam Mohammed
Binyam Ahmed Mohamed (, , born 24 July 1978), also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Go ...
, an Ethiopian student who lived in London, was apprehended in Pakistan in April 2002. He allegedly spent three years in "black sites," including in Morocco and Afghanistan. He was supposed to be part of a plot involving
José Padilla.
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
reported: "He went to Pakistan in June 2001 because, he says, he had a drug problem and wanted to quit. He was arrested on 10 April at the airport on his way back to England because of an alleged passport irregularity. Initially interrogated by Pakistani and British officials, he told Stafford Smith: "The British checked out my story and said they knew I was a nobody. They said they would tell the Americans." He was deprived of sleep by having heavy rock music played loudly throughout the day and night.
* On 13 December 2004,
Rodrigo Granda
Ricardo González also known as Rodrigo Granda is a Colombian Venezuelan, member of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). He has served as international spokesman of the guerrilla organization. He currently faces criminal charges in Paragu ...
, a FARC terrorist was captured in
Caracas
Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
, Venezuela by a group of Colombian intelligence officials. Granda was clandestinely transported to the Colombian city of
Cúcuta
Cúcuta (), officially San José de Cúcuta, is a Colombian municipality, capital of the department of Norte de Santander and nucleus of the Metropolitan Area of Cúcuta. The city is located in the homonymous valley, at the foot of the Eastern ...
, near the border with Venezuela, where his capture was legalised by the corresponding authorities. After the capture of Granda became publicly known, the Venezuelan Government broke relations with Colombia as response of violations to its sovereignty.
* On 5 April 2006,
Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
released details of the United States' system of extraordinary rendition, stating that three Yemeni citizens were held somewhere in Eastern Europe.
* On 21 February 2008, British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband admitted that two United States extraordinary rendition flights refuelled on
Diego Garcia
Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a disputed overseas territory of the United Kingdom. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of the 60 small islands of ...
in 2002, and was "very sorry" that earlier denials by British government ministers were having to be corrected.
* The case of
Mohammed Haydar Zammar
Mohammed Haydar Zammar ( ar, محمد حيدر زمار ''Muḥammad Ḥaydar Zammār'') (born 1961) is a Syrian-German militant who served as an important al-Qaida recruiter, and is currently a member of the Islamic State. He claims to have re ...
, now a terrorist for ISIL.
Investigations
Investigations by multi-nation groups
Council of Europe investigation and its two reports
On 25 November 2005, the lead investigator for the
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold European Convention on Human Rights, human rights, democracy and the Law in Europe, rule of law in Europe. ...
, Swiss lawmaker
Dick Marty
Dick Marty (born 7 January 1945) is a Swiss politician ( FDP.The Liberals) and former state prosecutor of the canton of Ticino. He is a former member of the Swiss Council of States (from 1995 to 2011) and of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Coun ...
announced that he had obtained latitude and longitude coordinates for suspected black sites, and he was planning to use satellite imagery over the last several years as part of his investigation. On 28 November 2005, EU Justice Commissioner
Franco Frattini
Franco Frattini (14 March 1957 – 24 December 2022) was an Italian politician and magistrate. From January to December 2022, Frattini served as president of the Council of State.
Frattini previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from ...
asserted that any EU country which had operated a secret prison would have its voting rights suspended. In a preliminary report, Dick Marty declared that it was "doubtful that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware" of the CIA kidnapping of a "hundred" persons on European territory and their subsequent rendition to countries where they may be tortured.
[Directed by Swiss senator Dick Marty, Entitled "Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states," see: , Dick Marty, 22 January 2006]
The report from the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe directed by Dick Marty, and made public on 7 June 2006, was titled: "Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states."
Following the publication of this report, the Council of Europe published its draft Recommendation and Resolution document which
found grounds for concern with the conduct of both the US and member states of the EU and expresses concern for the disregard of international law and the Geneva Convention. Following a 23-point resolution the document makes five recommendations.
* 1 refers to its Resolution on alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states.
* 2 recalling its previous recommendation on the legality of the detention of persons by the United States in Guantanamo Bay
* 3 urges the Committee of Ministers to draft a recommendation to Council of Europe member States containing:
:common measures to guarantee more effectively the human rights of persons suspected of terrorist offences who are captured from, detained in or transported through Council of Europe member States; and a set of minimum requirements for "human rights protection clauses", for inclusion in bilateral and multilateral agreements with third parties, especially those concerning the use of military installations on the territory of Council of Europe member States.
* 4 urgently requests that: an initiative be launched on an international level, expressly involving the United States, an Observer to the Council of Europe, to develop a common, truly global strategy to address the terrorist threat. The strategy should conform in all its elements with the fundamental principles of our common heritage in terms of democracy, human rights and respect for the rule of law. Also, a proposal be considered, in instances where States are unable or unwilling to prosecute persons accused of terrorist acts, to bring these persons within the jurisdiction of an international court that is competent to try them. One possibility worth considering would be to vest such a competence in the International Criminal Court, whilst renewing invitations to join the Court to the United States and other countries that have not yet done so.
* 5 recommends improving the Council of Europe's ability to react rapidly and effectively to allegations of systematic human rights abuse involving several member States.
Several months before the publication of the Council of Europe report directed by Dick Marty,
Gijs de Vries
Gijsbert Marius "Gijs" de Vries (born 22 February 1956) is a retired Dutch-American politician and diplomat who served as State Secretary for the Interior and Kingdom Relations from 1998 to 2002 and European Union Counter-terrorism Coordinato ...
, the EU's antiterrorism coordinator, asserted in April 2006 that no evidence existed that extraordinary rendition had been taking place in Europe. It was also said that the European Union's probe, and a similar one by the continent's leading human rights group had not found any human rights violations nor other crimes that could be proven to the satisfaction of the courts.
[EU official: No evidence of illegal CIA action: Antiterror chief advises committee](_blank)
''The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'', 21 April 2006 This denial from a member of the
executive power
The Executive, also referred as the Executive branch or Executive power, is the term commonly used to describe that part of government which enforces the law, and has overall responsibility for the governance of a state.
In political systems b ...
of the EU institutions has been questioned by the
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
report, which was accepted by a vast majority of the Parliament in February 2007 (''
See below:The European Parliament's 14 February 2007 report'').
On the other hand, Dick Marty explained the difference of approach concerning terrorism between the EU and the US as following:
While the states of the Old World have dealt with these threats primarily by means of existing institutions and legal systems, the United States appears to have made a fundamentally different choice: considering that neither conventional judicial instruments nor those established under the framework of the laws of war could effectively counter the new forms of international terrorism, it decided to develop new legal concepts. This legal approach is utterly alien to the European tradition and sensibility, and is clearly contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[Rendition and the rights of the individual](_blank)
''BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
'', 7 June 2006
However, despite Marty's claims, the European Parliament investigations uncovered cooperation between European
secret services and governments and the extraordinary renditions programs, making such a clear-cut distinction over-simplistic (''
see below''). Dick Marty himself has not accepted such a dualistic approach, as he showed that for the British government also, the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism was alleged to be so grave that the balance of liberties had to be reconsidered.
Marty's report stated that:
The compilation of so-called "black lists" of individuals and companies suspected of maintaining connections with organisations considered terrorist and the application of the associated sanctions clearly breach every principle of the fundamental right to a fair trial: no specific charges, no right to be heard, no right of appeal, no established procedure for removing one's name from the list.
The second report was released on 8 June 2007
27 June 2006 Council of Europe resolution
The
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, a 46-nation international organisation dedicated to upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
The Assembly is made up ...
(PACE) accused the United States of operating a "clandestine spiderweb of disappearances, secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers" and called for EU regulations governing foreign intelligence services operating in Europe, and demanded "human rights clauses" in military base agreements with the USA.
In a resolution and recommendation approved by a large majority, the Assembly also called for:
* The dismantling by the US of its system of detentions and transfers.
* A review of bilateral agreements between Council of Europe member states and the US, particularly on the status of US forces stationed in Europe and on the use of military and other instrastructures, to ensure they conform to international human rights norms.
* Official apologies and compensation for victims of illegal detentions against whom no formal accusations, nor any court proceedings, have ever been brought
* An international initiative, expressly involving the United States, to develop a common, truly global strategy to address the terrorist threat which conforms to democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
European Parliament's investigation and report
The
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
launched its own investigation into the reports. In April 2006,
MEPs
A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament.
When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...
leading the investigations expressed concerns that the CIA had conducted more than 1,000 secret flights over European territory since 2001, some to transfer terror suspects to countries that used torture. Investigators said that the same US agents and planes were involved over and over again.
[European Inquiry Says C.I.A. Flew 1,000 Flights in Secret](_blank)
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', 27 April 2006 The Parliament adopted a resolution in July 2006 endorsing the Council of Europe's conclusions, midway through its own investigation into the alleged program.
"In a resolution passed on 14 February 2007 MEPs approved by a large majority (382 voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining) their committee's final report, which criticized the rendition program and concluded that many European countries tolerated illegal
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
activities including secret flights over their territories. The countries named were: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The report ...
According to the report, the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture. The Parliament also called for the creation of an independent investigation commission and the closure of the Guantanamo camp. According to Italian Socialist
Giovanni Fava, who drafted the document, there was a "strong possibility" that the intelligence obtained under the illegal extraordinary rendition program had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained. The report also uncovered the use of secret detention facilities used in Europe, including Romania and Poland. The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".
UN report by Manfred Nowak
Manfred Nowak
Manfred Nowak (born 26 June 1950 in Bad Aussee) is an Austrian human rights lawyer, who served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture from 2004 to 2010. He is Secretary General of the European Inter-University Center for Human Rig ...
, a special reporter on torture, has catalogued in a 15-page U.N. report presented to the 191-member
General Assembly
A general assembly or general meeting is a meeting of all the members of an organization or shareholders of a company.
Specific examples of general assembly include:
Churches
* General Assembly (presbyterian church), the highest court of presb ...
that the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan are violating international human rights conventions by deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been tortured.
"The United States is holding at least 26 persons as "
ghost detainee
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous.[Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...]
said on 1 December 2005, as it released a list naming some of the detainees. The detainees are being held indefinitely and incommunicado, without legal rights or access to counsel.
World Policy Council report
The
World Policy Council, headed by
Ambassador Horace Dawson
Horace Greeley Dawson, Jr. (born January 30, 1926) was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Botswana.
Life and career
Dawson was born in Augusta, Georgia on January 30, 1926. After graduation from high school, Dawson ...
and Senator
Edward Brooke
Edward William Brooke III (October 26, 1919 – January 3, 2015) was an American politician of the Republican Party, who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1967 until 1979. Prior to serving in the Senate, he served as th ...
, criticized the Bush Administration in the area of civil and human rights for its policy on extraordinary rendition. The Council concluded in its
report
A report is a document that presents information in an organized format for a specific audience and purpose. Although summaries of reports may be delivered orally, complete reports are almost always in the form of written documents. Usage
In ...
that extraordinary rendition
Investigations by national governments
France
The French
district attorney
In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a l ...
of
Bobigny
Bobigny () is a commune, or town, in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, Île-de-France, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Bobigny is the prefecture (capital city) of the Seine-Saint-Denis department, as well as the seat of the A ...
opened up an instruction (an investigation) in order "to verify the presence in
Le Bourget Airport, on 20 July 2005, of the plane numbered N50BH." This instruction was opened following a complaint deposed in December 2005 by the ''
Ligue des droits de l'homme
The Human Rights League (french: Ligue des droits de l’homme ''t du citoyen' or LDH) of France is a Human Rights NGO association to observe, defend and promulgation of Rights Man within the French Republic in all spheres of public life. The ...
'' (LDH) NGO ("Human Rights League") and the ''
International Federation of Human Rights Leagues
The International Federation for Human Rights (french: Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; FIDH) is a non-governmental federation for human rights organizations. Founded in 1922, FIDH is the third oldest international h ...
'' (FIDH) NGO on charges of "arbitrary detention", "crime of torture" and "non-respect of the rights of
war prisoners". It has as objective to determine if the plane was used to transport CIA prisoners to
Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...
and if the French authorities had knowledge of this stop. However, the lawyer defending the LDH declared that he was surprised that the instruction was only opened on 20 January 2006, and that no verifications had been done before.
On 2 December 2005, conservative newspaper ''
Le Figaro
''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of r ...
'' had revealed the existence of two CIA planes that had landed in France, suspected of transporting CIA prisoners. But the instruction concerned only N50BH, which was a
Gulfstream III
The Gulfstream III, a business jet produced by Gulfstream Aerospace, is an improved variant of the Grumman Gulfstream II.
Design and development
The Gulfstream III was built at Savannah, Georgia, in the United States and was designed as an i ...
, which would have landed at Le Bourget on 20 July 2005, coming from
Oslo
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
, Norway. The other aircraft is suspected to have landed in
Brest
Brest may refer to:
Places
*Brest, Belarus
**Brest Region
**Brest Airport
**Brest Fortress
* Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria
* Břest, Czech Republic
*Brest, France
** Arrondissement of Brest
**Brest Bretagne Airport
** Château de Brest
*Br ...
on 31 March 2002. It was investigated by the Canadian authorities, as it would have been flying from
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, via
Keflavík
Keflavík (pronounced , meaning ''Driftwood Bay'') is a town in the Reykjanes region in southwest Iceland. It is included in the municipality of Reykjanesbær whose population as of 2016 is 15,129.
In 1995, Keflavik merged with nearby Njarð ...
in Iceland before going to Turkey.
Germany
Business daily ''
Handelsblatt
The ''Handelsblatt'' (literally "commerce paper" in English) is a German-language business newspaper published in Düsseldorf by Handelsblatt Media Group, formerly known as Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt.
History and profile
''Handelsblatt'' was es ...
'' reported 24 November 2005, that the CIA used an American military base in Germany to transport terrorism suspects without informing the German government. The ''
Berliner Zeitung
The ''Berliner Zeitung'' (, ''Berlin Newspaper'') is a daily newspaper based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in East Germany in 1945, it is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since reunification. It is published by Berliner ...
'' reported the following day there was documentation of 85 takeoffs and landings by planes with a "high probability" of being operated by the CIA, at
Ramstein, the
Rhein-Main Air Base
Rhein-Main Air Base (located at ) was a United States Air Force air base near the city of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was a Military Airlift Command (MAC) and United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) installation, occupying the south side ...
and others. The newspaper cited experts and "
plane-spotters" who observed the planes as responsible for the tally.
In January 2007 the German government indicted 13 alleged CIA operatives for the abduction in Macedonia, transport to Afghanistan, and torture of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen mistakenly believed to be a terrorist.
[Landler, Mark]
German Court Challenges C.I.A. Over Abduction
The New York Times, 1 February 2007.[Slackman, Michael]
The New York Times, 8 December 2010. Spanish authorities identified the suspected CIA abduction team from hotel records after a stopover by their Boeing 737 in Palma de Mallorca.
[Ref. I.D. 06MADRID3104]
Wikileaks Cablegate
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began on Sunday, 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates, embassies, and ...
28 December 2006 Names of the alleged occupants of the rendition aircraft were James Fairing, Jason Franklin, Michael Grady, Lyle Edgard Lumsden III, Eric Fain, Bryam Charles, Kirk James Bird, Walter Richard Gressbore, Patricia Rilroy, Jane Payne, James O'Hale, John Decker, and Hector Lorenzo.
Many of these names proved to be aliases. Investigations by news organizations including the ''Los Angeles Times'',
[Drogin, Bob and Goetz, Joh]
. ''Los Angeles Times'', 18 February 2007 ''The Nation'', and ''Der Spiegel'' identified James Kovalesky (alias James Richard Fairing), Harry Kirk Elarbee (alias Kirk James Bird), and Eric Robert Hume (alias Eric Matthew Fain) as pilots working for
Aero Contractors, a CIA flight contractor based in Smithfield, N.C. CBS News identified Lyle Edgard Lumsden III as a US Army captain who "retired in 1992 from active duty, having served as a physician's assistant" whose last known address was "the Washington DC area".
[Grace, Franci]
"Thirteen Arrests Ordered by Germany"
CBS News, 31 January 2007
None of the names or aliases in this case match those of the 26 alleged CIA agents prosecuted by Italy (see
Imam Rapito affair
The Abu Omar Case was the abduction and transfer to Egypt of the Imam of Milan Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. The case was picked by the international media as one of the better-documented cases of extraordinary rendition car ...
below). However, the ''Los Angeles Times'' reported one of the pilots may have been involved in both incidents.
''The New York Times'' reported that the 13 alleged CIA operatives were charged in indictments issued in Spain and in Munich, but because of "intense political pressure from Washington" Germany never requested their extradition.
[Egelko, Bob]
"WikiLeaks Cables Recount How U.S. Pressured Allies"
''San Francisco Chronicle'', 6 March 2011. In Germany, unlike Italy, defendants cannot be
tried ''in absentia''.
Italy
In the "
Abu Omar case" in Italy, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (aka Abu Omar), an Islamist cleric, was kidnapped in a joint CIA–
SISMI
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (abbreviated SISMI, ''Military Intelligence and Security Service'') was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services app ...
operation in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
on 17 February 2003, transferred to the
Aviano Air Base, and then flown to Egypt, where he was held until 11 February 2007, when an Egyptian court ruled his imprisonment was "unfounded".
[Italy indicts 31 linked to CIA rendition case](_blank)
''International Herald Tribune
The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France for international English-speaking readers. It had the aim of becoming "the world's first global newspaper" and could fairly be said ...
'', 16 February 2007 He claims he was abused on the Aviano Base and endured prolonged torture in Egypt. Italian prosecutors investigated the abduction, and indicted 26 US citizens including the head of CIA in Italy,
Jeffrey W. Castelli. SISMI chief General
Nicolò Pollari
Nicolò Pollari (born 3 March 1943 in Caltanissetta) is a general of the Italian Guardia di Finanza, who was the former head of Italy's national military intelligence agency, or SISMI, from 1 October 2001 until his resignation on 20 November 2006.
...
and second-in-command
Marco Mancini Marco Mancini was the second-highest-ranking officer of SISMI, the military intelligence agency of Italy Wilkinson, T. (2006)."Italian Probe Broadens Beyond Abduction: Prosecutors in the case of a Muslim cleric seek evidence of illegal spying by in ...
were forced to resign, and were also indicted. On 4 November 2009, after a
trial ''in absentia'', an Italian judge found
23 Americans (names listed here) and the two Italians guilty. The sentences ranged from five to eight years for the Americans and three years each for the Italians. The judge acquitted three American diplomats, citing
diplomatic immunity
Diplomatic immunity is a principle of international law by which certain foreign government officials are recognized as having legal immunity from the jurisdiction of another country. , along with five Italian secret service agents, including the former chief, citing state secrecy. In 2010 an Italian appellate court confirmed most of the verdicts and increased the sentences of the 23 Americans.
[The appellate court's written ruling explaining the reason for the increased sentences is due in March 2011. Winfield, Nichol]
Italy appeals court ups US sentences in CIA trial
Herald Online, 15 December 2010. Among those convicted was
Stephen R. Kappes, later the number two man at the CIA,
Robert Seldon Lady
Robert Seldon Lady (born February 2, 1954 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; nicknamed "Mister Bob") is a United States agent convicted of kidnapping in Italy for his role in the CIA's abduction of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in February 200 ...
, formerly CIA station Chief in Milan, Col.
Joseph L. Romano
Colonel Joseph L. Romano III is an officer in the United States Air Force and one of 26 American nationals charged by Italian authorities with the 2003 kidnapping of Italian resident cleric Hassan Nasr as part of an alleged covert CIA operation. ...
, a U S Air Force officer, and asserted CIA agent
Sabrina De Sousa, who unsuccessfully sued the US State Department to grant her diplomatic immunity and shield her from arrest.
These were the first convictions anywhere in the world arising from the CIA's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture occurred. The US had tried but failed to obstruct the prosecutions by Italy's independent judiciary.
[Goetz, John and Gebauer, Matthew,]
US Pressured Italy to Influence Judiciary
, ''Der Spiegel'', 17 December 2010. Following the convictions the US used threats and diplomatic pressure to stop the Italian executive branch from issuing arrest warrants and extradition requests for the Americans.
Ireland
The
Irish government
The Government of Ireland ( ga, Rialtas na hÉireann) is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in Ireland.
The Constitution of Ireland vests executive authority in a government which is headed by the , the head of government. The gover ...
has come under internal and external pressure to inspect airplanes at
Shannon Airport
Shannon Airport ( ga, Aerfort na Sionainne) is an international airport located in County Clare in the Republic of Ireland. It is adjacent to the Shannon Estuary and lies halfway between Ennis and Limerick. The airport is the third busiest ai ...
to investigate whether or not they contain extraordinary rendition captives.
Police at
Shannon Airport
Shannon Airport ( ga, Aerfort na Sionainne) is an international airport located in County Clare in the Republic of Ireland. It is adjacent to the Shannon Estuary and lies halfway between Ennis and Limerick. The airport is the third busiest ai ...
said that they had received political instruction not to approach, search or otherwise interfere with US aircraft suspected of being involved in extraordinary rendition flights. Irish Justice Minister
Dermot Ahern
Dermot Christopher Ahern (born 20 April 1955) is an Irish former Fianna Fáil politician who served as Minister for Justice and Law Reform from 2008 to 2011, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2004 to 2008, Minister for Communications, Marine a ...
sought permission from the US for random inspection of US flights, to provide political "cover" to him in case rendition flights were revealed to have used Shannon; he believed at least three flights had done so.
The European Parliament has censured Ireland for its role in facilitating extraordinary rendition and taking insufficient or no measures to uphold its obligations under the UN CAT.
[EU to censure Ahern over rendition role](_blank)
, ''The Irish Times
''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...
'', 24 January 2007.
Kosovo
In 2002, the
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold European Convention on Human Rights, human rights, democracy and the Law in Europe, rule of law in Europe. ...
's then-
Commissioner for Human Rights
The Commissioner for Human Rights is an independent and impartial non-judicial institution established in 1999 by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, to promote awareness of and respect for human rights in the council's 46 member states. The ...
Alvaro Gil-Robles witnessed "a smaller version of Guantanamo", he told France's ''
Le Monde
''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
'' newspaper.
Gil-Robles told the daily that he had inspected the centre, located within the
US military
The United States Armed Forces are the Military, military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six Military branch, service branches: the United States Army, Army, United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps, United States N ...
's Camp
Bondsteel in Kosovo, in 2002, to investigate reports of extrajudicial arrests by NATO-led peacekeepers.
Portugal
Portugal opened up an investigation concerning CIA flights in February 2007, on the basis of declarations by
Socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
MEP Ana Gomes
Ana Maria Rosa Martins Gomes (born 9 February 1954), better known as Ana Gomes, is a Portuguese former diplomat and politician of the Socialist Party (PS).
She earned wide recognition for her role in negotiating independence for East Timor, a ...
and by Rui Costa Pinto, journalist of ''
Visão
''Visão'' is a Portuguese news magazine published weekly in Lisbon, Portugal.
History and profile
''Visão'' was first published on 25 March 1993. The magazine is the successor to the weekly newspaper ''O Jornal'' which was published between 197 ...
'' review. The Portuguese general prosecutor,
Cândida Almeida, head of the
Central Investigation and Penal Action Department
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
(DCIAP), announced the opening of investigations on 5 February 2007. They were to be centered on the issue of "torture or inhuman and cruel treatment," and instigated by allegations of "illegal activities and serious human rights violations" made by MEP Ana Gomes to the attorney general, Pinto Monteiro, on 26 January 2007.
[Portugal: Renditions: Judicial investigation into CIA flights begins](_blank)
''Statewatch Statewatch is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 that monitors civil liberties and other issues in the European Union and encourages investigative reporting and research.
The organization has three free databases: a large database of all its ...
News Online'', 5 February 2007 – 6 February 2007 In February 2008, the UK NGO
Reprieve published a report based on flight logs obtained by Ana Gomes, confirming that over 728 prisoners were flown to Guantánamo through Portuguese airspace, and hence through Portuguese jurisdiction, in at least 28 flights.
One of the most critic voice against the scarce collaboration provided by the Portuguese government to the European Parliament Commission which investigated CIA flights, Ana Gomes declared that, although she had no doubt that permission of these illegal flights were frequent during
Durão Barroso Durão is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Joaquim Durão (1930–2015), Portuguese chess player
* Nuno Durão (born 1962), Portuguese rugby union footballer and coach
*Santa Rita Durão
José de Santa Rita Durão (1722–178 ...
(2002–2004) and
Santana Lopes (2004–2005)' governments, "during the
ocialistgovernment of
José Sócrates
José Sócrates Carvalho Pinto de Sousa, GCIH (born 6 September 1957), commonly known as José Sócrates (), is a Portuguese politician who was the prime minister of Portugal from 12 March 2005 to 21 June 2011. For the second half of 2007, he ...
005– 24 flights which passed through Portuguese territory" are registered. Active in the TDIP commission, Ana Gomes complained about the Portuguese state's reluctance to provide information, leading her to tensions with the Foreign minister,
Luís Amado
Luís Filipe Marques Amado, GCC (born 17 September 1953) is a portuguese politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2011 in Portugal's XIII Government led by the Socialist Party. Before replacing Diogo Freitas do Amaral ...
, member of the
same party. Ana Gomes declared herself satisfied with the opening of the investigations, but underlined that she had always claimed that a parliamentary inquiry would be necessary.
On the other hand, journalist Rui Costa Pinto was heard by the DCIAP, as he had written an article, refused by ''Visão'', about flights passing by
Lajes Field
Lajes Field or Lajes Air Base (; pt, Base Aérea das Lajes), officially designated Air Base No. 4 (''Base Aérea Nº 4'', BA4) , is a multi-use airfield near Lajes and northeast of Angra do Heroísmo on Terceira Island in the Azores, Portug ...
, a Portuguese airbase used by the US Air Forces, in the
Azores
)
, motto =( en, "Rather die free than subjected in peace")
, anthem= ( en, "Anthem of the Azores")
, image_map=Locator_map_of_Azores_in_EU.svg
, map_alt=Location of the Azores within the European Union
, map_caption=Location of the Azores wi ...
.
Approximately 150 CIA flights which have flown through Portugal have been identified.
Romania
Franco Frattini
Franco Frattini (14 March 1957 – 24 December 2022) was an Italian politician and magistrate. From January to December 2022, Frattini served as president of the Council of State.
Frattini previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from ...
the European Union Justice Commissioner requested an explanation from the governments of Poland and Romania about the accusations made by Dick Marty. Doris Mircea (Romanian spokeswoman in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
) replied to this in November 2007 in a letter stating "no person was kept illegally as a prisoner within Romanian jails and no illegal transfer of detainees passed through Romanian territory" and that that was the official finding of a committee of inquiry set up by the government to investigate the accusations.
Spain
In November 2005, Spanish newspaper ''
El País
''El País'' (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. ''El País'' is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA.
It is the second most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . ''El Pa ...
'' reported that CIA planes had landed in the
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Morocc ...
and in
Palma de Mallorca
Palma (; ; also known as ''Palma de Mallorca'', officially between 1983–88, 2006–08, and 2012–16) is the capital and largest city of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of the Balearic Islands in Spain. It is situate ...
. Spanish magistrate
Baltasar Garzón
Baltasar Garzón Real (; born 26 October 1955) is a former Spanish judge. Garzón formerly served on Spain's central criminal court, the ''Audiencia Nacional'', and was the examining magistrate of the ''Juzgado Central de Instrucción No. 5'', ...
, notable for his earlier attempt to prosecute Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...
, opened up an investigation concerning these landings which, according to Madrid, were made without official knowledge, thus being a breach of
national sovereignty
Westphalian sovereignty, or state sovereignty, is a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory. The principle underlies the modern international system of sovereign states and is enshrined in the Un ...
. Diplomatic cables exposed in 2010 by
WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...
suggest that the United States government including the American ambassador, worked with parts of the Spanish government to subvert the Spanish judicial process to control and ultimately stymie and thwart the investigation.
[Tremlett, Gile]
Wikileaks: US pressured Spain over CIA rendition and Guantánamo torture rendition
The Guardian, 1 December 2010.[Horton, Scot]
WikiLeaks Cables Reveal U.S. Tried to Thwart Spanish Probes of Gitmo Torture and CIA Rendition
Interview with Amy Goodman, 1 December 2010.
Sweden
Extraordinary rendition provoked a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Sweden in 2006 when Swedish authorities put a stop to CIA rendition flights.
[Nylander, Johan]
CIA rendition flights stopped by Swedish military
The Swedish Wire, 5 December 2010. In December 2001 Swedish police detained Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden. The police took them to Bromma airport in Stockholm, and then stood aside as masked alleged CIA operatives cut their clothes from their bodies, inserted drugged suppositories in their anuses, and dressed them in diapers and overalls, handcuffed and chained them and put them on an executive jet with American registration N379P. They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured according to extensive investigate reports by Swedish programme ''Kalla fakta''. A Swedish Parliamentary investigator concluded that the degrading and inhuman treatment of the two prisoners violated Swedish law. In 2006 the United Nations found Sweden had violated an international torture ban in its complicity in the CIA's transfer of al-Zari to Egypt. Sweden imposed strict rules on rendition flights, but Swedish Military Intelligence posing as airport personnel who boarded one of two subsequent extraordinary rendition flights in 2006 during a stopover at Stockholm's Arlanda International Airport found the Swedish restrictions were being ignored.
In 2008 the Swedish government awarded al-Zery $500,000 in damages for the abuse he received in Sweden and the subsequent torture in Egypt.
United Kingdom
After claims by
Liberty
Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom.
In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...
that British airports had been used by the
"CIA for extraordinary rendition flights, the
Association of Chief Police Officers
The Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (ACPO) was a not-for-profit private limited company that for many years led the development of policing practices in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Established ...
launched an investigation in November 2005. The report was published in June 2007 and found no evidence to support the claim. This was on the same day the Council of Europe released its report with evidence that the UK had colluded in extraordinary rendition, thus directly contradicting ACPO's findings. Liberty has challenged the findings and has stated that its original claims were based on "credible evidence".
[Police reject UK rendition claims](_blank)
''BBC News Online
BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. It is one of the most popular news websites, with 1.2 billion website visits in April 2021, as well as being used by 60% of the U ...
'', 9 June 2007
In July 2007, the British government's Intelligence and Security Committee released their Rendition report, detailing U.S. and U.K. activities and policies.
On 21 February 2008, British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband admitted (despite previous government denials) that two U.S. extraordinary rendition flights had stopped on
Diego Garcia
Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, a disputed overseas territory of the United Kingdom. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of the 60 small islands of ...
in 2002, a U.K. territory. When questioned as to whether the government had deliberately misled the public over rendition, the Foreign Secretary apologised and stated that the government had simply "made a mistake". His statement also laid out the current UK Government view on Extraordinary rendition;
A judicial inquiry, chaired by
Sir Peter Gibson was announced by the government in July 2010, but was never formally launched and was scrapped in January 2012. According to the government, this was due to ongoing criminal investigations. In April 2012 the CIA and FBI won a court ruling in the US, exempting them from releasing documentation requested by British members of parliament. It later emerged that relevant 2002 flight records from Diego Garcia had been destroyed by
water damage
Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a s ...
.
"Erroneous rendition"
An article published on 5 December 2005, ''The Washington Post'' reported that the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
's
Inspector General was investigating what it calls erroneous renditions.
[Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake: German Citizen Released After Months in 'Rendition'](_blank)
Dana Priest
Dana Louise Priest (born May 23, 1957) is an American journalist, writer and teacher. She has worked for nearly 30 years for the ''The Washington Post, Washington Post'' and became the third John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Public Affairs Jo ...
, ''The Washington Post'', 4 December 2005 The term appears to refer to cases in which innocent people were subjected to extraordinary rendition.
Khalid El-Masri
Khaled El-Masri (also Khalid El-Masri and Khaled Masri, Levantine Arabic pronunciation: , ar, خالد المصري) (born 29 June 1963) is a German and Lebanese citizen who was mistakenly abducted by the Macedonian police in 2003, and handed ov ...
is the most well-known person who is believed to have been subjected to the process of "extraordinary rendition", as a result of mistaken identity.
Laid Saidi, an Algerian detained and tortured along with El-Masri, was apprehended apparently because of a taped telephone conversation in which the word ''tirat'', meaning "tires" in Arabic, was mistaken for the word ''tairat'', meaning "airplanes".
The Post's anonymous sources say that the Inspector General is looking into a number of similar cases—possibly as many as thirty innocent men who were captured and transported through what has been called "erroneous renditions".
A 27 December 2005 story quotes anonymous CIA insiders claiming there have been 10 or fewer such erroneous renditions.
[CIA watchdog probes 'renditions' of suspects](_blank)
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
, 27 December 2005
It names the CIA's
inspector general,
John Helgerson, as the official responsible for the inquiry.
The AP story quotes
Tom Malinowski
Tomasz "Tom" P. Malinowski (; born September 23, 1965) is an American politician and diplomat who is the U.S. representative from New Jersey's 7th congressional district. A Democrat, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Huma ...
, Washington office director of Human Rights Watch who said:
I am glad the CIA is investigating the cases that they are aware of, but by definition you are not going to be aware of all such cases, when you have a process designed to avoid judicial safeguards.
Obama Executive Order on rendition
Two days after President Barack Obama was sworn into office, on 22 January 2009, he signed an executive order entitled "Ensuring Lawful Interrogations".
Overall, the executive order calls for more oversight of interrogation by third parties, but does not end extraordinary rendition. The section of the Executive Order relating to extraordinary rendition provides as follows:
On 2 November 2009 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that victims of extraordinary rendition cannot sue Washington for torture suffered overseas, because Congress has not authorized such lawsuits, in ruling on Canadian citizen Maher Arar's case.
On 15 September 2010
PolitiFact.com
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times ...
wrote about the Obama administration's record on renditions:
The administration has announced new procedural safeguards concerning individuals who are sent to foreign countries. President Obama also promised to shut down the CIA-run "black sites," and there seems to be anecdotal evidence that extreme renditions are not happening, at least not as much as they did during the Bush administration. Still, human rights groups say that these safeguards are inadequate and that the DOJ Task Force recommendations still allow the U.S. to send individuals to foreign countries.
Other countries
CIA participating countries
According to a report by the
Open Society Foundations
Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a Grant (money), grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the wo ...
, 54 countries participated at one point or another with the CIA's extraordinary rendition program:
#
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
#
Albania
Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...
#
Algeria
)
, image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Algiers
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, relig ...
#
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
#
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
#
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...
#
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
#
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and Pars pro toto#Geography, often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of Southern Europe, south and southeast Euro ...
#
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
#
Croatia
, image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg
, anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capit ...
#
Cyprus
Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is geo ...
#
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
#
Denmark
)
, song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast")
, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark
...
#
Djibouti
Djibouti, ar, جيبوتي ', french: link=no, Djibouti, so, Jabuuti officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red ...
#
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
#
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
#
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
#
Gambia
#
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
#
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
#
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
#
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
#
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
#
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
#
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
#
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
#
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
#
Jordan
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
#
Kenya
)
, national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Nairobi
, coordinates =
, largest_city = Nairobi
, ...
#
Libya
Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...
#
Lithuania
Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
#
Macedonia
#
Malawi
Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeas ...
#
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
#
Mauritania
#
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...
#
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
#
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
#
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
#
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
#
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
#
Somalia
Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constituti ...
#
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
#
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
# Sri Lanka
# Sweden
# Syria
# Thailand
# Turkey
# United Arab Emirates
#
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
# Uzbekistan
# Yemen
# Zimbabwe
Bibliography
* Grey, Stephen (2006). ''Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program''. New York City: St. Martin's Press. .
* Thompson, A. C., and Trevor Paglen (2006). ''Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights''. Hoboken, New Jersey: Melville House. .
* Paglen, Trevor (2010) ''Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World.'' New York: Duton.
Notes
External links
therenditionproject.org.uk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Extraordinary Rendition By The United States
American phraseology
Counterterrorism in the United States
Extraordinary rendition program,
Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency operations
Emergency laws
Extradition
George W. Bush administration controversies
Human rights abuses
International law
Kidnapping
Torture
Euphemisms