CIA East Europe "Will Pay"

Cheriff Bassiouni, the UN's representative in Aghanistan, explains how the CIA's torture network began in 2001. If the Bush administration is primarily responsible, Poland, Hungary and Romania also played their part.

"Poland, Romania and Hungary, being members of the European system, are gravely responsible for having collaborated or allowed the CIA to torture presumed terrorists, seized with impunity throughout the world, in secret prisons in these sovereign nations. All of these countries have signed the European Convention on Human Rights and other EU treaties outlawing torture. They have committed clear and unquestionable violations of these European conventions. There have been both prosecutable civil and criminal violations". It is in these harsh terms of "complicity and collusion" with Washington that the jusrist in international law, Cheriff Bassiouni, spoke in his interview with Il Manifesto. Bassiouni was UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's representative on Human Rights in Afghanistan in 2004 and is the author of a report about the secret prison scandal in which the CIA tortured Afghan and foreign citizens. His investigation was published in May and it angered Washington and his mandate [in Afghanistan] was not renewed.

Q: Professor Bassiouni, how do you interpret these revelations of secret CIA prisons in eastern countries, which these countries deny, including Bush's "we do not torture"?

Bassiouni: This method of acting in secret with impunity will continue until they are discovered. It's part of how the CIA has operated since the Cold War. America now operates illegally based on secret "executive orders" from President Bush: it's a common procedure in dictatorial states and it's incomprehensible that America can tolerates it. The CIA operates in Afghanistan or in Italy, such as the case of the Imam Omar, who was taken to Egypt to be tortured. From their 14 military bases in Afghanistan or their secret prisons in Eastern Europe or other locations in Asia, they act in total illegality contrary to international law, in violation of human rights. My investigation upset Washington. But the investigations will continue and the international consequences will soon catch up with Bush.

Q: Poland and Hungary are in the EU. Romania is slated to enter in 2007. What are the future consequences of these violations of human rights treaties and conventions against torture?

Bassiouni: The request to join the EU entails a clear commitment by these countries to follow the Convention on Human Rights. These obligations have not been honored, indeed the violations by these governments is incontrovertible. The intelligence agencies of these countries form part of the institutional organs of a sovereign state. And in Poland and the other Eastern European countries they have collaborated with the government in Washington and therefore they are legally prosecutable.

Q: As the governments of Poland, Hungary and Romania have stated they know nothing about this, what can the EU's organs do in terms of legal litigation?

Bassiouni: These countries must respond to these serious crimes committed by their state institutions such as their intelligence agencies. If the CIA operates or interferes in Poland or in any other third country, the responsibility falls on the Polish government and those countries which collaborated with the government in Washington to violate the laws that all EU countries must follow. In this case, crimes against torture and violations of human rights. On top of that the CIA agents who are responsible for these crimes are criminally responsible.

Q: And who in Washington is legally responsible for the crimes of torture committed by the CIA in their secret eastern prisons?

Bassiouni: The American intelligence agencies operated under the authorization of President Bush, who after September 11 created the system and the structure for the so-called "global war on terror".

Q: How was this CIA torture network created?

Bassiouni: Since February 2002, the CIA has operated with intelligence agencies of allied countries in the "global war on terror". Starting in 2001, Bush issued executive order, described in memorandum 13224, which launched the "joint doctrine for detainees operation". This presidential directive must be renewed annually. The last time it was renewed was on March 23, 2005. In that administration document it is pointed out: "Any detainee or presumably connected to terrorist organizations is henceforth classifed an enemy combatant". In the last three years, the Pentagon's strategy for this "mission" has been to create a structure and a system of secret prisons to torture and to move people around, as an alternative to Guantanamo. In Afghanistan, at the air base in Bagram and in Kandahar, prisoners are brought from all over the world by CIA aircraft and from there they are sent to the other 14 American military centers to be tortured. The others from Afghanistan are transported to secret prisons under American control - in Eastern Europe countries like Poland, Romania, Hungary, whereas Asians [are taken to] the military base at Diego Garcia.